Peace War Quotes

Until we stop harming all other living beings, we are still savages.

Liberty and democracy become unholy when their hands are dyed red with innocent blood.

A nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people.

War is an instrument entirely inefficient toward redressing wrong; and multiplies, instead of indemnifying losses.

Statism needs war; a free country does not. Statism survives by looting; a free country survives by producing.

The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.

Our government has kept us in a perpetual state of fear – kept us in a continuous stampede of patriotic fervor – with the cry of grave national emergency.

All forms of violence, especially war, are totally unacceptable as means to settle disputes between and among nations, groups and persons.

The real and lasting victories are those of peace, and not of war.

Guard against the impostures of pretended patriotism.

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

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

We make war that we may live in peace.

Any intelligent fool can make things bigger and more complex… It takes a touch of genius – and a lot of courage to move in the opposite direction.

The release of atomic energy has not created a new problem. It has merely made more urgent the necessity of solving an existing one.

Everybody’s worried about stopping terrorism. Well, there’s a really easy way: stop participating in it.

We must see that peace represents a sweeter music, a cosmic melody, that is far superior to the discords of war.

There was never a good war, or a bad peace.

I believe in only one thing: liberty; but I do not believe in liberty enough to want to force it upon anyone.

There are no warlike people, just warlike leaders.

There is no way to peace. Peace is the way.

We must concentrate not merely on the negative expulsion of war but the postive affirmation of peace.

For peace is not mere absence of war, but is a virtue that springs from force of character: for obedience is the constant will to execute what, by the general decree of the commonwealth, ought to be done.

All wars are follies, very expensive and very mischievous ones. In my opinion, there never was a good war or a bad peace. When will mankind be convinced and agree to settle their difficulties by arbitration?

It is my conviction that there is no way to peace – peace is the way.

The price of freedom is eternal vigilance.

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

It is my conviction that killing under the cloak of war is nothing but an act of murder.

Although tyranny…may successfully rule over foreign peoples, it can stay in power only if it destroys first of all the national institutions of its own people.

If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other.

I never again want to see the face of a starving child or hear the weeping of a mother who has lost her son to war. Peace, this is what my husband gave his life for, and I want the world to know that he did not die in vain. Peace, this is what will make me very happy.

We seek peace, knowing that peace is the climate of freedom. And now, as in no other age, we seek it because we have been warned, by the power of modern weapons, that peace may be the only climate possible for human life itself.

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

The enemy? His sense of duty was no less than yours, I deem. You wonder what his name is, where he came from. And if he was really evil at heart. What lies or threats led him on this long march from home. If he would not rather have stayed there in peace. War will make corpses of us all.

Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars.

Peace is more than the absence of war. Peace is accord. Harmony.

The attainment of the economic aims of man presupposes peace.

You must not fight too often with one enemy, or you will teach him all your art of war.

I hate those men who would send into war youth to fight and die for them; the pride and cowardice of those old men, making their wars that boys must die.

All those who seek to destroy the liberties of a democratic nation ought to know that war is the surest and shortest means to accomplish it.

War is a way of shattering to pieces… materials which might otherwise be used to make the masses too comfortable and… too intelligent.

We must be prepared to make the same heroic sacrifices for the cause of peace that we make ungrudgingly for the cause of war.

At the age of four with paper hats and wooden swords we’re all Generals. Only some of us never grow out of it.

There is no more cruel illusion than that war makes a people richer.

Government is not reason, it is not eloquence, it is force…Never for a moment should it be left to irresponsible action.

The people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders…tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger.

There is nothing that war has ever achieved that we could not better achieve without it.

People do not make wars; governments do.

I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. This is why right, temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant.

An end to wars, peace among the nations, the cessation of pillaging and violence – such is our ideal, but only bourgeois sophists can seduce the masses with this ideal, if the latter is divorced from a direct and immediate call for revolutionary action.

Force always attracts men of low morality.

War…is as much a punishment to the punisher as to the sufferer.

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

Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred.

ask not for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee

When people speak to you about a preventive war, you tell them to go and fight it. After my experience, I have come to hate war.

Patriotism means to stand by the country. It does not mean to stand by the president.

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

I object to violence because when it appears to do good, the good is only temporary; the evil it does is permanent.

A lasting order cannot be established by bayonets.

War will exist until that distant day when the conscientious objector enjoys the same reputation and prestige that the warrior does today.

We shall never be able to effect physical disarmament until we have succeeded in effecting moral disarmament.

What is absurd and monstrous about war is that men who have no personal quarrel should be trained to murder one another in cold blood.

To plunder, to slaughter, to steal, these things they misname empire; and where they make a wilderness, they call it peace.

Somehow we must transform the dynamics of the world power struggle from the negative nuclear arms race which no one can win to a positive contest to harness man’s creative genius for the purpose of making peace and prosperity a reality for all of the nations of the world.

Peace has its victories no less than war, but it doesn’t have as many monuments to unveil.

I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its futility, its stupidity.

Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.

Any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankind; And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.

The direct use of force is such a poor solution to any problem, it is generally employed only by small children and large nations.

Governments constantly choose between telling lies and fighting wars, with the end result always being the same. One will always lead to the other.

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

We must all learn to live together as brothers. Or we will all perish together as foolsFor some strange reason I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. And you can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be.

Peace hath higher tests of manhood, than battle ever knew.

A people free to choose will always choose peace.

A state of war only serves as an excuse for domestic tyranny.

The nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, but he has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them.

Violence can only be concealed by a lie, and the lie can only be maintained by violence.

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

What the people want is very simple – they want an America as good as its promise.

What is more immoral than war?

Peace goes into the making of a poem as flour goes into the making of bread.

Commerce with all nations, alliance with none, should be our motto.

From time immemorial, people have talked about peace without achieving it. Do we simply lack enough experience? Though we talk peace, we wage war. Sometimes we even wage war in the name of peace. . . . War may be too much a part of history to be eliminatedВ—ever.

To be prepared for war is one of the most effective means of preserving peace.

Each time a man stands up for an ideal or acts to improve the lot of others or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope.

War’s a game, which, were their subjects wise, Kings would not play at.

All the war-propaganda, all the screaming and lies and hatred, comes invariably from people who are not fighting.

Being in Russia filming War & Peace…filming War & Peace alone is an extraordinary experience, but to be out there was just magical.

The greater the state, the more wrong and cruel its patriotism, and the greater is the sum of suffering upon which its power is founded.

Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. This is the interrelated structure of reality.

Unconditional love will have the final word in reality.

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

Whoever wants peace among nations must seek to limit the state and its influence most strictly.

Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.

Knowledge will forever govern ignorance; and a people who mean to be their own governors must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.

Peace cannot be achieved through violence, it can only be attained through understanding.

Peace demands the most heroic labor and the most difficult sacrifice.

Observe good faith and justice toward all nations. Cultivate peace and harmony with all.

War is only a cowardly escape from the problems of peace.

Far from making peace, wars invariably serve as classrooms and laboratories where men and techniques and states of mind are prepared for the next war.

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.

You cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war.

No mother would ever willingly sacrifice her sons for territorial gain, for economic advantage, for ideology.

The opposite of war isn’t peace… It’s creation!

It is a universal truth that the loss of liberty at home is to be charged to the provisions against danger, real or pretended, from abroad.

The guns and the bombs, the rockets and the warships, are all symbols of human failure.

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

If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy.

The means by which we live have outdistanced the ends for which we live.

War vies with magic in its efforts to get something for nothing.

War is the greatest plague that can afflict mankind… Any scourge is preferable to it.

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.

In war, truth is the first casualty.

War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.

We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security.

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.

It is not enough to say we must not wage war. It is necessary to love peace and sacrifice for it.

Man has no right to kill his brother. It is no excuse that he does so in uniform: he only adds the infamy of servitude to the crime of murder.

The spirit of this country is totally adverse to a large military force.

A tyrant… is always stirring up some war or other, in order that the people may require a leader.

We used to wonder where war lived, what it was that made it so vile. And now we realize that we know where it lives… inside ourselves.

Peace has to be created, in order to be maintained. It is the product of Faith, Strength, Energy, Will, Sympathy, Justice, Imagination, and the triumph of principle. It will never be achieved by passivity and quietism.

War creates peace like hate creates love.

War remains the decisive human failure.

If we don’t stop extending our troops all around the world in nation-building missions, we’re going to have a serious problem coming down the road.

I am not blaming those who are resolved to rule, only those who show an even greater readiness to submit.

It is not reasonable that those who gamble with men’s lives should not stake their own.

But what a cruel thing is war to separate and destroy families and friends.

Strike against war, for without you no battles can be fought.

We cannot change ideas in the minds of men and races with machine guns or battle ships.

We are not afraid to entrust the American people with unpleasant facts, foreign ideas, alien philosophies, and competitive values.

If you want to make peace with your enemy, you have to work with your enemy. Then he becomes your partner.

Peace does not mean the absence of war, peace means the presence of harmony, love, satisfaction and oneness. Peace means a flood of love in the world family.

War’s tragedy is that it uses man’s best to do man’s worst.

We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence.

The worst crimes were dared by a few, willed by more and tolerated by all.

Every war, when it comes, or before it comes, is represented not as a war but as an act of self-defense against a homicidal maniac.

Peace and not war is the father of all things.

Economically considered, war and revolution are always bad business.

I hope our wisdom will grow with our power, and teach us, that the less we use our power the greater it will be.

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

There is no flag large enough to cover the shame of killing innocent people.

Right is right, even if everyone is against it, and wrong is wrong, even if everyone is for it.

I went into the Army believing that if you want peace you must prepare for war. I now believe that if you prepare thoroughly for war you will get it.

We have guided missiles and misguided men.

We cannot have peace if we are only concerned with peace. War is not an accident. It is the logical outcome of a certain way of life. If we want to attack war, we have to attack that way of life.

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.

The life of the nation is secure only while the nation is honest, truthful, and virtuous.

Great is the guilt of an unnecessary war.

Wars are poor chisels for carving out peaceful tomorrows.

In all history there is no war which was not hatched by the governments, the governments alone, independent of the interests of the people, to whom war is always pernicious even when successful.

In the process of gaining our rightful place, we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred. We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline.

A merely fallen enemy may rise again, but the reconciled one is truly vanquished.

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

Nothing will end war unless the peoples themselves refuse to go to war.

Peace and friendship with all mankind is our wisest policy, and I wish we may be permitted to pursue it.