“The death of one man is a tragedy. The death of millions is a statistic.” ——Joseph Stalin, comment to Churchill at Potsdam, 1945
“During times of war, hatred becomes quite respectable, even though it has to masquerade often under the guise of patriotism.” ——Howard Thurman
“During war, the laws are silent.” ——Quintus Tullius Cicero (c.102-43 B.C.), Roman general, brother of Cicero the orator
“There never was a good war. There have indeed been many wars in which a good man must take part, and take part with grave gladness to die if need be, a willing sacrifice, thankful to give life for what is dearer than life, and happy that even by death in war he is serving the cause of peace. But if a war be undertaken for the most righteous end, before the resources of peace have been tried and proved vain to secure it, that war has no defense, it is a national crime.” ——Charles Eliot Norton
“Each of the Iraqi children killed by the United States was our child. Each of the prisoners tortured in Abu Ghraib was our comrade. Each of their screams was ours. When they were humiliated, we were humiliated. The U.S. soldiers fighting in Iraq – mostly volunteers in a poverty draft from small towns and poor urban neighborhoods – are victims just as much as the Iraqis of the same horrendous process, which asks them to die for a victory that will never be theirs.” ——Arundhati Roy, Tide? Or Ivory Snow? Public Power in the Age of Empire
“Either man is obsolete or war is. War is the ultimate tool of politics. Political leaders look out only for their own side. Politicians are always realistically maneuvering for the next election. They are obsolete as fundamental problem-solvers.” ——R. Buckminster Fuller
“Endless money forms the sinews of war.” ——Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43 B.C.), Roman statesman, philosopher and orator
“Everything, 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
“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
“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
“For what can war, but endless war, still breed?” ——John Milton
“Force is all-conquering, but its victories are short-lived.” ——Abraham Lincoln
“Force is the vital principle and immediate parent of despotism.” ——Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826), US Founding Father, drafted the Declaration of Independence, 3rd US President
“From such beginnings of governments, what could be expected, but a continual system of war and extortion?” ——Thomas Paine
“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
“George, your reckless and wanton foreign policies killed my son, Spc. Casey Austin Sheehan, in the illegal and unjust war on Iraq. Helping to bring about your political downfall will be the most noble accomplishment of my life, and it will bring justice for my son and the hundreds of other brave Americans and tens of thousands of innocent Iraqis your lies have killed.” ——Cindy Sheehan
“God and a soldier all people adore in time of war, but not before; And when war is over and all things are righted, God is neglected and an old soldier slighted.” ——Author Unknown
“The only place you and I disagree is with regard to the bombing. You’re so goddamned concerned about the civilians, and I (in contrast) don’t give a damn. I don’t care…. I’d rather use the nuclear bomb…. Does that bother you? I just want you to think big.” ——Richard Nixon to Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, from the Watergate tapes
“This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation’s homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into veins of peoples normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice and love.” ——Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.
“How many does it take to metamorphose wickedness into righteousness? One man must not kill. If he does, it is murder… But a state or nation may kill as many as they please, and it is not murder. It is just, necessary, commendable, and right. Only get people enough to agree to it, and the butchery of myriads of human beings is perfectly innocent. But how many does it take?” ——Adin Ballou, The Non-Resistant, February 5, 1845
“I am strongly in favour of using poisoned gas against uncivilised tribes.” ——Winston Churchill, 1919, at the time Secretary of Defense
“I am tired and sick of war. Its glory is all moonshine. It is only those who have neither fired a shot nor heard the shrieks and groans of the wounded who cry aloud for blood, more vengeance, more desolation. Some of these young men think that war is all glory but let me say war is all hell.” ——William Tecumseh Sherman
“I don’t believe that the big men, the politicians and the capitalists alone are guilty of the war. Oh, no, the little man is just as keen, otherwise the people of the world would have risen in revolt long ago! There is an urge and rage in people to destroy, to kill, to murder, and until all mankind, without exception, undergoes a great change, wars will be waged.” ——Anne Frank (1929-1945)
“I have learned from first hand experience that war is the destroyer of everything that is good in the world, it turns our young into soulless killers and we tell them that they are heroes when they master the ‘art’ of killing.” ——Kevin Benderman
“I cannot tell anyone else how to live his or her life but I have determined how I want to live mine–by not participating in war any longer…” ——Monica Benderman
“I have seen men march to the wars, and then I have watched their homeward tread, and they brought back bodies of living men, But their eyes were cold and dead.” ——Edmund Vance Cooke
“It’s odd how those who dismiss the peace movement as utopian, don’t hesitate to proffer the most absurdly dreamy reasons for going to war: to stamp out terrorism, install democracy, eliminate fascism, and most entertainingly, to ‘rid the world of evil-doers.'” ——Arundhati Roy
“I refuse to be silent any longer. I refuse to be party to an illegal and immoral war against people who did nothing to deserve our aggression. My oath of office is to protect and defend America’s laws and its people. By refusing unlawful orders for an illegal war, I fulfill that oath today.” ——U.S. Army First Lt. Ehren Watada
“I’m fed up to the ears with old men dreaming up wars for young men to die in.” ——George McGovern
“If a country develops an economic system that is based on how to pay for the war, and if the amounts of fixed capital investment that are apparent are tied up in armaments, and if that country is a major exporter of arms, and its industrial fabric is dependent on them, then it would be in that country’s interests to ensure that it always had a market. It is not an exaggeration to say that it is clearly in the interests of the world’s leading arms exporters to make sure that there is always a war going on somewhere.” ——Marilyn Waring, Documentary Who’s Counting, based on her book Counting for Nothing
“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, French pacifist leader
“If sunbeams were weapons of war, we would have had solar energy centuries ago.” ——Sir George Porter, quoted in The Observer, August 26, 1973
“If the public knew the truth, the war would end tomorrow. But they don’t know and they can’t know.” ——Former British Prime Minister David Lloyd George, to Manchester Guardian editor C. P. Scott, 1914
“The Pentagon recently justified its position on censorship by insisting: ‘If we let people see that kind of thing, there would never again be any war.'” ——Geoffrey Regan, Military Blunders, Night and Day, January 23, 2000
“If they talk about dying for principles that are bigger than life you say mister you’re a liar. Nothing is bigger than life. There’s nothing noble in death. What’s noble about lying in the ground and rotting? What’s noble about never seeing the sunshine again? What’s noble about having your legs and arms blown off? What’s noble about being an idiot? What’s noble about being blind and deaf and dumb? What’s noble about being dead? Because when you’re dead mister it’s all over. It’s the end. You’re less than a dog less than a rat less than a bee or an ant less than a maggot crawling around on a dungheap. You’re dead mister and you died for nothing. You’re dead mister. Dead.” ——Dalton Trumbo, Johnny Got His Gun
“If war aims are stated which seem to be solely concerned with Anglo-American imperialism, they will offer little to people in the rest of the world. The interests of other peoples should be stressed. This would have a better propaganda effect.” ——Private memo from The Council of Foreign Relations to the US State Department, 1941
“If we do go to war, psychological operations are going to be absolutely a critical, critical part of any campaign that we must get involved in.” ——General H. Norman Schwarzkopf
“If you will not fight for the right when you can easily win without bloodshed, if you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not too costly, you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a small chance of survival. There may even be a worse case: you may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves.” ——Winston Churchill
“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.” ——Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoy (1828-1910), Russian author
“In all history, there is no instance of a country having benefited from prolonged warfare. Only one who knows the disastrous effects of a long war can realize the supreme importance of rapidity in bringing it to a close.” ——Sun Tzu (c.500-320 B.C.), The Art of War
“Every great historic change has been based on nonconformity, has been bought either with the blood or with the reputation of nonconformists.” ——Ben Shahn (1898-1969), Atlantic Monthly, September 1957
“In the democracy of the dead all men at last are equal. There is neither rank nor station nor prerogative in the republic of the grave.” ——John James Ingalls
“In the struggle of good against evil, it’s always the people who get killed.” ——Eduardo Galeano
“In violence, we forget who we are.” ——Mary McCarthy (1912-1989), American novelist and critic
“In war, there are no unwounded soldiers.” ——Jose Narosky
“It is a sobering thought that better evidence is required to prosecute a shoplifter than is needed to commence a world war.” ——Anthony Scrivener QC, Times, October 5, 2001
“It is foolish in the extreme not only to resort to force before necessity compels, but especially to madly create the conditions that will lead to this necessity.” ——Benjamin Tucker, Liberty, May 22, 1886
“It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets.” ——Voltaire, War