Quotes on War (2)

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, 8/14/1992
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“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
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“A great war leaves the country with three armies - an army of cripples, an army of mourners, and an army of thieves.” German Proverb
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“Setting a good example is a far better way to spread ideals than through force of arms.” Congressman Ron Paul
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“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 to Benjamin Vaughan, 14 March 1785 (B 11:16-7)
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“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
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“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
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”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
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”How far you can go without destroying from within what you are trying to defend from without?” Dwight D. Eisenhower
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“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
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“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.
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“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.” Aalbert Campus, The Plague, Modern Library Edition, p. 120
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“A tyrant is always stirring up some war or other, in order that the people may require a leader.” Plato (429-347 BC), The Republic
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“All of us have heard this term ‘preventive war’ since the earliest days of Hitler. I don’t believe there is such a thing; and, frankly, I wouldn’t even listen to anyone seriously that came in and talked about such a thing.” Dwight Eisenhower, Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman, Bush and America’s Willing Executioners would be Guilty at Nuremberg, The Free Press (Columbus, Ohio), 3/2/03
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“A people living under the perpetual menace of war and invasion is very easy to govern. It demands no social reforms. It does not haggle over expenditures for armaments and military equipment. It pays without discussion, it ruins itself, and that is an excellent thing for the syndicates of financiers and manufacturers for whom patriotic terrors are an abundant source of gain.” Anatole France (1844-1924), pseudonym for Jacques Anatole Thibault
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“All that talk about “liberation” twenty, thirty years ago, all the plotting, all the bodies, produced this, this impoverished broken-down country led by a gang of cruel and paternalistic half-educated theorists.” Former Vietcong General Pham Xuan An, quoted by Lewis Sorley, A Better War
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“All those who seek to destroy the liberties of a democratic nation ought to know that war is the surest and shortest means to accomplish it.” Alexis de Tocqueville
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“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. If today, he should choose to say he thinks it necessary to invade Canada, to prevent the British from invading us, how could you stop him? You may say to him, ‘I see no probability of the British invading us’ but he will say to you, ‘Be silent; I see it, if you don’t.’” Abraham Lincoln
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“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
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“War should be made a crime, and those who instigate it should be punished as criminals.” Charles Evans Hughes

More War Quotes:
(1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7) (8) (9) (10) (11) (12) (13) (14) (15) (16) (17) (18) (19) (20) (21) (22) (23) (24) (25)

World of Wars

A War Prayer by Mark Twain. Preachers, profiteers and politicians make war appear to be glorious. It is not. 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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See also Power, Justice and Mercy Quotes