Quotes on War (9)

“I was a bombadier in WW 2. When you are up 30,000 feet you do not hear the screams or smell the blood or see those without limbs or eyes. It was not til I read Hersey's Hiroshima that I realized what bomber pilots do.” Howard Zinn

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“The pioneers of a warless world are the youth that refuse military service.” Albert Einstein
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“Peoples of Egypt , you will be told that I have come to destroy your religion. Do not believe it! Reply that I have come to restore your rights!” (Napoleon Bonaparte, 1798)
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“Our armies do not come into your cities and lands as conquerors or enemies, but as liberators. Your wealth has been stripped of you by unjust men… The people of Baghdad shall flourish under institutions which are in consonance with their sacred laws.” (General F.S. Maude, commander of British forces in Iraq, 1917)
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“Iraqis are sick of foreign people coming in their country and trying to destabilize their country.” Washington , D.C. , May 5, 2004
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“If we let people see that kind of thing, there would never again be any war.” Pentagon official explaining why the U.S. military censored graphic footage from the Gulf War
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“Political history is largely an account of mass violence and of the expenditure of vast resources to cope with mythical fears and hopes.” Murray Edelman
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“Democracy don't rule the world, you'd better get that in your head; This world is ruled by violence, But I guess that's better left unsaid.” Bob Dylan, American folksinger
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“You have to show violence the way it is. If you don't show it realistically, then that's immoral and harmful. If you don't upset people, then that's obscenity.” Roman Polanski
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“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. War settles nothing.” Dwight David Eisenhower (1890-1969), 34th president of the United States
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“Political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.” George Orwell
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“Strike against war, for without you no battles can be fought! Strike against manufacturing shrapnel and gas bombs and all other tools of murder! Strike against preparedness that means death and misery to millions of human beings! Be not dumb, obedient slaves in an army of destruction! Be heroes in an army of construction!” Helen Keller, told to an audience at Carnegie Hall one year before the United States entered World War I, “Declarations of Independence” by Howard Zinn, page 75

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“Sure, there were lots of bodies we never identified. You know what a direct hit by a shell does to a guy. Or a mine, or a solid hit with a grenade, even. Sometimes all we have is a leg or a hunk of arm. The ones that stink the worst are the guys who got internal wounds and are dead about three weeks with the blood staying inside and rotting, and when you move the body the blood comes out of the nose and mouth. Then some of them bloat up in the sun, they bloat up so big that they bust the buttons and then they get blue and the skin peels. They don't all get blue, some of them get black. But they all stunk. There's only one stink and that's it. You never get used to it, either. As long as you live, you never get used to it. And after a while, the stink gets in your clothes and you can taste it in your mouth. You know what I think? I think maybe if every civilian in the world could smell this stink, then maybe we wouldn't have any more wars.” Technical Sergeant Donald Haguall, 48th Quartermaster Graves Registration (quoted in Purnell's History of the Second World War)
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“Under the influence of politicians, masses of people tend to ascribe the responsibility for wars to those who wield power at any given time. In World War I it was the munitions industrialists; in World War II it was the psychopathic generals who were said to be guilty. This is passing the buck. The responsibility for wars falls solely upon the shoulders of these same masses of people, for they have all the necessary means to avert war in their own hands. In part by their apathy, in part by their passivity, and in part actively, these same masses of people make possible the catastrophes under which they themselves suffer more than anyone else. To stress this guilt on the part of the masses of people, to hold them solely responsible, means to take them seriously. On the other hand, to commiserate masses of people as victims, means to treat them as small, helpless children. The former is the attitude held by genuine freedom fighters; the latter that attitude held by power-thirsty politicians.” Wilhelm Reich, The Mass Psychology of Fascism
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“That the aggressor, who puts himself into the state of war with another, and unjustly invades another man's right, can, by such an unjust war, never come to have a right over the conquered, will be easily agreed by all men, who will not think that robbers and pirates have a right of empire over whomsoever they have force enough to master, or that men are bound by promises which unlawful force extorts from them. Should a robber break into my house, and, with a dagger at my throat, make me seal deeds to convey my estate to him, would this give him any title? Just such a title by his sword has an unjust conqueror who forces me into submission. The injury and the crime is equal, whether committed by the wearer of a crown or some petty villain. The title of the offender and the number of his followers make no difference in the offence, unless it be to aggravate it. The only difference is, great robbers punish little ones to keep them in their obedience; but the great ones are rewarded with laurels and triumphs, because they are too big for the weak hands of justice in this world, and have the power in their own possession which should punish offenders.” John Locke (1632-1704)

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“That's not really a number I'm terribly interested in.” General Colin Powell, Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, on being asked his assessment of Iraqi military and civilian casualties, April 1991
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“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 (1879-1949), Anglo-Irish essayist, journalist
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“The biggest lesson I learned from Vietnam is not to trust [our own] government statements. I had no idea until then that you could not rely on [them].”
James W. Fulbright (1905-1995), US senator who initiated the international exchange program for scholars
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“If you succumb to the temptation of using violence in the struggle, unborn generations will be the recipients of a long and desolate night of bitterness, and your chief legacy to the future will be an endless reign of meaningless chaos.” Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968), Baptist minister who led the civil-rights movement in the US
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“The cry has been that when war is declared, all opposition should therefore be hushed. A sentiment more unworthy of a free country could hardly be propagated. If the doctrine be admitted, rulers have only to declare war and they are screened at once from scrutiny.” William Ellery Channing
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"War seems to me to be a mean, contemptible thing: I would rather be hacked in pieces than take part in such an abominable business. And yet so high, in spite of everything, is my opinion of the human race that I believe this bogey would have disappeared long ago, had the sound sense of the nations not been systematically corrupted by commercial and political interests acting through the schools and the Press": Albert Einstein (Spoken by a man who helped build the atomic bomb which killed hundreds of thousands of people.)

More War Quotes:
(1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7) (8) (9) (10) (11) (12) (13) (14) (15) (16) (17) (18) (19) (20) (21) (22) (23) (24) (25)

World of Wars

A War Prayer by Mark Twain. Preachers, profiteers and politicians make war appear to be glorious. This is the text of Mark Twain's powerful illustration and a link to a youtube video version.

War: Who is responsible? by Lawrence M. Vance. Points out that the American government has created a mindset that when a person puts on a military uniform, they are no longer responsible for their actions on the killing fields. This is wrong.

War is a Racket by Major General Smedley Darlington Butler

The pioneers of a warless world are the youth that refuse military service. - Albert Einstein.

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

"Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God." -MATTHEW 5:9

Neither shall they learn war any more. Jewish and Christian Bibles, Isaiah 2:4; Micah 4:3

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Perhaps the world's largest war antiwar quotes

See also Power, Justice and Mercy Quotes

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