Quotes and Quotables:
On liberty, freedom, patriotism, wisdom, war, and lunacy.
Quotes and quotables; Wisdom from patriots, presidents, authors, the famous, lunatics, and just regular people too.
"If this were a dictatorship, it'd be a heck of a lot easier, just so long as I'm the dictator." George W. Bush
"I just want you to know that, when we talk about war, we're really talking about peace." George W. Bush
"If we don’t stop extending our troops all around the world in nation-building missions, we’re going to have a serious problem coming down the road." George W. Bush
"The reason we start a war is to fight a war, win a war, thereby causing no more war." George W. Bush
"Our nation is somewhat sad, but we’re angry. There’s a certain level of blood lust, but we won’t let it drive our reaction. We’re steady, clear-eyed and patient, but pretty soon we’ll have to start displaying scalps." George W. Bush
"I think war is a dangerous place." George W. Bush
"Death has a tendency to encourage a depressing view of war." Donald Rumsfeld
"We live in a country where 98-plus percent of the members of Congress get re-elected every year with no serious competition. That, my friends, is a dead democracy." Author Unknown
"Dissent is the highest form of patriotism." President Thomas Jefferson
"No man, for any considerable period, can wear one face to himself and another to the multitude without finally getting bewildered as to which one is true" Nathaniel Hawthorne
"To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public." President 'Teddy' Roosevelt
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." Benjamin Franklin
"No people ever lost their liberties unless they themselves first became corrupt. The people are the safeguards of their own liberties, and I rely wholly on them to guard themselves." President Andrew Jackson
"Our government has kept us in a perpetual state of fear - kept us in a continuous stampede of patriotic fervor - with the cry of grave national emergency. Always there has been some terrible evil at home or some monstrous foreign power that was going to gobble us up if we did not blindly rally behind it." General Douglas MacArthur, 1957
"The beauty of the second amendment is that it will not be needed until they try to take it." Author Unknown
"When the people fear the government you have tyranny ... when the government fears the people you have liberty." President Thomas Jefferson
"Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed." Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
"Government is not reason, it is not eloquence, it is force; like fire, a troublesome servant and a fearful master. Never for a moment should it be left to irresponsible action." President George Washington
"Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add 'within the limits of the law' because law is often but the tyrant's will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual." President Thomas Jefferson
"Each time a person stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, these ripples build a current that can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance." Robert F. Kennedy
"Human reason left to itself can neither preserve morals nor give duration to a free government." Noah Webster
"Experience has shown that even under the best forms of government, those entrusted with power have, in time and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny". Thomas Jefferson
"For by small degrees has liberty in all nations been wrested from the hands of the people". Fischer Ames
"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants." President Thomas Jefferson
"Posterity, you will never know how much it has cost my generation to preserve your freedom. I hope you will make good use of it." President John Quincy Adams
"Liberty has never come from the government; it has always come from the subjects of it. The history of liberty is a history of limitation of governmental power, not the increase of it." President Woodrow Wilson
"I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty, or give me death." Patrick Henry
"Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we will pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of Liberty." President John F. Kennedy
"Liberty is to the collective body, what health is to every individual body. Without health no pleasure can be tasted by man; without liberty, no happiness can be enjoyed by society." Henry Bolingbroke
"A nation which makes the final sacrifice for life and freedom does not get beaten." Kemal Atatürk
"Only our individual faith in freedom can keep us free." President Dwight D. Eisenhower
"Freedom is the last, best hope of earth." President Abraham Lincoln
"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it." Thomas Paine
"Our Country, in dealing with other countries, may she always be right; but it is still our country, right or wrong." Stephen Decatur
"My language has always been that of liberty and humanity, and I know by experience that nothing so exalts a nation as the union of these two principles, under all circumstances." Thomas Paine
"Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction." President Ronald Reagan
"It does not take a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority, keen on setting brush fires of freedom in the minds of men." Samuel Adams
"If a Nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be. If we are to guard against ignorance and remain free, it is the responsibility of every American to be informed." President Thomas Jefferson
"Firearms are the people's liberty's teeth." Unknown Author
"Anti-Semitism is always the calling card of a new despotism." Alan Caruba
"The liberties of our country, the freedom of our civil Constitution, are worth defending at all hazards; and it is our duty to defend them against all attacks. We have received them as a fair inheritance from our worthy ancestors; they purchased them for us with toil and danger and expense of treasure and blood. It will bring an everlasting mark of infamy on the present generation, enlightened as it is, if we should suffer them to be wrested from us by violence without a struggle, or be cheated out of them by the artifices of false and designing men." Samuel Adams
"In those wretched countries where a man cannot call his tongue his own, he can scarce call anything his own. Who ever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech." Benjamin Franklin
"What makes Western civilization worth saving is the freedom of the mind; now under heavy attack from the primitives, who have persisted among us. If we have not the courage to defend that faith, it won't matter much whether we are saved or not." Elmer Davis
"Americans who value freedom had better be more concerned about the gun control crowd than the criminals. The criminals want your money. The Neo-Totalitarians want your Freedom." Charley Reese
"Taking my guns away because I might shoot someone is like cutting my tongue out because I might yell, 'FIRE' in a crowded theater." Author Unknown
"Throughout its history, America has given hope, comfort and inspiration to freedom's cause in all lands. The reservoir of good will and respect for America was not built up by American arms or intrigue; it was built upon our deep dedication to the cause of human liberty and welfare." Adlai Stevenson
"Our strength is not to be measured by our military capacity alone, by our industry, or by our technology. We will be remembered, not for the power of our weapons, but for the power of our compassion, our dedication to human welfare." Hubert Humphrey
"The strongest reason for people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government." Author Unknown
"If we make peaceful revolution[activism] impossible, we make violent revolution[activism] inevitable." President John F. Kennedy
"This country belongs to the people and whenever they shall grow weary of their government they can exercise their constitutional right to amend it, or revolutionary right to dismember it or overthrow it." President Abraham Lincoln
"Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet deprecate agitation, are men who want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the roar of its many waters." Frederick Douglass
"Most of the trouble in the world is caused by people wanting to be important." T.S. Eliot
"There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when we fail to protest." Elie Wiesel
"The greatest menace to freedom is an inert people." Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis
"You may think your actions are meaningless and that they won't help, but that is no excuse, you must still act." Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi
"In the beginning of a change, the patriot is a scarce man, brave, hated, and scorned. When his cause succeeds however, the timid join him, for then it cost nothing to be a patriot." Mark Twain
"I love agitation and investigation and glory in defending unpopular truth against popular error." President James A. Garfield
"We are descended in spirit from revolutionaries and rebels -- men and women who dare to dissent from accepted doctrine." President Dwight D. Eisenhower
"A person in the US with a gun is a citizen. A person in the US without a gun is a subject." Author Unknown
"War's a game, which, were their subjects wise, Kings would not play at." William Cowper
"Military glory - that attractive rainbow, that rises in showers of blood - that serpent's eye, that charms to destroy..." Abraham Lincoln
"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. War is hell." Gen. William T. Sherman
"Only a free and unrestrained press can effectively expose deception in government." Hugo Black, Supreme Court Justice
"War is fear cloaked in courage." General William Westmoreland
"Because I do it with one small ship, I am called a terrorist. You do it with a whole fleet and are called an emperor." A pirate, from St. Augustine's 'The City of God'
"Never believe any war will be smooth and easy, or that anyone who embarks on the strange voyage can measure the tides and hurricanes he will encounter." Sir Winston Churchill
"What is morally wrong can never be advantageous, even when it enables you to make some gain that you believe to be to your advantage." Marcus Tullius Cicero
"We are the ones responsible to determine whether the war that our marines, soldiers and airmen are fighting in is worth the cause..." Scott Ritter
"I am not blaming those who are resolved to rule, only those who show an even greater readiness to submit." Thucydides
"War: A wretched debasement of all the pretenses of civilization." General Omar Bradley
"The life of the nation is secure only while the nation is honest, truthful, and virtuous." Frederick Douglass
"Everybody's worried about stopping terrorism. Well, there's a really easy way: stop participating in it." Noam Chomsky
"Of all the enemies to public liberty, war is perhaps the most to be dreaded because it comprises and develops the germ of every other." James Madison
"War doesn't make boys men, it makes men dead." Ken Gillespie
"An army of principles can penetrate where an army of soldiers cannot." Thomas Paine
"Modern war appears as a struggle led by all the State apparatuses and their general staffs against all men old enough to bear arms..." Simone Weil
"Every nation has its war party. It is not the party of democracy. It is the party of autocracy. It seeks to dominate absolutely. " Senator Robert M. La Follette
"It is the job of thinking people not to be on the side of the executioners." Albert Camus
"We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. When the loyal opposition dies, I think the soul of America dies with it." Edward R. Murrow
"Wars teach us not to love our enemies, but to hate our allies." W. L. George
"The opinion of 10,000 men is of no value if none of them know anything about the subject." Marcus Aurelius
"The mere act of believing that some wrongful course of action constitutes an advantage is pernicious." Marcus Tullius Cicero
"Man was/is born free, and everywhere he is in chains. One who believes himself the master of others is nonetheless a greater slave than they." Jean Jaques Rousseau
"The dangerous patriot... drifts into chauvinism and exhibits blind enthusiasm for military actions." Colonel James A. Donovan, Marine Corps
"I've been immersed in it too long. My spirit is wobbly and my mind is confused. The hurt has become too great." Ernie Pyle
"It is unpatriotic not to tell the truth, whether about the president or anyone else." Theodore Roosevelt
"Our country is now geared to an arms economy bred in an artificually induced psychosis of war hysteria and an incessant propaganda of fear." General Douglas MacArthur
"For what can war, but endless war, still breed?" John Milton
"The statesman who yields to war fever... is no longer the master of policy but the slave of unforeseeable and uncontrollable events." Sir Winston Churchill
"Paramount among the responsibilities of a free press is the duty to prevent any part of the government from deceiving the people..." Hugo Black, Supreme Court Justice
"Violence is the first refuge of the incompetent." Issac Asimov
"Liberty and democracy become unholy when their hands are dyed red with innocent blood." Mahatma Gandhi
"Let not your zeal to share your principles entice you beyond your borders." Marquis de Sade
"Even if we are spared destruction by war, our lives will have to change if we want to save life from self-destruction." Alexander Solzhenitsyn
"The demands of internal growth are incomparably more important to us... than the need for any external expansion of our power." Alexander Solzhenitsyn
"A state of war only serves as an excuse for domestic tyranny." Alexander Solzhenitsyn
"It is always more valuable to report the truth." Jean-Paul Sartre
"Any man who has once proclaimed violence as his method is inevitably forced to take the lie as his principle." Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
"In times of universal deceit, telling the truth will be a revolutionary act." George Orwell
"What an immense mass of evil must result... from allowing men to assume the right of anticipating what may happen." Leo Tolstoy
"Peace is constructed, not fought for." Brent Davis
"Love of power, operating through greed and through personal ambition, was the cause of all these evils." Thucydides
"We say that we care about the war, but we don’t even really know what we’re fighting for." Scott Ritter
"In this war – as in others – I am less interested in honoring the dead than in preventing the dead." Butler Shaffer
"It is only those who have neither fired a shot nor heard the shrieks and groans of the wounded who cry aloud for blood... War is hell." General William Tecumseh Sherman
"It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong." Voltaire
"When one doesn’t have the courage needed to be a pacifist, one’s a warrior. The pacifist is always alone." Jean Giono
"... some men... in order to prevent the supposed intentions of their adversaries, have committed the most enormous cruelties..." Clearchus, in Xenophon
"[War] might be avoidable were more emphasis placed on the training to social interest, less on the attainment of egotistical grandeur." Lydia Sicher
"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed people can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has." Margaret Mead
"No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare." James Madison
"Look at you in war... There has never been a just one, never an honorable one, on the part of the instigator of the war." Mark Twain
"The power to declare war, including the power of judging the causes of war, is fully and exclusively vested in the legislature." James Madison
"Violence as a way of gaining power... is being camouflaged under the guise of tradition, national honor [and] national security..." Alfred Adler
"Every nation has its war party... It is commercial, imperialistic, ruthless. It tolerates no opposition." Senator Robert M. La Follette
"War is not the continuation of politics with different means, it is the greatest mass-crime perpetrated on the community of man." Alfred Adler
"As long as we can talk with people, as long as one can keep the guns quiet, one has a chance." Lydia Sicher
"It is always easier to fight for one’s principles than to live up to them." Alfred Adler
"We will not learn how to live together in peace by killing each other's children." Jimmy Carter
"The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy." Martin Luther King, Jr.
"I hope our wisdom will grow with our power, and teach us, that the less we use our power the greater it will be." Thomas Jefferson
"The dangerous patriot... is a defender of militarism and its ideals of war and glory." Colonel James A. Donovan, Marine Corps
"To jaw-jaw is always better than to war-war." Winston Churchill
"Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." John Kennedy
"War is the continuation of politics by other means." Karl Von Clausewitz
"Man has no right to kill his brother. It is no excuse that he does so in uniform: he only adds the infamy of servitude to the crime of murder." Percy Bysshe Shelley
"Is it not a strange blindness on our part to teach publicly the techniques of warfare and to reward with medals those who prove to be the most adroit killers?" Marquis de Sade
"The next war ... may well bury Western civilization forever." Alexander Solzhenitsyn
"The cry has been that when war is declared, all opposition should be hushed. A sentiment more unworthy of a free country could hardly be propagated." William Ellery Channing
"Uncalled-for aggression arouses the hatred of the civilian population..." Jean-Paul Sartre
"War is at best barbarism. Its glory is all moonshine... War is hell." General William Tecumseh Sherman
"The voice of protest... is never more needed than when the clamor of fife and drum... is bidding all men... obey in silence the tyrannous word of command." Charles Eliot Norton
"Our neoconservatives are neither new nor conservative, but old as Bablyon and evil as Hell." Edward Abbey
"The war... was an unnecessary condition of affairs, and might have been avoided if forebearance and wisdom had been practiced on both sides." Robert E. Lee
"Where is the justice of political power if it... marches upon neighboring lands, killing thousands and pillaging the very hills?" Kahlil Gibran
"We must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex." Dwight D. Eisenhower
"Respect for the rights of others means peace." Benito Juárez
"War is not a word, it's an acronym for 'Wasting Another's Resources.'" Ramman Kenoun
"Let us become inspired by inherent beauty, and not impassioned by manufactured hate." Nima Shirali, Middle Eastern Reconciliation Forum
"Wild animals never kill for sport. Man is the only one to whom the torture and death of his fellow creatures is amusing in itself." James Anthony Froude
"Anyone who has the power to make you believe absurdities has the power to make you commit injustices." Voltaire
"... the executive has no right, in any case, to decide the question, whether there is or is not cause for declaring war." James Madison
"To all those who walk the path of human cooperation war must appear loathsome and inhuman." Alfred Adler
"If there is no sufficient reason for war, the [war] party will make war on one pretext, then invent another... pretext after war is on." Sen. Robert M. La Follette
"War is a racket. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives." General Smedley Butler
"War is not its own end, except in some catastrophic slide into absolute damnation." Lois McMaster Bujold
"We thought, because we had power, we had wisdom." Stephen Vincent Benét
"Chauvinism is a proud and bellicose form of patriotism... which identifies numerous enemies who can only be dealt with through military power..." Colonel James A. Donovan, Marine Corps
"The guns and the bombs, the rockets and the warships, are all symbols of human failure." Lyndon B. Johnson
"Of all the enemies to public liberty, war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other." James Madison
"History teaches that war begins when governments believe the price of aggression is cheap." Ronald Reagan
"What is more immoral than war?" Marquis de Sade
"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
"There are only two things we should fight for. One is the defense of our homes and the other is the Bill of Rights." General Smedley Butler
"War is wretched beyond description, and only a fool or a fraud could sentimentalize its cruel reality." Senator John McCain
"Total war is no longer war waged by all members of one national community against all those of another. It is total... because it may well involve the whole world." Jean-Paul Sartre
"Dulce bellum inexpertis (War is delightful to the inexperienced)." Erasmus, the 16th-century scholar
"Right is right, even if everyone is against it, and wrong is wrong, even if everyone is for it." William Penn
"The essential act of war is destruction, not necessarily of human lives, but of the products of human labor." Emmanuel Goldstein
"Where is the justice of political power if it executes the murderer and jails the plunderer?" Kahlil Gibran
"this world of ours... must avoid becoming a community of dreadful fear and hate, and be, instead, a proud confederation of mutual trust and respect." Dwight D. Eisenhower
"Disarmament, with mutual honor and confidence, is a continuing imperative." Dwight D. Eisenhower
"May we never confuse honest dissent with disloyal subversion." Dwight D. Eisenhower
"We first fought... in the name of religion, then Communism, and now in the name of drugs and terrorism. Our excuses for global domination always change." Serj Tankian
"People do not make wars; governments do." Ronald Reagan
"If there is no sufficient reason for war, the war party will make war on one pretext, then invent another... after the war is on." Senator Robert "Bob" M. La Follette
"Any forces that would impose their will on other nations will certainly face defeat." General Vo Nguyen Giap (Vietnam)
"Non-violence leads to the highest ethics, which is the goal of all evolution." Thomas Alva Edison
"There should be an honest attempt at the reconciliation of differences before resorting to combat." Jimmy Carter
"After each war there is a little less democracy to save." Brooks Atkinson
"Our modern states are preparing for war without even knowing the future enemy." Alfred Adler
"The tragedy of war is that it uses man's best to do man's worst." Henry Emerson Fosdick
"A man who says that no patriot should attack the war until it is over... is saying no good son should warn his mother of a cliff until she has fallen." G. K. Chesterton
"War is organized murder and torture against our brothers." Alfred Adler
"Never, never, never believe any war will be smooth and easy, or that anyone who embarks on the strange voyage can measure the tides and hurricanes he will encounter..." Winston Churchill
"Chauvinism is a proud and bellicose form of patriotism... which equates the national honor with military victory." Colonel James A. Donovan, Marine Corps
"Man's enemies are not demons, but human beings like himself." Lao Tzu
"Social order at the expense of liberty is hardly a bargain." Marquis de Sade
"Criticism in a time of war is essential to the maintenance of any kind of democratic government." Sen. Robert Taft, (R) Ohio
"We... are not really free if we can't control our own government and its policies. And we will never do that if we remain ignorant" Charley Reese
"War is a way of shattering to pieces... materials which might otherwise be used to make the masses too comfortable and... too intelligent." Emmanuel Goldstein
"There is neither rank nor station nor prerogative in the republic of the grave." John James Ingalls
"Together we must learn how to compose differences, not with arms, but with intellect and decent purpose." Dwight D. Eisenhower
"There is no glory in battle worth the blood it costs." Dwight D. Eisenhower
"Cruelty must be whitewashed by a moral excuse, and pretense of reluctance." George Bernard Shaw
"... no mother would ever willingly sacrifice her sons for territorial gain, for economic advantage, for ideology." Ronald Reagan
"In times of peace, the war party insists on making preparation for war. As soon as prepared for, it insists on making war." Senator Robert "Bob" M. La Follette
"Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities." Voltaire
"It is finer to bring one noble human being into the world and rear it well... than to kill ten thousand." Olive Schreiner
"War... is harmful, not only to the conquered but to the conqueror." Ludwig Von Mises
"There is no way to peace. Peace is the way." A. J. Muste
"The cry has been that when war is declared, all opposition should therefore be hushed. A sentiment more unworthy of a free country could hardly be propagated." William Ellery Channing
"The State thrives on war – unless, of course, it is defeated and crushed – expands on it, glories in it." Murray Rothbard
"Old men declare war. But it is the youth that must fight and die." Herbert C. Hoover
"The greater the state, the more wrong and cruel its patriotism, and the greater is the sum of suffering upon which its power is founded." Leo Tolstoy
"How could man rejoice in victory and delight in the slaughter of men?" Lao Tzu
"Most wars are started by well-fed people with time on their hands to dream up half-baked ideologies or grandiose ambitions..." Thomas Sowell
"War is harmful, not only to the conquered but to the conqueror." Ludwig Von Mises
"It is for us to refuse loyalty when injustice holds sway." Henry T. Laurency, in 'The Philosopher's Stone'
"Usually, terrible things that are done with the excuse that progress requires them are not really progress at all, but just terrible things." Russell Baker
"A people free to choose will always choose peace." Ronald Reagan
"Any excuse will serve a tyrant." Aesop
"Society has arisen out of the works of peace; the essence of society is peacemaking. Peace and not war is the father of all things." Ludwig Von Mises
"To defeat the aggressors is not enough to make peace durable. The main thing is to discard the ideology that generates war." Ludwig Von Mises
"The world cannot continue to wage war like physical giants and to seek peace like intellectual pygmies." Basil O'Connor
"All government wars are unjust." Murray Rothbard
"The people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders... tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger." Herman Goering
"We must not only cease our present desire for the growth of the state, but we must desire its decrease, its weakening..." Leo Tolstoy
"Violence, even well intentioned, always rebounds upon oneself." Lao Tzu
"Wars have ever been but another aristocratic mode of plundering and oppressing commerce." Richard Cobden
"Society has arisen out of the works of peace; the essence of society is peacemaking." Ludwig Von Mises
"Peace and friendship with all mankind is our wisest policy, and I wish we may be permitted to pursue it." Thomas Jefferson
"Let us form a new religion, that which would be called 'humanity', with 'peace' as its prophet." Nima Shirali
"In peace sons bury fathers, but war violates the order of nature, and fathers bury sons." Herodotus
"To some degree it matters whose in office, but it matters more how much pressure their under from the public." Noam Chomsky
"Tyrants seldom want pretexts." Edmund Burke
"Economically considered, war and revolution are always bad business." Ludwig Von Mises
"The very nature of interstate war puts innocent civilians into great jeopardy, especially with modern technology." Murray Rothbard
"Peace hath higher tests of manhood than battle ever knew." John Greenleaf Whittier
"A belligerent state permits itself every such misdeed, every such act of violence, as would disgrace the individual." Sigmund Freud
"It's more humane to cure your enemies than to kill them." Hugh Mann
"A war for a great principle ennobles a nation. A war for commercial supremacy, upon some shallow pretext, is despicable." Albert Pike
"War prosperity is like the prosperity that an earthquake or a plague brings." Ludwig Von Mises
"[Iraqis] know we own their country. We own their airspace... We dictate the way they live and talk. And that's what's great about America right now." U.S. Brig. General William Looney
"... we own [Iraq]... their airspace... We dictate the way they live and talk. It's a good thing, especially when
there's a lot of oil out there we need." U.S. Brig. General William Looney
"The government of the United States is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion." George Washington
"Force is the weapon of the weak." Ammon Hennacy
"The price of empire is America’s soul, and that price is too high." Sen. J. William Fulbright (Ark.)
"There is nothing politically right that is morally wrong." Daniel O'Connell
"O peace! how many wars were waged in thy name." Alexander Pope
"I can tell you this: If I’m ever in a position to call the shots, I’m not going to rush to send somebody else’s kids into a war." George H. W. Bush
"In war, there are no unwounded soldiers." Jose Narosky
"The tragedy of war is that it uses man’s best to do man’s worst." Henry Emerson Fosdick
"It is a universal truth that the loss of liberty at home is to be charged to the provisions against danger, real or pretended, from abroad." James Madison
"War is the most striking instance of the failure of intelligence to master the problem of human relationships." Harry Elmer Barnes
"We know more about war than we know about peace, more about killing that we know about living." General Omar N. Bradley
"War can really cause no economic boom, at least not directly, since an increase in wealth never does result from destruction of goods." Ludwig Von Mises
"No great dependence is to be placed on the eagerness of young soldiers for action... fighting is agreeable to those who are strangers to it." Vegetius
"To the wicked, everything serves as pretext." Voltaire
"The philosophy of protectionism is a philosophy of war." Ludwig Von Mises
"Sovereignty must not be used for inflicting harm on anyone, whether citizen or foreigner." Ludwig Von Mises
"If this phrase of the 'balance of power' is to be always an argument for war, the pretext for war will never be wanting, and peace can never be secure." John Bright
"Whoever wishes peace among peoples must fight statism." Ludwig Von Mises
"To kill a man is not to defend a doctrine, but to kill a man." Michael Servetus
"Phony pretexts repeated often enough become real reasons. Things that... are not true become true in the public mind simply through endless repetition." Lenny Bloom
"Modern society, based as it is on the division of labor, can be preserved only under conditions of lasting peace." Ludwig Von Mises
"In all history there is no war which was not hatched by the governments, the governments alone, independent of the interests of the people..." Leo Tolstoy
"'Emergencies' have always been the pretext on which the safeguards of individual liberty have been eroded." Friedrich August von Hayek
"Men are fighting... because they are convinced that the extermination of adversaries is the only means of promoting their own well-being." Ludwig Von Mises
"If men do not now succeed in abolishing war, civilization and mankind are doomed." Ludwig Von Mises
"The more power a government has the more it can act arbitrarily according to the whims and desires of the elite, and the more it will make war..." R. J. Rummel
"It is unfortunately none too well understood that, just as the State has no money of its own, so it has no power of its own." Albert J. Nock
"The root of the evil is not the construction of new, more dreadful weapons. It is the spirit of conquest." Ludwig Von Mises
"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
"The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not sufficient warrant." John Stuart Mill
"The moral and constitutional obligations of our representatives in Washington are to protect our liberty, not coddle the world, precipitating no-win wars, while bringing bankruptcy and economic turmoil to our people." Ron Paul
"Force always attracts men of low morality." Albert Einstein
"Wars are poor chisels for carving out peaceful tomorrows." Martin Luther King
"War is just a racket... I believe in adequate defense at the coastline and nothing else." General Smedley Butler
"War technology is science in the service of obscene anatomical vandalism." Stan Goff
"There are only two things we should fight for. One is the defense of our homes and the other is the Bill of Rights. War for any other reason is simply a racket." General Smedley Butler
"We have to face the fact that either all of us are going to die together or we are going to learn to live together and if we are to live together we have to talk." Eleanor Roosevelt
"The loss of liberty at home is to be charged to the provisions against danger, real or imagined, from abroad." James Madison
"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." Abraham Lincoln
"It is part of the general pattern of misguided policy that our country is now geared to an arms economy which was bred in an artificially induced psychosis of war hysteria and nurtured upon an incessant propaganda of fear." General Douglas MacArthur
"If some peoples pretend that history or geography gives them the right to subjugate other races, nations, or peoples, there can be no peace." Ludwig Von Mises
"They wrote in the old days that it is sweet and fitting to die for one’s country. But in modern war, there is nothing sweet nor fitting in your dying. You will die like a dog for no good reason." Ernest Hemingway
"What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans, and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty and democracy?" Mahatma Ghandi
"And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free." John 8:32
"War should be the politics of last resort. And when we go to war, we should have a purpose that our people understand and support." Colin Powell
"Vietnam was the first war ever fought without censorship. Without censorship, things can get terribly confused in the public mind." General William Westmoreland
"If I'm fighting for freedom here, and I go home and I'm opressed what does that mean?" Pv2 Frederick Phoenix, MP, US Army
"The slightest acquaintance with history shows that powerful republics are the most warlike and unscrupulous of nations." Ambrose Bierce
"War, n: A time-tested political tactic guaranteed to raise a president’s popularity rating by at least 30 points. It is especially useful during election years and economic downturns." Chaz Bufe
"To plunder, to slaughter, to steal, these things they misname empire; and where they make a desert, they call it peace." Calgacus
"I learned nothing from war. War is not an activity for human beings; war is for criminals—rape, robbery and murder." Roman Podabedov (Russian anti-tank gunner)
"There is no flag large enough to cover the shame of killing innocent people." Howard Zinn
"War is a racket." Smedley Butler
"We have to show the American People that war is not patriotic." Justin Raimondo
"If my soldiers were to begin to think, not one of them would remain in the army." Frederick the Great
"They talk about conscription as a democratic institution. Yes; so is a cemetary." Rep. Meyer London
"Either war is obsolete, or men are." R. Buckminster Fuller
"You can no more win a war than you can win an earthquake." Jeanette Rankin, first woman member of Congress
"Are bombs the only way of setting fire to the spirit of a people? Is the human will as inert as the past two world-wide wars would indicate?
" Gregory Clark
"I'm fed up to the ears with old men dreaming up wars for young men to die in." George McGovern
"War is too serious a matter to entrust to military men." Georges Clemenceau
"Nothing except a battle lost can be half as melancholy as a battle won." Duke of Wellington
"You're not to be so blind with patriotism that you can't face reality. Wrong is wrong, no matter who does it or says it." Malcolm X
"I love America more than any other country in this world, and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually." James Baldwin
"Mankind must put an end to war, or war will put an end to mankind." John F. Kennedy
"Every government has as much of a duty to avoid war as a ship's captain has to avoid a shipwreck." Guy de Maupassant
"Wars of aggression are popular nowadays with those nations convinced that only victory and conquest could improve their material well-being." Ludwig Von Mises
"War is a quarrel between two thieves too cowardly to fight their own battle." Thomas Carlyle
"To sin by silence when they should protest makes cowards of men." Abraham Lincoln
"Why should you ask blood be spilled for a cause that is not in the interest of the American people?" Rep. Wally Herger
"All wars are fought for money." Socrates
"Tis nobler to lose honor to save the lives of men than it is to gain honor by taking them." David Borenstein
"Man is the only animal that is cruel. It kills just for the sake of it." Mark Twain
"Force is all-conquering, but its victories are short-lived." Abraham Lincoln
"The first casualty when war comes is the truth." Sen. Hiram Johnson
"This war is not necessary. We are truly sleepwalking through history." Sen. Robert Byrd
"They talk about conscription as a democratic institution. Yes; so is a cemetery." Rep. Meyer London
"Washington... has become an alien city-state that rules America, and much of the rest of the world, in the way that Rome ruled the Roman Empire." Richard Maybury
"Arbitrary power is most easily established on the ruins of liberty abused to licentiousness." George Washington
"The more constrained the power of governments, the more power is diffused, checked, and balanced, the less it will aggress on others and commit democide." R. J. Rummel
"Great is the guilt of an unnecessary war." John Adams
"War is only a cowardly escape from the problems of peace." Thomas Mann
"The belief in the possibility of a short decisive war appears to be one of the most ancient and dangerous of human illusions." Robert Lynd
"In peace, sons bury their fathers. In war, fathers bury their sons." Herodotus
"Our government has kept us in a perpetual state of fear - kept us in a continuous stampede of patriotic fervor - with the cry of grave national emergency." General Douglas MacArthur
"I want to scare the hell out of the rest of the world." General Colin Powell
"We will not learn to live together in peace by killing each other's children." Jimmy Carter
"Violence and arms can never resolve the problems of men." Pope John Paul II
"If peace... only had the music and pagaentry of war, there'd be no wars." Sophie Kerr
"God hates violence. He has ordained that all men fairly possess their property, not seize it." Euripides
"Every man thinks god is on his side." Jean Anouilh
"All the gods are dead except the god of war." Eldridge Cleaver
"The bombs in Vietnam explode at home; they destroy the hopes and possibilities for a decent America." Martin Luther King, Jr.
"Wars should be over in three days or less... and the American people must be all for it from the outset." Evan Thomas
"We used to wonder where war lived, what it was that made it so vile. And now we realize that we know where it lives... inside ourselves." Albert Camus
"Only one thing can conquer war - that attitude of mind which can see nothing in war but destruction and annihilation..." Ludwig Von Mises
"The supreme excellence is to subde the armies of your enemies without even having to fight them." Sun Tzu
"From fanaticism to barbarism is only one step." Denis Diderot
"When [men] go to war, what they want is to impose on their enemies the victor's will and call it peace." St. Augustine, 'The City of God'
"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing." Edmund Burke
"The time has come to stop beating our heads against stone walls under the illusion that we have been appointed policeman to the human race." Walter Lippmann
"It is our true policy to steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world." George Washington
"We must recognize the chief characteristic of the modern era - a permanent state of what I call violent peace." Admiral James D. Watkins
"The spirit of this country is totally adverse to a large military force." Thomas Jefferson
"No nation ever had an army large enough to guarantee it against attack in time of peace, or ensure it of victory in time of war." Calvin Coolidge
"Can anything be more ridiculous than that a man has a right to kill me because he lives on the other side of the water, and because his ruler has quarrel with mine, although I have none with him?" Blaise Pascal
"An empire founded by war has to maintain itself by war." Montesquieu
"Whoever wants peace among nations must seek to limit the state and its influence most strictly." Ludwig Von Mises
"War will exist until that distant day when the conscientious objector enjoys the same reputation and prestige that the warrior does today." John F. Kennedy
"Most quarrels are inevitable at the time; incredible afterwards." E. M. Forster
"It is the youth who must inherit the tribulation, the sorrow... that are the aftermath of war." Herbert C. Hoover
"There's no difference between one's killing and making decisions that will send others to kill. It's exactly the same thing, or even worse." Golda Meir
"The military doesn't start wars. The politicians start wars." General William Westmoreland
"It is the merit of a general to impart good news, and to conceal the truth." Sophocles
"In war, truth is the first casualty." Aeschylus
"A thing is not necessarily true because a man dies for it." Oscar Wilde
"Man is the only animal of which I am thoroughly and cravenly afraid... There is no harm in a well-fed lion. It has no ideals, no sect, no party..." George Bernard Shaw
"As a rule, high culture and military power go hand in hand, as evidenced in the cases of Greece and Rome." Baron Colmar Von Der Goltz
"History is littered with wars which everybody knew would never happen." Enoch Powell
"At least we're getting the kind of experience we need for the next war." Allen Dulles
"War is the greatest plague that can affect humanity; it destroys religion, it destroys states, it destroys families. Any scourge is preferable to it." Martin Luther
"How vile and despicable war seems to me! I would rather be hacked to pieces than take part in such an abominable business." Albert Einstein
"Have you ever thought that war is a madhouse and that everyone in the war is a patient?" Oriana Fallaci
"War is the unfolding of miscalculations." Barbara Tuchman
"War is mainly a catalogue of blunders." Winston Churchill
"It is far easier to make war than peace." Georges Clemeceau
"Hate is able to provoke disorders, to ruin a social organization, to cast a country into a period of bloody revolutions; but it produces nothing." Georges Sorel
"We are all familiar with the argument: Make war dreadful enough, and there will be no war. And we none of us believe it." John Galsworthy
"War is not an adventure. It is a disease. It is like typhus." Antoine De Saint-Exupery
"War is the health of the State." Randolph Bourne
"War is the Health of the State." Randolph Bourne
"War would end if the dead could return." Stanley Baldwin
"There are no warlike people - just warlike leaders." Ralph Bunche
"Name me an emperor who was ever struck by a cannonball." Charles V of France
"As for being a General, well, at the age of four with paper hates and wooden swords, we're all Generals. Only some of us never grow out of it." Peter Ustinov
"Putting aside all the fancy words and academic doubletalk, the basic reason for having a miltary is to do two jobs - to kill people and to destroy." General Thomas S. Power
"To wage war, you need first of all money; second, you need money, and third, you also need money." Prince Montecuccoli
"Wars are not paid for in wartime, the bill comes later." Benjamin Franklin
"A man may build himself a throne of bayonets, but he cannot sit on it." William Ralph Inge
"You can wipe out your opponents. But if you do it unjustly you become eligible for being wiped out yourself." Ernest Hemingway
"No weapon has ever settled a moral problem. It can impose a solution but it cannot guarantee it to be a just one." Ernest Hemingway
"You can't have this kind of war. There just aren't enough bulldozers to scrape the bodies off the streets." Dwight D. Eisenhower
"The Atomic Age is here to stay - but are we?" Bennett Cerf
"You've got to forget about this civilian. Whenever you drop bombs, you're going to hit civilians." Barry Goldwater
"It isn't enough to talk about peace. One must believe in it. And it isn't enough to believe in it. One must work at it." Eleanor Roosevelt
"Peace cannot be kept by force. It can only be achieved by understanding." Albert Einstein
"Let us not deceive ourselves; we must elect world peace or world destruction." Bernard M. Baruch
"It is not reasonable that those who gamble with men's lives should not pay with their own." H. G. Wells
"Only the winners decide what were war crimes." Gary Wills
"True patriotism hates injustice in its own land more than anywhere else." Clarence Darrow
"You're not supposed to be so blind with patriotsim that you can't face reality. Wrong is wrong no matter who does it or who says it." Malcolm X
"A time will come when a politician who has willfully made war and promoted international dissension will be... surer of the noose than a private homicide." H. G. Wells
"It takes twenty years or more of peace to make a man; it only takes twenty seconds of war to destroy him." King Baudouin I of Belgium
"The time not to become a father is eighteen years before a war." E. B. White
"In peace, sons bury their fathers; in war, fathers bury their sons." Herodotus
"When you are winning a war almost everything that happens can be claimed to be right and wise." Winston Churchill
"If you live long enough, you'll see that every victory turns into a defeat." Simon de Beauvoir
"One more such victory and we are undone." Pyrrhus of Epirus
"All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing." Edmund Burke
"The urge to save humanity is almost always only a false-face for the urge to rule it." H. L. Mencken
"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary." H. L. Mencken
"Those who stand for nothing fall for anything." Alexander Hamilton
"One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors." Plato
"The obligations of our representatives in Washington are to protect our liberty, not coddle the world, precipitating no-win wars, while bringing bankruptcy and economic turmoil to our people." Ron Paul
"Government is not reason, it is not eloquence, it is force... Never for a moment should it be left to irresponsible action." George Washington
"It is our true policy to steer clear of entangling alliances with any portion of the foreign world." George Washington
"I believe in only one thing: liberty; but I do not believe in liberty enough to want to force it upon anyone." H. L. Mencken
"America does not go abroad in search of monsters to destroy." John Quincy Adams
"Patriotism is indeed a double-edged sword. It both emboldens the blood, just as it narrows the mind." Julius Caesar
"Civilized society is perpetually menaced with disintegration through this primary hostility of men towards one another..." Sigmund Freud
"The coward threatens when he is safe." Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
"People who talk of outlawing the atomic bomb are mistaken — what needs to be outlawed is war." Leslie Richard Groves
"Peace has its victories no less than war, but it doesn't have as many monuments to unveil." Kin Hubbard
"A coward is much more exposed to quarrels than a man of spirit." Thomas Jefferson
"How strangely will the Tools of a Tyrant pervert the plain Meaning of Words!" Samuel Adams
"Do not ever say that the desire to "do good" by force is a good motive. Neither power-lust nor stupidity are good motives." Ayn Rand
"Most wars are started by well-fed people with time on their hands to dream up half-baked ideologies or grandiose ambitions, and to nurse real or imagined grievances." Thomas Sowell
"The worst evils which mankind has ever had to endure were inflicted by bad governments." Ludwig Von Mises
"The state can be and has often been in the course of history the main source of mischief and disaster." Ludwig Von Mises
"The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in the insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well meaning but without understanding." Justice Louis Brandeis
"Economically considered, war and revolution are always bad business." Ludwig von Mises
"War can really cause no economic boom, at least not directly, since an increase in wealth never does result from destruction of goods." Ludwig von Mises
"Whoever wishes peace among peoples must fight statism." Ludwig von Mises
"The attainment of the economic aims of man presupposes peace." Ludwig von Mises
"History has witnessed the failure of many endeavors to impose peace by war, cooperation by coercion, unanimity by slaughtering dissidents…. A lasting order cannot be established by bayonets." Ludwig von Mises
"Peace and abstinence from European interferences are our objects, and so will continue while the present order of things in America remain uninterrupted." Thomas Jefferson
"Commerce with all nations, alliance with none, should be our motto." Thomas Jefferson
"There never was a good war or a bad peace." Benjamin Franklin
"Of all the enemies to public liberty, war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded because it comprises and develops the germ of every other." James Madison
"The most fundamental purpose of government is defense, not empire." Joseph Sobran
"Peace, commerce and honest friendship with all nations; entangling alliances with none." Thomas Jefferson
" The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule. " H.L. Mencken
"America does not go abroad in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. " John Quincy Adams
"The more power a government has the more it can act arbitrarily according to the whims and desires of the elite, and the more it will make war on others and murder its foreign and domestic subjects. " R. J. Rummel
" When the tyrant has disposed of foreign enemies by conquest or treaty, and there is nothing to fear from them, then he is always stirring up some war or other, in order that the people may require a leader." Plato
"War is not an independent phenomenon, but the continuation of politics by different means." Carl von Clausewitz
"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 Tolstoy
"The constitution vests the power of declaring war in Congress; therefore no offensive expedition of importance can be undertaken until after they shall have deliberated upon the subject and authorized such a measure." George Washington
"Those who give up essential liberties for temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." Benjamin Franklin
"The chain reaction of evil - hate begetting hate, wars producing more wars - must be broken, or we shall be plunged into the dark abyss of annihilation." Martin Luther King, Jr.
"War is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious." General Smedley Butler
"Imperialism is an institution under which one nation asserts the right to seize the land or at least to control the government or resources of another people." John T. Flynn
"The great error of nearly all studies of war... has been to consider war as an episode in foreign policies, when it is an act of interior politics..." Simone Weil
"We may extend our dominion over the whole continent... but be assured it will be at the price of our free institutions." Rep. William Waters Boyce
"America is the only nation in history which miraculously has gone directly from barbarism to degeneration without the usual interval of civilization." Georges Clemenceau
"Before the war is ended, the war party assumes the divine right to denounce and silence all opposition to war as unpatriotic and cowardly." Senator Robert M. La Follette
"After every 'victory' you have more enemies. " Jeanette Winterson
"Wars are inevitable... as long as we believe that wars are inevitable. The moment we don't believe it anymore it is not inevitable." Lydia Sicher
"The winds that blow our billions away return burdened with themes of scorn and dispraise." Garet Garrett
"I hope... that mankind will at length, as they call themselves responsible creatures, have the reason and sense enough to settle their differences without cutting throats..." Benjamin Franklin
"The essence of so-called war prosperity; it enriches some by what it takes from others. It is not rising wealth but a shifting of wealth and income." Ludwig von Mises
"Our children are not born to hate, they are raised to hate." Thomas della Peruta
"Violence can only be concealed by a lie, and the lie can only be maintained by violence." Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
"The shepherd always tries to persuade the sheep that their interests and his own are the same." Marie Beyle
"I guess every generation is doomed to fight its war... suffer the loss of the same old illusions, and learn the same old lessons on its own." Phillip Caputo
"Although tyranny... may successfully rule over foreign peoples, it can stay in power only if it destroys first of all the national institutions of its own people." Hannah Areddt
"I hate those men who would send into war youth to fight and die for them; the pride and cowardice of those old men, making their wars that boys must die." Mary Roberts Rinehart
"Guard against the impostures of pretended patriotism." George Washington
"The de facto role of the US armed forces will be to keep the world safe for our economy and open to our cultural assault." Major Ralph Peters, US Military
"For me war has become a flat, black depression without highlights, a revulsion of the mind and an exhaustion of the spirit." Ernie Pyle
"Patriotism means to stand by the country. It does not mean to stand by the president or any other public official..." Theodore Roosevelt
"The worst crimes were dared by a few, willed by more and tolerated by all." Tacitus
"War creates peace like hate creates love." David L. Wilson
"We Americans have no commission from God to police the world." Benjamin Harrison
"No one has deputized America to play Wyatt Earp to the world." Pat Buchanan
"An eye for an eye makes us all blind." Gandhi
"the expenditures for such warfare... have crippled the nation's livelihood and exhausted the resources of the people." Mo Tzu
"All murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets." Voltaire
"You never need an argument against the use of violence, you need an argument for it." Noam Chomsky
"Anyone who has proclaimed violence his method inexorably must choose lying as his principle." Mikhail Gorbachev
"A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government." Edward Abbey
"Our ‘neoconservatives’ are neither new nor conservative, but old as Bablyon and evil as Hell." Edward Abbey
"The tragedy of modern war is that the young men die fighting each other - instead of their real enemies back home in the capitals." Edward Abbey
"I venture to say no war can be long carried on against the will of the people." Edmund Burke
"War’s a brain spattering windpipe splitting art." Lord Byron
"It is in war that the State really comes into its own: swelling in power, in number, in pride, in absolute dominion over the economy and the society." Murray Rothbard
"It is harder to preserve than to obtain liberty." John C. Calhoun
"The only defensible war is a war of defense." G. K. Chesterton
"All wars come to an end, at least temporarily. But the authority acquired by the state hangs on; political power never abdicates." Frank Chodorov
"The pertinent question: if Americans did not want these wars should they have been compelled to fight them?" Frank Chodorov
"The State acquires power... and because of its insatiable lust for power it is incapable of giving up any of it. The State never abdicates." Frank Chodorov
"The more laws, the less justice." Marcus Tullius Cicero
"The sinews of war are infinite money." Marcus Tullius Cicero
"Politics is the womb in which war develops." Carl P. G. von Clausewitz
"The political object is the goal, war is the means of reaching it, and the means can never be considered in isolation form their purposes." Carl P. G. von Clausewitz
"Remember that a government big enough to give you everything you want is also big enough to take away everything you have." Davy Crockett
"A standing army is a standing menace to liberty." Voltairine de Clayre
"When people speak to you about a preventive war, you tell them to go and fight it. After my experience, I have come to hate war." Dwight D. Eisenhower
"War settles nothing." Dwight D. Eisenhower
"Peace cannot be achieved through violence, it can only be attained through understanding." Ralph Waldo Emerson
"If you kill one person you are a murderer. If you kill ten people you are a monster. If you kill ten thousand you are a national hero." Vassilis Epaminondou
"Civilization began the first time an angry person cast a word instead of a rock." Sigmund Freud
"When American presidents prepare for foreign wars, they lie." Robert Higgs
"Since the end of the nineteenth century, if not earlier, presidents have misled the public about their motives and their intentions in going to war." Robert Higgs
"Force and fraud are in war the two cardinal virtues." Thomas Hobbes
"What is absurd and monstrous about war is that men who have no personal quarrel should be trained to murder one another in cold blood." Aldous Huxley
"Conquest is not in our principles. It is inconsistent with our government." Thomas Jefferson
"We did not raise armies for glory or for conquest." Thomas Jefferson
"Nations of eternal war [expend] all their energies... in the destruction of the labor, property, and lives of their people." Thomas Jefferson
"I abhor war and view it as the greatest scourge of mankind." Thomas Jefferson
"The most successful war seldom pays for its losses." Thomas Jefferson
"Strike against war, for without you no battles can be fought!" Helen Keller
"Be not dumb, obedient slaves in an army of destruction! Be heroes in an army of construction!" Helen Keller
"Nothing good ever comes of violence." Martin Luther King, Jr.
"Man must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression, and retaliation. " Martin Luther King, Jr.
"If any question why we died, Tell them, because our fathers lied." Rudyard Kipling
"War against a foreign country only happens when the moneyed classes think they are going to profit from it." George Orwell
"Every war when it comes, or before it comes, is represented not as a war but as an act of self-defense against a homicidal maniac." George Orwell
"One certain effect of war is to diminish freedom of expression." Howard Zinn
"War prosperity is like the prosperity that an earthquake or a plague brings." Ludwig von Mises
"Will ... the threat of common extermination continue?... Must children receive the arms race from us as a necessary inheritance?" Pope John Paul II
"War - after all, what is it that the people get? Why - widows, taxes, wooden legs and debt." Samuel B. Pettengill
"No matter what political reasons are given for war, the underlying reason is always economic." A. J. P. Taylor
"No war is inevitable until it breaks out." A. J. P. Taylor
"Almost all war making states borrow extensively, raise taxes, and seize the means of combat- including men - from reluctant citizens..." Charles Tilly
"All warfare is based on deception." Sun Tzu
"There is no instance of a country having benefited from prolonged warfare." Sun Tzu
"I hate it when they say, ‘He gave his life for his country.’ They don’t die for the honor and glory of their country. We kill them." Rear Admiral Gene R. LaRocque
"War has become a spectator sport for Americans." Rear Admiral Gene R. LaRocque
"We all have to be concerned about terrorism, but you will never end terrorism by terrorizing others." Martin Luther King III
"Always there has been some terrible evil at home or some monstrous foreign power that was going to gobble us up if we did not blindly rally behind it." General Douglas MacArthur
"Of all the enemies of public liberty, war is perhaps the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other." James Madison
"The executive has no right, in any case, to decide the question, whether there is or is not cause for declaring war." James Madison
"If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy." James Madison
"The means of defense against foreign danger historically have become the instruments of tyranny at home." James Madison
"Our poverty will be brought home to us to its full extent only after the war. " Joseph A. Schumpeter
"War is the statesmans game, the priests delight, the lawyers jest, the hired assassins trade." Percy Bysshe Shelley
"War is just one more big government program." Joseph Sobran
"This president failed so miserably in diplomacy that we are now forced to war." Tom Daschle
"The opposite of war is not peace, it's creation." Jonathan Larson
"Either war is obsolete or men are." R. Buckminster Fuller
"The real and lasting victories are those of peace, and not of war." Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Is it security you want? There is no security at the top of the world." Garet Garrett
"With no notice to the American people... this country entered the war... Stranger than the fact was the passive acceptance of it." Garet Garrett
"What a cruel thing is war: to separate and destroy families and friends, and mar the purest joys and happiness god has given us in this world..." Robert E. Lee
"What a cruel thing war is... to fill our hearts with hatred instead of love for our neighbors." Robert E. Lee
“My country, right or wrong,” is a thing that no patriot would think of saying except in a desperate case. It is like saying, “My mother, drunk or sober." G. K. Chesterton
"It is not only the living who are killed in war." Isaac Asimov
"Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants. " General Omar N. Bradley
"Wars frequently begin ten years before the first shot is fired." K. K. V. Casey
"Are bombs the only way of setting fire to the spirit of a people?" Gregory Clark
"Where is the indignation about the fact that the US and USSR have thirty thousand pounds of destructive force for every human being in the world?" Norman Cousins
"There is nothing that war has ever achieved that we could not better achieve without it." Henry Havelock Ellis
"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
"War grows out of the desire of the individual to gain advantage at the expense of his fellow man. " Napoleon Hill
"The basic problems facing the world today are not susceptible to a military solution." John F. Kennedy
"We have war when at least one of the parties to a conflict wants something more than it wants peace. " Jeane J. Kirkpatrick
"One does not create a human society on mounds of corpses." Louis Lecoin
"A visitor from Mars could easily pick out the civilized nations. They have the best implements of war." Herbert V. Prochnow
"I hate war for its consequences, for the lies it lives on and propagates, for the undying hatreds it arouses..." Henry Emerson Fosdick
"I hate war... for the dictatorships it puts in the place of democracies, and for the starvation that stalks after it." Henry Emerson Fosdick
"Unconditional war can no longer lead to unconditional victory. It can no longer serve to settle disputes... can no longer be of concern to great powers alone." John F. Kennedy
"[War] can no longer be of concern to great powers alone." John F. Kennedy
"We know more about war than we know about peace, more about killing than we know about living." General Omar N. Bradley
"There are no warlike people, just warlike leaders." Ralph Bunche
"Peace is not the absence of war; it is a virtue; a state of mind; a disposition for benevolence; confidence; and justice." Spinoza
"Conflict cannot survive without your participation." Dr. Wayne Dyer
"Probably, no nation is rich enough to pay for both war and civilization. We must make our choice; we cannot have both." Abraham Flexner
"How far you can go without destroying from within what you are trying to defend from without?" Dwight D. Eisenhower
"You are not going to get peace with millions of armed men. The chariot of peace cannot advance over a road littered with cannon." David Lloyd
"When will mankind be convinced and agree to settle their difficulties by arbitration?" Benjamin Franklin
"All wars are follies, very expensive and very mischievous ones." Benjamin Franklin
"Mankind is becoming a single unit, and that for a unit to fight against itself is suicide. " Havelock Ellis
"I'd like to see the government get out of war altogether and leave the whole field to private individuals." Joseph Heller
"What a country calls its vital... interests are not things that help its people live, but things that help it make war." Simone Weil
"Petroleum is a more likely cause of international conflict than wheat." Simone Weil
"War is never a solution; it is an aggravation." Benjamin Disraeli
"Force without judgement falls on its own weight." Horace
"Yes, we love peace, but we are not willing to take wounds for it, as we are for war." John Andrew Holmes
"I think that people want peace so much that one of these days government had better get out of their way and let them have it." Dwight D. Eisenhower
"We have all taken risks in the making of war. Isn't it time that we should take risks to secure peace?" J. Ramsay MacDonald
"We shall never be able to effect physical disarmament until we have succeeded in effecting moral disarmament." J. Ramsay MacDonald
"I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its futility, its stupidity." Dwight D. Eisenhower
"The world is a dangerous place, not because of those who do evil, but because of those who look on and do nothing." Albert Einstein
"During times of war, hatred becomes quite respectable even though it has to masquerade often under the guise of patriotism." Howard Thurman
"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
"We have guided missiles and misguided men." Martin Luther King, Jr.
"Peace is not merely a distant goal that we seek, but a means by which we arrive at that goal." Martin Luther King, Jr.
"If you succumb to the temptation of using violence in the struggle... your chief legacy to the future will be an endless reign of meaningless chaos." Martin Luther King, Jr.
"It is not enough to say we must not wage war. It is necessary to love peace and sacrifice for it." Martin Luther King, Jr.
"We must concentrate not merely on the negative expulsion of war but the postive affirmation of peace." Martin Luther King, Jr.
"I am a steadfast follower of the doctrine of non-violence which was first preached by Lord Buddha, whose divine wisdom is absolute..." Dalai Lama
"The great armies, accumulated to provide security and preserve the peace, carried the nations to war by their own weight." A.J.P. Taylor
"It is my conviction that killing under the cloak of war is nothing but an act of murder." Albert Einstein
"I went into the Army believing that if you want peace you must prepare for war. I now believe that if you prepare thoroughly for war you will get it." Sir John Frederick Maurice
"NO legislation should be passed, or restriction should be placed upon, ANY individual as long as there is no infringement upon the safety, rights, freedom and liberties of others. When these basic freedoms and liberties are denied to us, we are, and should be considered oppressed." Douglas Doane
"The first casualty of war is truth" Hiram Johnson
"Where annual elections end, there slavery begins" President John Adams
"We are fast approaching the stage of the ultimate inversion: the stage where the government is free to do anything it pleases, while the citizens may act only by permission; which is the stage of the darkest periods of human history, the stage of rule by brute force." Ayn Rand
"Civil liberties MUST remain intact, under threat of terror, and even during a time of war. What else are we fighting for?" Brian J. Karem
More Quotes: Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
