“Wars throughout history have been waged for conquest and plunder. In the Middle Ages when the feudal lords who inhabited the castles whose towers may still be seen along the Rhine concluded to enlarge their domains, to increase their power, their prestige and their wealth they declared war upon one another. But they themselves did not go to war any more than the modern feudal lords, the barons of Wall Street go to war. The feudal barons of the Middle Ages, the economic predecessors of the capitalists of our day, declared all wars. And their miserable serfs fought all the battles. The poor, ignorant serfs had been taught to revere their masters; to believe that when their masters declared war upon one another, it was their patriotic duty to fall upon one another and to cut one another’s throats for the profit and glory of the lords and barons who held them in contempt. And that is war in a nutshell. The master class has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles. The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject class has had nothing to gain and all to lose—especially their lives.” ——Eugene Debs, June 16, 1918, speech for which he was sentenced to ten years in prison under the Espionage Act
“We are fighting to vindicate the principle that small nationalities are not to be crushed in defiance of international good faith at the arbitrary will of a strong and overmastering Power.” ——Rt. Hon. Herbert Henry Asquith, statement to House of Commons, Declaration of War with Germany, August 4, 1914
“We have come out of the time when obedience, the acceptance of discipline, intelligent courage and resolution, were most important, into that more difficult time when it is a person’s duty to understand the world rather than simply fight for it.” ——Ernest Hemingway
“We kill at every step, not only in wars, riots, and executions. We kill when we close our eyes to poverty, suffering, and shame. In the same way all disrespect for life, all hard-heartedness, all indifference, all contempt is nothing else than killing. With just a little witty skepticism we can kill a good deal of the future in a young person. Life is waiting everywhere, the future is flowering everywhere, but we only see a small part of it and step on much of it with our feet.” ——Hermann Hesse, German poet and novelist
“We must be prepared to make heroic sacrifices for the cause of peace that we make ungrudgingly for the cause of war.” ——Albert Einstein
“We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security.” ——Dwight David Eisenhower (1890-1969), 34th President of the United States
“What a cruel thing is war: to separate and destroy families and friends, and mar the purest joys and happiness God has granted us in this world; to fill our hearts with hatred instead of love for our neighbors, and to devastate the fair face of this beautiful world.” ——Robert E. Lee, letter to his wife, 1864
“It is my conviction that killing under the cloak of war is nothing but an act of murder.” ——Albert Einstein
“I find war detestable but those who praise it without participating in it even more so.” ——Romain Rolland
“When the tyrant has disposed of foreign enemies by conquest and there is nothing to fear from them, then he is always stirring up some war.” ——Plato
“Where is it written in the Constitution, in what article or section is it contained, that you may take children from their parents and parents from their children, and compel them to fight the battles of any war in which the folly and wickedness of the government may engage itself? Under what concealment has this power lain hidden, which now for the first time comes forth, with a tremendous and baleful aspect, to trample down and destroy the dearest right of personal liberty? Who will show me any Constitutional injunction which makes it the duty of the American people to surrender everything valuable in life, and even life, itself, whenever the purposes of an ambitious and mischievous government may require it? A free government with an uncontrolled power of military conscription is the most ridiculous and abominable contradiction and nonsense that ever entered into the heads of men.” ——Daniel Webster, Speech in the House of Representatives, January 14, 1814
“The death of a single human being is too heavy a price for the vindication of any principle, however sacred.” ——Daniel Berrigan
“Where is the justice of political power if it executes the murderer and jails the plunderer, and then itself marches upon neighboring lands, killing thousands and pillaging the very hills?” ——Kahlil Gibran
“You can have all the advanced war methods you want, but, after all, nobody has ever invented a war that you don’t have to have somebody in the guise of soldiers to stop the bullets.” ——Will Rogers
“No power but Congress can declare war, but what is the value of this constitutional provision, if the President of his own authority may make such military movements as must bring on war?” ——Daniel Webster
“We must make clear to the Germans that the wrong for which their fallen leaders are on trial is not that they lost the war, but that they started it.” ——U.S. Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson, U.S. representative to the International Conference on Military Trials, August 12, 1945
“The War Prayer” by Mark Twain:
“O Lord our God, help us tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells; help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of their patriot dead; help us to drown the thunder of the guns with the shrieks of their wounded, writhing in pain; help us to lay waste their humble homes with a hurricane of fire; help us to wring the hearts of their unoffending widows with unavailing grief; help us to turn them out roofless with their little children to wander unfriended in the wastes of their desolated land in rags and hunger and thirst, sports of the sun flames in summer and the icy winds of winter, broken in spirit, worn with travail, imploring thee for the refuge of the grave and denied it — For our sakes who adore Thee, Lord, blast their hopes, blight their lives, protract their bitter pilgrimage, make heavy their steps, water their way with their tears, strain the white snow with the blood of their wounded feet! We ask it, in the spirit of love, of Him Who is the Source of Love, and Who is the ever-faithful refuge and friend of all that are sore beset and seek His aid with humble and contrite hearts. Amen.” ——Mark Twain
“Although you may spend your life killing, You will not exhaust all your foes. But if you quell your own anger, your real enemy will be slain.” ——Nagarjuna
“When I was twelve, I went hunting with my father and we shot a bird. He was laying there and something struck me. Why do we call this fun to kill this creature who was as happy as I was when I woke up this morning.” ——Marv Levy
“When people decry civilian deaths caused by the U.S. government, they’re aiding propaganda efforts. In sharp contrast, when civilian deaths are caused by bombers who hate America, the perpetrators are evil and those deaths are tragedies. When they put bombs in cars and kill people, they’re uncivilized killers. When we put bombs on missiles and kill people, we’re upholding civilized values. When they kill, they’re terrorists. When we kill, we’re striking against terror.” ——Norman Solomon
“Everybody’s worried about stopping terrorism. Well, there’s a really easy way: stop participating in it.” ——Noam Chomsky
“War provides an outlet for every evil element in man’s nature. It enfranchises cupidity and greed, gives a charter to petty tyranny, glorifies cruelty and places in positions of power the vulgar and base.” ——Cyril Edwin Mitchinson Joad, Guide to Modern Wickedness
“Countries that invest heavily in ‘intelligence agencies’ are ruled by murderers, liars and thieves who come but to kill, steal and destroy whose language is double-speak.” ——Emet Tzedakah
“I think that NATO is itself a war criminal.” ——Harold Pinter
“Preemptive war is political-military doublespeak for mass murder.” ——Emet Tzedakah
“War sucks always, so why do we allow ourselves to be sucked into it?” ——Emet Tzedakah
“In modern political society it is probably a fact that national leadership can heighten foreign crises to the point where war becomes almost inevitable and public approval, at least for a time, automatic.” ——Arthur A. Ekirch Jr., Ideas, Ideals, and American Diplomacy
“We need to take our country back from the avaricious corporatocracy that feeds on the War Economy. The War Machine has our leadership, our Media and our very lives in its pocket. Everywhere health care, education, and fundamental human rights have suffered. We, as Americans and as members of the human race, must place Peace as our primary raison d’etre and begin the movement into an Age where violence is no more.” ——Barton Boyce
“Perhaps man’s insanity is illustrated most by millions of them going to war for land, flags, and pride to kill another human being because some authority figure declared it legal and right to do so. Listen man! You are accountable to someone much higher than Hitler, Stalin, Mao Zedong, George Bush or Barack Obama! Your highest authority said, ‘Love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who persecute you.’ What don’t you understand about this simple command?!” ——Gary Amirault (Matthew 5:38-48)
“People who make war in order to escape slavery may possibly win….This will doubtless bring death and suffering to thousands….But people who tamely allow slavery to be imposed on them without resorting to a defensive war are inevitably doomed to years of death and suffering–and far more of each than any war would bring to them….The army doesn’t exist that can annihilate men in their own land–not if they love it sufficiently.” ——Kenneth Roberts, Lydia Bailey
“So they collected the cripples, the wounded, the maimed
And they shipped us back home to Australia
The armless, the legless, the blind, the insane
Those proud wounded heroes of Suvla
And as our ship pulled into Circular Quay
I looked at the place where my legs used to be
And thank Christ there was nobody waiting for me
To grieve and to mourn and to pity
And the band played Waltzing Matilda
As they carried us down the gangway
But nobody cheered, they just stood and stared
Then turned all their faces away
And the band played Waltzing Matilda.” ——Eric Bogle, performed by The Pogues
“War is the trade of kings.” ——John Dryden, King Arthur
“All war represents a failure of diplomacy.” ——Tony Benn, speech, February 28, 1991
“I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its stupidity.” ——Dwight D. Eisenhower, speech, January 10, 1946
“There never was a good war, or a bad peace.” ——Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard’s Almanac
“As long as war is regarded as wicked, it will always have its fascination. When it is looked upon as vulgar, it will cease to be popular.” ——Oscar Wilde, The Critic as Artist
“If you think of humanity as one large body, then war is like suicide, or at best, self mutilation.” ——Jerome P. Crabb, War Quotes and Quibbles
“Accursed be he that first invented war.” ——Christopher Marlowe, Tamburlaine the Great
“I think a curse should rest on me — because I love this war. I know it’s smashing and shattering the lives of thousands every moment — and yet — I can’t help it — I enjoy every second of it.” ——Winston Churchill, letter to a friend, 1916
“War makes rattling good history; but Peace is poor reading.” ——Thomas Hardy, The Dynasts
“Vietnam was the first war ever fought without any censorship. Without censorship, things can get terribly confused in the public mind.” ——William Westmoreland, Time magazine, April 5, 1982
“When the rich wage war, it is the poor who die.” ——Jean-Paul Sartre, The Devil and the Good Lord
“War is like love, it always finds a way.” ——Bertolt Brecht, Mother Courage and Her Children
“In order for us human beings to commit ourselves personally to the inhumanity of war, we find it necessary first to dehumanize our opponents, which is in itself a violation of the beliefs of all religions. Once we characterize our adversaries as beyond the scope of God’s mercy and grace, their lives lose all value. We deny personal responsibility when we plant landmines and, days or years later, a stranger to us — often a child – is crippled or killed. From a great distance, we launch bombs or missiles with almost total impunity, and never want to know the number or identity of the victims.” ——Jimmy Carter, Nobel Lecture, December 10, 2002
“War… it paid well and liberated children from the pernicious influence of their parents.” ——Joseph Heller, Catch-22
“The second best thing about space travel is that the distances involved make war very difficult, usually impractical, and almost always unnecessary. This is probably a loss for most people, since war is our race’s most popular diversion, one which gives purpose and color to dull and stupid lives. But it is a great boon to the intelligent man who fights only when he must—never for sport.” ——Robert A. Heinlein, Time Enough For Love
“You can’t say civilization don’t advance… in every war they kill you in a new way.” ——Will Rogers, New York Times, December 23, 1929
“In time of war, when truth is so precious, it must be attended by a bodyguard of lies.” ——Winston Churchill
“In war, truth is the first casualty.” ——Aeschylus
“It’s funny how those who are most pro-war are almost always the guys who never had to fight in one.” ——Jerome P. Crabb, War Quotes and Quibbles