You think you are dying for your country; you die for the industrialists. Jacques Anatole Francois Thibault, 1844-1924, L’Humanite 18th July 1922
A true revolution of values will lay hand on the world order and say of war, ‘This way of settling differences is not just’. 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 the 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. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death. Martin Luther King
Wars are poor chisels for carrying out peaceful tomorrows. Martin Luther King
If an American is concerned only about his nation, he will not be concerned about the peoples of Asia, Africa, or South America. Is this not why nations engage in the madness of war without the slightest sense of penitence? Is this not why the murder of a citizen of your own nation is a crime, but the murder of citizens of another nation in war is an act of heroic virtue? Martin Luther King
War settles nothing ... to win a war is as disastrous as to lose one! Agatha Christie, An Autobiography, 1977
Put your trust in God, my boys, and keep your powder dry. Valentine Blacker, attributions inc Oliver Cromwell
For what can war, but endless war, still breed? John Milton, On the Lord General Fairfax at Siege of Colchester
War has a supernatural object ... But at last we must love it. Josemaria Escriva, The Way, Maxim 311
Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery;
None but ourselves can free our minds.
War – have no fear for atomic energy,
’Cause none of them can stop the time.
How long will they kill our prophets?
While we stand aside and look? Ooh!
Some say it is just a part of it:
We’ve got to fulfil the Book.
Won’t you help to sing
This song of freedom,
Is all I ever have
Redemption songs. Bob Marley, Redemption Songs
We are mad, not only individually, but nationally. We check manslaughter and isolated murders; but what of war and the much vaunted crime of slaughtering whole peoples? Lucius Annaeus Seneca
I have never understood this liking for war. It panders to instincts already catered for within the scope of any respectable domestic establishment. Alan Bennett, Forty Years On act I, 1969
There never was a good war, or a bad peace. Benjamin Franklin
War, he sung, is toil and trouble;
Honour but an empty bubble.
Never ending, still beginning,
Fighting still, and still destroying,
If the world be worth thy winning,
Think, oh think, it worth enjoying. John Dryden, 1631-1700, Alexander’s Feast
War is the trade of kings. John Dryden, King Arthur
All delays are dangerous in war. John Dryden, Tyrannic Love
War is, after all, the universal perversion. John Rae, The Custard Boys 1960
What if someone gave a war and Nobody came?
Life would ring the bells of Ecstasy and Forever be
Itself again. Allen Ginsberg, Graffiti, 1972
Among the calamities of war may be jointly numbered the diminution of the love of truth, by the falsehoods which interest dictates and credulity encourages. Samuel Johnson
War is the most exciting and dramatic thing in life. In fighting to the death you feel terribly relaxed when you manage to come through. Moshe Dayan, Israeli statesman
There never has been a war yet which if the facts had been put calmly before the ordinary folk, could not have been prevented ... The common man I think is the great protection against war. Ernest Bevin, 1881-1951, House of Commons 23rd November 1945
War hath no fury like a non-combatant. C E Montague, Disenchantment 1922
Laws are silent in times of war. Cicero
Cicero, 106-43 B.C.
We started our four Dreadnoughts. They cost eight millions of money. We promised them four more. They cost another eight millions.
Somebody has got to pay; and then these gentlemen say: Perfectly true; somebody has got to pay but we would rather that somebody were somebody else. We started building; we wanted money to pay for the building; so we sent the hat round. We sent it round amongst the workmen and winders of Derbyshire and Yorkshire, the weavers of High Peak and the Scotsmen of Dumfries who, like all their countrymen, know the value of money. They all dropped in their coppers. We went round Belgravia; and there has been such a howl ever since that it has completely deafened us. Lloyd George, address Edinburgh Castle Limehouse London July 1909
No-one who would see what we see would ever ever support a war again. So it’s essential for governments they shouldn’t see these things. Robert Fisk
Soldier and civilian, they died in their tens of thousands because death had been concocted for them, morality hitched like a halter round the warhorse so that we could talk about ‘target-rich environments’ and ‘collateral damage’ – that most infantile of attempts to shake off the crime of killing – and report the victory parades, the tearing down of statues and the importance of peace. Governments like it that way. They want their people to see war as a drama of opposites, good and evil, ‘them’ and ‘us’, victory or defeat. But war is primarily not about victory or defeat but about death and the infliction of death. It represents a total failure of the human spirit. Robert Fisk, The Great War for Civilisation: The Conquest of the Middle East
In historical events great men – so-called – are but labels serving to give a name to the event, and like labels they have the least possible connexion with the event itself. Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
The cudgel of the people’s war was lifted with all its menacing and majestic might, and caring nothing for good taste and procedure, with dull-witted simplicity but sound judgement it rose and fell, making no distinctions. ibid.
The grim fact is that we prepare for war like precocious giants and for peace like retarded pygmies. Lester Pearson, Canadian diplomat
Earl of Uxbridge: By God, sir, I’ve lost my leg.
Duke of Wellington: By God, sir, so you have.
Older men declare war; but it is youth who must fight and die. Herbert Hoover, speech 27th June 1944
When you’re in the battlefield, survival is all these is. Death is the only great emotion. Sam Fuller, cited Guardian 26th February 1991
People don’t start wars, governments do. Ronald Reagan
We make war that we may live in peace. Aristotle
All war represents a failure of diplomacy. Tony Benn
Ben Battle was a soldier bold,
And used to war’s alarms;
But a cannon-ball took off his legs,
So he laid down his arms! Thomas Hood, Faithless Nelly Gray 1826
War-huh
What is it good for?
Absolutely nothing.
Say it again … Frankie Goes to Hollywood, War
Yes; quaint and curious war is!
You shoot a fellow down
You’d treat if met where any bar is,
Or help to half-a-crown. Thomas Hardy, The Man He Killed 1909