Anti-War Quotes

War and other institutional behaviors have no direct genetic or neurophysiological basis.

-- David Adams

Only in time of fear is government thrown back to its primitive and sole function of self-defense and the many interests of which it is the guardian become subordinate to that.

-- Jane Addams

Better beans and bacon in peace than cakes and ale in fear

-- Aesop

Bullets cannot be recalled. They cannot be uninvented. But they can be taken out of the gun.

-- Martin Amis

Let us face squarely the paradox that the world which goes to war is a world, usually genuinely desiring peace. War is the outcome, not mainly of evil intentions, but on the whole of good intentions which miscarry or are frustrated. It is made not usually by evil men knowing themselves to be wrong, but is the outcome of policies pursued by good men usually passionately convinced that they are right.

-- Norman Angell

"Of the tyrant, spies and informers are the principal instruments. War is his favorite occupation, for the sake of engrossing the attention of the people, and making himself necessary to them as their leader."

-- Aristotle (384-322 BC)



War would end if the dead could return.

-- Stanley Baldwin

It takes twenty years or mor e of peace to make a man; it takes only twenty seconds of war to destroy him.

--Baudouin I

No more wars, no more bloodshed. Peace unto you. Shalom, salaam, forever.

-- Menachem Begin

The pens which write against disarmament are made with the same steel from which guns are made.

--Aristide Briand

Peace is the best security If this phrase of the "balance of power" is to be always an argument for war, the pretext for war will never be wanting, and peace can never be secure.

-- John Bright

"Say it isn't true

That there always has been and always will be war

Say it isn't true

And apart from all the fine things that man has struggled for

Say it isn't true

There always has been and always will be war"

--Jackson Browne, "Say It Isn't True"

The pen is mightier than the sword.

-- Edward George Bulwer-Lytton

"There are no warlike people, just warlike leaders."

-- Ralph J. Bunche

It hath been said that an unjust peace is to be preferred before a just war.

-- Samuel Butler

It is the people who have no say in making wars who suffer from the consequences of them.

-- Philippa Carr

* We cannot have peace among men whose hearts delight in killing any living creature. By every act that glorifies or even tolerates such moronic delight in killing we set back the progress of humanity.

-- Rachel Carson

War may sometimes be a necessary evil. But no matter how necessary, it is always an evil, never a good. We will not learn how to live together in peace by killing each other's children.

-- Jimmy Carter

One is left with the horrible feeling now that war settles nothing; that to win a war is as disastrous as to lose one!

-- Agatha Christie

I cease not to advocate peace; even though unjust it is better than the most just war.

-- Cicero

Laws are silent in time of war.

-- Cicero

I prefer the most unfair peace to the most righteous war.

-- Cicero

* "War is an invention of the human mind. The human mind can invent peace with justice."

-- Norman Cousins

No one is so foolish as to prefer war to peace, in which, instead of sons burying their fathers, fathers bury their sons.

-- Croesus, King of Lydia

* "Those advocates who work for world peace by urging a system of world government are called impractical dreamers. Those impractical dreamers are entitled to ask their critics what is so practical about war."

-- Walter Cronkite

* I think war is based in greed and there are huge karmic retributions that will follow. I think war is never the answer to solving any problems. The best way to solve problems is to not have enemies.

-- Sheryl Crow

I am a man of peace. I believe in peace. But I do not want peace at any price.

-- Mohandas K. Gandhi "If we are to teach real peace in this world, and if we are to carry on a real war against war, we shall have to begin with the children."

-- Mohandas Gandhi

Negotiation talks are the best way to solve anything. We must replace wars and weapons with negotiations and talks.

~ Akbar Ganji

I have little faith in the theory that organized killing is the best prelude to peace. -- Ellen Glasgow

All wars are wars among thieves who are too cowardly to fight and who therefore induce the young manhood of the whole world to do the fighting for them.

-- Emma Goldman The contention that a standing army and navy is the best security of peace is about as logical as the claim that the most peaceful citizen is he who goes about heavily armed.

-- Emma Goldman

War is the admission of defeat in the face of conflicting interests.

-- Germaine Greer

"Terrorism" is what we call the violence of the weak, and we condemn it; "war" is what we call the violence of the strong, and we glorify it.

-- Sydney J. Harris

I really do inhabit a system in which words are capable of shaking the entire structure of government, where words can prove mightier than ten military divisions.

-- Vaclav Havel

Never think that war, no matter how necessary, nor how justified, is not a crime.

-- Ernest Hemingway

"In peace sons bury fathers, but war violates the order of nature, and fathers bury sons."

-- Herodotus

I believe - though I may be wrong, because I'm no expert - that this war is about what most wars are about: hegemony, money, power and oil.

-- Dustin Hoffman

War grows out of the desire of the individual to gain advantage at the expense of his fellow man.

-- Napoleon Hill

If people were forced to eat what they killed there would be no more war.

-- Abbie Hoffman

So long as governments set the example of killing their enemies, private individuals will occasionally kill theirs.

- Elbert Hubbard

Nothing is more useless in developing a nation's economy than a gun, and nothing blocks the road to social development more than the financial burden of war. War is the arch enemy of national progress and the modern scourge of civilized man.

-- King Hussein of Jordan

The most shocking fact about war is that its victims and its instruments are individual human beings, and that these individual beings are condemned by the monstrous conventions of politics to murder or be murdered in quarrels not their own.

-- Aldous Huxley

"And they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more."

-- Isaiah 2:4

The first casualty, when war comes, is truth.

-- Hiram Johnson



I am tired of fighting.... from where the sun now stands, I will fight no more.

-- Chief Joseph (1732-1794)

"Mankind must put an end to war, or war will put an end to mankind...War will exist until that distant day when the conscientious objector enjoys the same reputation and prestige that the warrior does today."

--John F. Kennedy

Everything in war is barbaric But the worst barbarity of war is that it forces men collectively to commit acts against which individually they would revolt with their whole being.

-- Ellen Key

The belief that we some day shall be able to prevent war is to me one with the belief in the possibility of making humanity really human.

-- Ellen Key

"The past is prophetic in that it asserts loudly that wars are poor chisels for carving out peaceful tomorrows."

-- Martin Luther King, Jr.

We have war when at least one of the parties to a conflict wants something more than it wants peace.

-- Jeane J. Kirkpatrick

The most important thing today is to stop US wars.

-- Yuri Kochiyama

Every war carries within it the war which will answer it. Every war is answered by a new war, until everything, everything is smashed.

-- Kathe Kollwitz

Who would ever have believed that human beings would be stupid enough to blow themselves off the face of the earth? The war started when people accepted the idiotic principle that peace could be maintained by arranging to defend themselves with weapons they couldn't possibly use without committing suicide.

-- Stanley Kramer and John Paxton

War: first, one hopes to win; then one expects the enemy to lose; then, one is satisfied that he too is suffering; in the end, one is surprised that everyone has lost.

-- Karl Kraus

"How is the world ruled and led to war? Diplomats lie to journalists and believe these lies when they see them in print."

-- Karl Kraus, Die letzte Nacht, 1918

War can be so impersonal yet when we put a name, a face, a place and match it to families, then war is not impersonal.

-- Dennis Kucinich "The belief in the inevitability of war is a self-fulfilling prophecy... We need an alternative vision, to see the world as one, as interconnected."

-- Dennis Kucinich

* I don't believe war is a way to solve problems. I think it's wrong. I don't have respect for the people that made the decisions to go on with war.

-- Avril Lavigne

If it were proved to me that in making war, my ideal had a chance of being realized, I would still say "No" to war. For one does not create human society on mounds of corpses.

-- Louis Lecoin

The way to prevent war is to bend every energy toward preventing it, not to proceed by the dubious indirection of preparing for it.

--Max Lerner

War is as outmoded as cannibalism, chattel slavery, blood-feuds, and dueling, an insult to God and humanity...a daily crucifixion of Christ.

-- Muriel Lester

There is no honorable way to kill, no gentle way to destroy. There is nothing good in war. Except its ending.

-- Abraham Lincoln

It has now become clear to the whole world that each war is the creation of a preceding war and the generation of a new present or future wars.

-- Maxim Maximovich Litvinov

Certain peace is better and safer than anticipated victory

-- Livy (c 29BC)

The belief in the possibility of a short decisive war appears to be one of the most ancient and dangerous of human illusions.

-- Robert Lynd

The great question is, can war be outlawed from the world? If so, it would mark the greatest advance in civilization since the Sermon on the Mount.

-- Douglas MacArthur

I'm fed up to the ears with old men dreaming up wars for young men to die in.

-- George McGovern

Put up again thy sword into his place: for all they that take the sword shall perish by the sword.

-- Bible, Matthew 26:52

Warmaking doesn't stop warmaking. If it did, our problems would have stopped millennia ago.

-- Colman McCarthy

Everything you do in war is a crime in peace

-- Helen McCloy

There's no difference between one's killing and making decisions that will send others to kill. It's exactly the same thing, or even worse.

-- Golda Meir

It is true that we have won all our wars, but we have paid for them. We don't want victories anymore.

-- Golda Meir

* We have learned that change cannot come through war. War is not a feasible tool to use in fighting against the oppression we face. War has caused more problems. We cannot embrace that path.

-- Rigoberta Menchu

I dream of giving birth to a child who will ask: "Mother, what was war?"

-- Eve Merriam

Peace hath her victories No less renown'd than war.

-- John Milton

The problem after a war is with the victor. He thinks he has just proved that war and violence pa y. Who will now teach him a lesson?

-- A. J. Muste

War is a damnable, filthy thing and has destroyed civilization after civilization

-- Philip Noel-Baker

Today the real test of power is not capacity to make war but capacity to prevent it.

-- Anne O'Hare McCormick

To establish any mode to abolish war, however advantageous it might be to Nations, would be to take from such Government the most lucrative of its branches.

-- Thomas Paine.

Can anything be more ridiculous than that a man should have the right to kill me because he lives on the other side of the water, and because his ruler has a quarrel with m ine, though I have none with him?

-- Blaise Pascal

It seems to me that there are two great enemies of peace - fear and selfishness.

-- Katherine Paterson

"Does the commandment 'Thou Shalt Not Kill' mean nothing to us? Are we to interpret it as meaning 'Thou shalt not kill except on the grand scale,' or 'Thou shalt not kill except when the national leaders say to do so'?"

-- Linus Pauling

Who would ever have believed that human beings would be stupid enough to blow themselves off the face of the earth? The war started when people accepted the idiotic principle that peace could be maintained by arranging to defend themselves with weapons they couldn't possibly use without committing suicide.

--John Paxton and Stanley Kramer

The true and solid peace of nations consists not in equality of arms but in mutual trust alone.

-- Pope John XXIII

Let us not accept violence as the way of peace. Let us instead begin by respecting true freedom: the resulting peace will be able to satisfy the world's expectations, for it will be a peace built on justice, a peace founded on the incomparable dignity of the f ree human being.

-- Pope John Paul II

No more war, war never again! Peace, it is peace which must guide the destinies of people and of all mankind.

-- Pope Paul VI

Those who give the orders are not the ones to die The people who are doing the work and the fighting and the dying, and those who are doing the talking, are not all the same people.

-- Katherine Anne Porter

You can no more win a war than you can win an earthquake.

-- Jeannette Rankin There can be no compromise with war; it cannot be reformed or controlled; cannot be disciplined into decency or codified into common sense.

-- Jeannette Rankin

War comes a the end of the twentieth century as absolute failure of imagination, scientific and political. That a war can be represented as helping a people to "feel good" about themselves, their country, is a measure of that failure.

-- Adrienne Rich

The strength of a civilization is not measured by its ability to fight wars, but rather by its ability to prevent them.

-- Gene Roddenberry



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* More than an end to war, we want an end to the beginning of all wars -- yes, an end to this brutal, inhuman and thoroughly impractical method of settling the differences between governments.

-- Franklin D. Roosevelt

War does not determine who is right - only who is left.

-- Bertrand Russell War seems a mere madness, a collective insanity.

-- Bertrand Russell This idea of weapons of mass extermination is utterly horrible and is something which no one with one spark of humanity can tolerate.

-- Bertrand Russell

We are all victims of war, and we all count.

-- Marla Ruzicka

Let there be no more w ar or bloodshed between Arabs and Israelis. Let there be no more suffering or denial of rights. Let there be no more despair or loss of faith.

-- Anwar al-Sadat

Sometime they'll give a war and nobody will come.

-- Carl Sandburg

When the rich wage war it is the poor who die.

-- Jean Paul Sartre

If a victory is told in detail, one can no longer distinguish it from a defeat.

-- Jean-Paul Sartre

Everyone is always talking about our defense effort in terms of protecting women and children, but no one ever asks the women and children what they think.

~ Patricia Schroeder

"Peace is not only better than war, but infinitely more arduous"

-- George Bernard Shaw

War is cruelty and you cannot refine it.

-- General William T. Sherman

Nothing fairer than peace is given to man to know; Better one peace than countless triumphs

-- Silius Italicus

Freedom achieved by the sword is uniformly lost again, but it is lasting when gained by peaceful agit ation.

-- Herbert Spencer

The State practices "violence," the individual must not do so. The state's behavior is violence, and it calls its violence "law"; that of the individual, "crime".

-- Max Stirner

When women have a voice in national and international affairs, wars will cease forever.

--Augusta Stowe-Gullen

War crushes with bloody heel all justice, all happiness, all that is Godlike in man. In our age there can be no peace that is not honorable; there can be no war that is not dishonorable.

-- Charles Sumner

Hence to fight and conquer in all your battles is not supreme excellence; supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy's resistance without fighting.

-- Sun Tzu

"We, the peop les of the United Nations, determined to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, which twice in our lifetime has brought untold sorrow to mankind, and to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, in the equal right of men and women and of nations large and small....And for these ends to practice tolerance and live together in peace with one another as good neighbors...have resolved to combine our efforts to accomplish these aims."

-- Preamble, Charter of the United Nations.

Terrorism is the war of the poor, and war is the terrorism of the rich.

-- Peter Ustinov

Nothing except a battle lost can be half so melancholy as a battle won.

-- Duke Of Wellington

I was in the midst of it all - saw war where war is worst - not on the battlefields, no - in the hospitals there I mixed with it: and now I say God damn the wars - allw ars: God damn every war: God damn 'em! God damn 'em!

~ Walt Whitman



When you're at war, you think about a better life; when you're at peace you think about a more comfortable one.

-- Thornton Wilder

An insincere peace is better than a sincere war - Yiddish Proverb

* "We need to rethink our position in the world. We need to stop sending weapons to countries that oppress other people. We need to decide that we will not go to war, whatever reason is conjured up by the politicians or the media, because war in our time is always indiscriminate, a war against innocents, a war against children. War is terrorism, magnified a hundred times."

-- Howard Zinn