“Never think that war, no matter how necessary, nor how justified, is not a crime.” ——Ernest Hemingway
“Truth is always the first war casualty. The emotional disturbances and distortions in historical writing are greatest in wartime.” ——Elmer Barnes
“The West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact, non-Westerners never do.” ——Samuel P. Huntington
“Give me the money that has been spent in war and I will clothe every man, woman, and child in an attire of which kings and queens will be proud. I will build a schoolhouse in every valley over the whole earth. I will crown every hillside with a place of worship consecrated to peace.” ——Charles Sumner
“It’ll be a great day when education gets all the money it wants and the Air Force has to hold a bake sale to buy bombers.” ——Author Unknown
“Nations have recently been led to borrow billions for war; no nation has ever borrowed largely for education. Probably, no nation is rich enough to pay for both war and civilization. We must make our choice; we cannot have both.” ——Abraham Flexner
“Studies by Medical Corps psychiatrists of combat fatigue cases… found that fear of killing, rather than fear of being killed, was the most common cause of battle failure, and that fear of failure ran a strong second.” ——S. L. A. Marshall
“War is as much a punishment to the punisher as it is to the sufferer.” ——Thomas Jefferson
“Men are at war with each other because each man is at war with himself.” ——Francis Meehan
“War paralyzes your courage and deadens the spirit of true manhood. It degrades and stupefies with the sense that you are not responsible, that ’tis not yours to think and reason why, but to do and die,’ like the hundred thousand others doomed like yourself. War means blind obedience, unthinking stupidity, brutish callousness, wanton destruction, and irresponsible murder.” ——Alexander Berkman
“It seems that ‘we have never gone to war for conquest, for exploitation, nor for territory’; we have the word of a president [McKinley] for that. Observe, now, how Providence overrules the intentions of the truly good for their advantage. We went to war with Mexico for peace, humanity and honor, yet emerged from the contest with an extension of territory beyond the dreams of political avarice. We went to war with Spain for relief of an oppressed people [the Cubans], and at the close found ourselves in possession of vast and rich insular dependencies [primarily the Philippines] and with a pretty tight grasp upon the country for relief of whose oppressed people we took up arms. We could hardly have profited more had ‘territorial aggrandizement’ been the spirit of our purpose and heart of our hope. The slightest acquaintance with history shows that powerful republics are the most warlike and unscrupulous of nations.” ——Ambrose Bierce, Warlike America
“COWARDICE, n. A charge often levelled by all-American types against those who stand up for their beliefs by refusing to fight in wars they find unconscionable, and who willingly go to prison or into exile in order to avoid violating their own consciences. These ‘cowards’ are to be contrasted with red-blooded, ‘patriotic’ youths who literally bend over, grab their ankles, submit to the government, fight in wars they do not understand (or disapprove of), and blindly obey orders to maim and to kill simply because they are ordered to do so—all to the howling approval of the all-American mob. This type of behavior is commonly termed ‘courageous.'” ——Chaz Bufe
“In reviewing the history of the English Government, its wars and its taxes, a bystander, not blinded by prejudice nor warped by interest, would declare that taxes were not raised to carry on wars, but that wars were raised to carry on taxes.” ——Thomas Paine
“Our men…have killed to exterminate men, women, children, prisoners and captives, active insurgents and suspected people from lads of 10 up…. Our soldiers have pumped salt water into men to ‘make them talk,’ and have taken prisoners people who held up their hands and peacefully surrendered, and an hour later…stood them on a bridge and shot them down one by one, to drop into the water below and float down, as examples to those who found their bullet-loaded corpses.” ——Philadelphia Ledger, 1901, from its Manila correspondent during the US war with Spain for the control of the Philippines
“…the United States, for generations, has sustained two parallel but opposed states of mind about military atrocities and human rights: one of U.S. benevolence, generally held by the public, and the other of ends-justify-the-means brutality sponsored by counterinsurgency specialists. Normally the specialists carry out their actions in remote locations with little notice in the national press. That allows the public to sustain its faith in a just America, while hard-nosed security and economic interests are still protected in secret.” ——Robert Parry, investigative reporter and author
“They have always taught and trained you to believe it to be your patriotic duty to go to war and to have yourselves slaughtered at their command. But in all the history of the world you, the people, have never had a voice in declaring war.” ——Eugene Debs
“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 (1874-1936)
“War and insanity are synonyms.” ——Gary Amirault
“…And while everybody was tremendously impressed with the low cost of the conflict, for the 146 Americans who were killed in action and for their families, it wasn’t a cheap war. And the question in my mind is how many additional American casualties is Saddam worth? And the answer is not very damned many.” ——Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney, remarks to the Discovery Institute, August 14, 1992
“A common and natural result of an undue respect for law is that you may see a file of soldiers, colonel, captain, corporal, privates, powder-monkeys, and all marching in admirable order over hill and dale to the wars, against their wills, ay, against their common sense and consciences, which makes it very steep marching indeed, and produces a palpitation of the heart. They have no doubt that it is a damnable business in which they are concerned; they are all peaceably inclined. Now, what are they? Men at all? or small movable forts and magazines, at the service of some unscrupulous man in power?” ——Henry David Thoreau, On the Duty of Civil Disobedience
“A great war leaves the country with three armies – an army of cripples, an army of mourners, and an army of thieves.” ——German Proverb
“Setting a good example is a far better way to spread ideals than through force of arms.” ——Congressman Ron Paul
“A highwayman is as much a robber when he plunders in a gang as when single; and a nation that makes an unjust war is only a great gang.” ——Benjamin Franklin, letter to Benjamin Vaughan, 14 March 1785
“A modern gentleman is necessarily the enemy of his country. Even in war he does not fight to defend it, but to prevent his power of preying on it from passing to a foreigner.” ——George Bernard Shaw
“A time comes when silence is betrayal. That time has come for us in relation to Vietnam. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift, is approaching spiritual death. I knew that America would never invest the necessary funds or energies in rehabilitation of its poor so long as adventures like Vietnam continued to draw men and skills and money like some demonic destructive suction tube. So I was increasingly compelled to see the war as an enemy of the poor.” ——Rev. Martin Luther King
“In most communities it is illegal to cry ‘fire’ in a crowded assembly. Should it not be considered serious international misconduct to manufacture a general war scare in an effort to achieve local political aims?” ——Dwight D. Eisenhower
“How far you can go without destroying from within what you are trying to defend from without?” ——Dwight D. Eisenhower
“A time will come when a politician who has willfully made war and promoted international dissension will be as sure of the dock and much surer of the noose than a private homicide. It is not reasonable that those who gamble with men’s lives should not stake their own.” ——H. G. Wells
“A true revolution of values will say of war, ‘This way of settling differences is not just.’… I call on Washington today, I call on every man and woman of goodwill all over America today: Take a stand on this issue. Tomorrow may be too late; a book may close. And I don’t know about you—I ain’t going to study war no more.” ——Martin Luther King Jr.
“The evil that is in the world always comes of ignorance, and good intentions may do as much harm as malevolence, if they lack understanding. On the whole, men are more good than bad; that, however, isn’t the real point. But they are more or less ignorant, and it is that we call vice or virtue; the most incorrigible vice being that of an ignorance which fancies it knows everything and therefore claims for itself the right to kill.” ——Albert Camus, The Plague
“Allow the President to invade a neighboring nation, whenever he shall deem it necessary to repel an invasion, and you allow him to do so, whenever he may choose to say he deems it necessary for such a purpose—and you allow him to make war at pleasure.” ——Abraham Lincoln
“American strategists have calculated the proportion of civilians killed in this century’s major wars. In the First World War, 5 percent of those killed were civilians, in the Second World War 48 percent, while in a Third World War 90-95 percent would be civilians.” ——Colin Ward, Anarchy in Action
“War should be made a crime, and those who instigate it should be punished as criminals.” ——Charles Evans Hughes
“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
“I think this is a very hard choice, but the price — we think the price is worth it.” ——Former U.N. Ambassador Madeleine Albright, responding to reporter Lesley Stahl as to whether the over half a million Iraqi children killed by the UN sanctions against Iraq were “worth it,” CBS, May 11, 1996
“And so long as they were at war, their power was preserved, but when they had attained empire they fell, for of the arts of peace they knew nothing, and had never engaged in any employment higher than war.” ——Aristotle, Politics
“Any man who has once acclaimed violence as his method must inexorably choose falsehood as his principle. At its birth, violence acts openly and even with pride. But no sooner does it become strong, firmly established, than it senses the rarefaction of the air around it and it cannot continue to exist without descending into a fog of lies, clothing them in sweet talk. It does not always, not necessarily, openly throttle the throat, more often it demands from its subjects only an oath of allegiance to falsehood, only complicity in falsehood. And the simple step of a simple courageous man is not to partake in falsehood, not to support false actions! Let falsehood enter the world, let it even reign in the world-but not with my help.” ——Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Nobel Prize for Literature, 1970
“As a result of the war, corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed. I feel at this moment more anxiety for the safety of my country than ever before, even in the midst of war. God grant that my suspicions may prove groundless.” ——U.S. President Abraham Lincoln, November 21, 1864, letter to Col. William F. Elkins
“Between 1898 and 1934, the Marines invaded Cuba 4 times, Nicaragua 5 times, Honduras 7 times, the Dominican Republic 4 times, Haiti twice, Guatemala once, Panama twice, Mexico 3 times and Colombia 4 times, Washington has intervened militarily in foreign countries more than 200 times.” ——From the book Addicted To War
“But why should we hear about body bags, and deaths, and how many, what day it’s gonna happen, and how many this or what do you suppose? Or, I mean, it’s, it’s not relevant. So, why should I waste my beautiful mind on something like that?” ——Barbara Bush, ABC Good Morning America, March 18, 2003
“Can any reasonable man be well disposed toward a government which makes war and carnage the only means of supporting itself?” ——Alexander Hamilton (1757-1804), at the US Constitutional Convention
“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, b. 1941
“Do not hold the delusion that your advancement is accomplished by crushing others.” ——Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43 B.C.), Roman statesman, philosopher and orator
“The bad thing of war is, that it makes more evil people than it can take away.” ——Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), German philosopher
“There are some whose only reason for inciting war is to use it as a means to exercise their tyranny over their subjects more easily. For in times of peace the authority of the assembly, the dignity of the magistrates, the force of the laws stand in the way to some extent of the ruler doing what he likes. But once war is declared then the whole business of state is subject to the will of a few… They demand as much money as they like. Why say more?” ——Erasmus of Rotterdam (1469-1536), Adages IV.i.1
“Don’t be taken in when they paternally pat you on the shoulder and say that there’s no inequality worth speaking of and no more reason to fight because if you believe them they will be completely in charge in their marble homes and granite banks from which they rob the people of the world under the pretence of bringing them culture. Watch out, for as soon as it pleases them they’ll send you out to protect their gold in wars whose weapons, rapidly developed by servile scientists, will become more and more deadly until they can with a flick of the finger tear a million of you to pieces.” ——Jean-Paul Marat (May 24, 1743 – July 13, 1793), Swiss-born scientist and physician
“Dress it as we may, feather it, daub it with gold, huzza it, and sing swaggering songs about it, what is war, nine times out of ten, but murder in uniform?” ——Douglas Jerrold
“War hath no fury like a noncombatant.” ——Charles Edward Montague, Disenchantment
“Why do we kill people who are killing people to show that killing people is wrong?” ——Holly Near