“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
“I was able to go to Iraq to the place my son died and fill my promise to my wife to put a crucifix on the spot and bring home some of the blood drenched dirt and plant a white rose bush in it.” ——Fernando Suarez Solar, Military Families Speak Out
“War grows out of the desire of the individual to gain advantage at the expense of his fellow man.” ——Napoleon Hill
“The enemy aggressor is always pursuing a course of larceny, murder, rapine and barbarism. We are always moving forward with high mission, a destiny imposed by the Deity to regenerate our victims while incidentally capturing their markets, to civilise savage and senile and paranoid peoples while blundering accidentally into their oil wells.” ——John Flynn, 1944
“The establishment center has led us into the stupidest and cruelest war in all history. That war is a moral and political disaster—a terrible cancer eating away at the soul of our nation.” ——George McGovern
“The fact is that every war suffers a kind of progressive degradation with every month that it continues, because such things as individual liberty and a truthful press are simply not compatible with military efficiency…” ——George Orwell, Homage to Catalonia
“The Fuhrer has ordered all troops and police to adopt the severest measures. Every act of violence committed by partisans must be punished immediately. Where there is evidence of a considerable number of partisan groups a proportion of the male population of the area will be arrested, and in the event of an act of violence being committed these men will be shot.” ——Albert Kesselring, general field marshal of the air force and later supreme commander of the German armed forces, June 17, 1944
“This fight has nothing to do with soldierly gallantry or principles of the Geneva Convention. If the fight against the partisans is not waged with the most brutal means, we will shortly reach the point where the available forces are insufficient to control the area. It is therefore not only justified, but it is the duty of the troops to use all means without restriction, even against women and children, so long as it ensures success.” ——Wilhelm Keitel, chief of staff of the Supreme Command of the Armed Forces of Germany, December 16, 1942
“The industrial way of life leads to the industrial way of death. From Shiloh to Dachau, from Antietam to Stalingrad, from Hiroshima to Vietnam and Afghanistan, the great specialty of industry and technology has been the mass production of human corpses.” ——Edward Abbey
“The institutions founded ‘to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war’ have failed. Since the end of WW2, some thirty million people have been killed in armed conflict. Most of them were civilians.” ——George Monbiot, The Age of Consent
“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 (1894-1963), English novelist and critic
“The point of public relations slogans like ‘Support our troops’ is that they don’t mean anything… That’s the whole point of good propaganda. You want to create a slogan that nobody’s going to be against, and everybody’s going to be for. Nobody knows what it means, because it doesn’t mean anything. Its crucial value is that it diverts your attention from a question that does mean something: Do you support our policy? That’s the one you’re not allowed to talk about.” ——Noam Chomsky
“The powerful have invoked God at their side in this war, so that we will accept their power and our weakness as something that has been established by divine plan. But there is no god behind this war other than the god of money, nor any right other than the desire for death and destruction. Today there is a ‘NO’ which shall weaken the powerful and strengthen the weak: the ‘NO’ to war.” ——Subcomandante Marcos, February 16, 2003
“The so-called Christian virtues of humility, love, charity, personal freedom, the strong prohibitions against violence, murder, stealing, lying, cruelty—all these are washed away by war. The greatest hero is the one who kills the most people. Glamorous exploits in successful lying and mass stealing and heroic vengeance are rewarded with decorations and public acclaim.” ——John T. Flynn, As We Go Marching
“After every ‘victory’ you have more enemies.” ——Jeanette Winterson
“The war against Iraq is as disastrous as it is unnecessary; perhaps in terms of its wisdom, purpose and motives, the worst war in American history… Our military men and women…were not called to defend America but rather to attack Iraq. They were not called to die for, but rather to kill for, their country. What more unpatriotic thing could we have asked of our sons and daughters…?” ——William Sloane Coffin (1924- ), Clergyman, Social Activist
“After the invasion of Iraq, I again heard from Vietnamese the excuse that Americans were good people who happened to have bad leaders. I wondered how long we can get away with that one. My fear is that we are no longer a nation at war but have become a nation of war. My hope is that we will pull back from empire and once again embrace our republic.” ——Peter Davis, filmmaker, journalist, writer
“The world will never have lasting peace so long as men reserve for war the finest human qualities. Peace, no less than war, requires idealism and self-sacrifice and a righteous and dynamic faith.” ——John Foster Dulles
“There have been periods of history in which episodes of terrible violence occurred but for which the word violence was never used… Violence is shrouded in justifying myths that lend it moral legitimacy, and these myths for the most part kept people from recognizing the violence for what it was. The people who burned witches at the stake never for one moment thought of their act as violence; rather they thought of it as an act of divinely mandated righteousness. The same can be said of most of the violence we humans have ever committed.” ——Gil Bailie
“There is no flag large enough to cover the shame of killing innocent people for a purpose which is unattainable.” ——Howard Zinn, US historian, 1993
“There’s a graveyard in northern France where all the dead boys from D-Day are buried. The white crosses reach from one horizon to the other. I remember looking it over and thinking it was a forest of graves. But the rows were like this, dizzying, diagonal, perfectly straight, so after all it wasn’t a forest but an orchard of graves. Nothing to do with nature, unless you count human nature.” ——Barbara Kingsolver
“Those who are convinced they have a monopoly on The Truth always feel that they are only saving the world when they slaughter the heretics.” ——Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. (1888-1965)
“To have good soldiers, a nation must always be at war.” ——Napoleon
“To initiate a war of aggression is not only an international crime, it is the supreme international crime, differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.” ——Nuremberg Tribunal
“The US-led invasion of Iraq was an illegal act that contravened the UN charter.” ——UN Chief Kofi Annan, September 2004, BBC
“To judge from the history of mankind, we shall be compelled to conclude, that the fiery and destructive passions of war, reign in the human breast, with much more powerful sway, than the mild and beneficent sentiments of peace.” ——Alexander Hamilton
“To plunder, to slaughter, to steal, these things they misname empire; and where they make a wilderness, they call it peace.” ——Publius Cornelius Tacitus (55-117), Roman historian
“To save your world you asked this man to die;
Would this man, could he see you now, ask why?” ——W. H. Auden, Epitaph for an Unknown Soldier
“Until we go through it ourselves, until our people cower in the shelters of New York, Washington, Chicago, Los Angeles and elsewhere while the buildings collapse overhead and burst into flames, and dead bodies hurtle about and, when it is over for the day or the night, emerge in the rubble to find some of their dear ones mangled, their homes gone, their hospitals, churches, schools demolished — only after that gruesome experience will we realize what we are inflicting on the people of Indochina.” ——William Shirer, author, 1973
“We have grasped the mystery of the atom and rejected the Sermon on the Mount. Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants. We know more about war than we know about peace, more about killing than we know about living.” ——General Omar Bradley
“War against a foreign country only happens when the moneyed classes think they are going to profit from it.” ——George Orwell
“War creates peace like hate creates love.” ——David L. Wilson
“War is like a big machine that no one really knows how to run and when it gets out of control it ends up destroying the things you thought you were fighting for, and a lot of other things you kinda forgot you had.” ——Author Unknown
“War should never be entered upon until every agency of peace has failed.” ——William McKinley, March 4, 1897
“Let those who would die for the flag on the field of battle give a better proof of their patriotism and a higher glory to their country by promoting fraternity and justice.” ——Benjamin Harrison (1889-1893), Inaugural Address, 1889
“War should only be declared by the authority of the people, whose toils and treasures are to support its burdens, instead of the government which is to reap its fruits.” ——James Madison (1751-1836)
“We used to have a War Office, but now we have a Ministry of Defense, nuclear bombs are now described as deterrents, innocent civilians killed in war are now described as collateral damage and military incompetence leading to US bombers killing British soldiers is cozily described as friendly fire. Those who are in favour of peace are described as mavericks and troublemakers, whereas the real militants are those who want the war.” ——Tony Benn
“War would end if the dead could return.” ——Stanley Baldwin
“War, we have come to believe, is a spectator sport. The military and the press have turned war into a vast video arcade game. Its very essence—death—is hidden from public view.” ——Chris Hedges, Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter for New York Times
“War: a massacre of people who don’t know each other for the profit of people who know each other but don’t massacre each other.” ——Paul Valéry (1871-1945), French poet, essayist and critic