Quotes on War (10)

“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
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“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, broadcast on C Span
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“War grows out of the desire of the individual to gain advantage at the expense of his fellow man.” Napoleon Hill
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“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
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“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
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“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
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“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 marshall of the air force and later supreme commander of the German armed forces, wrote on June 17, 1944
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“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, Dec. 16, 1942.
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“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
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“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”
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“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
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“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 on the Watergate tapes
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“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.
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“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
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“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, source: No to war, 2/16/03
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“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
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“After every ‘victory’ you have more enemies.” Jeanette Winterson
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“The guns and the bombs, the rockets and the warships, are all symbols of human failure.” Lyndon B Johnson
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“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 Biography, Clergyman, Social Activist, 1924
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“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 Biography, filmmaker, journalist, writer

More War Quotes:
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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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