Quotes about War and Peace

[thomist]

"We often think of peace as the absence of war; that if the powerful countries would reduce their arsenals, we could have peace. But if we look deeply into the weapons, we see our own minds - our prejudices, fears, and ignorance. Even if we transported all the bombs to the moon, the roots of war and the reasons for bombs would still be here, in our hearts and minds, and sooner or later we would make new bombs.

Seek to become more aware of what causes anger and separation, and what overcomes them. Root out the violence in your life, and learn to live compassionately and mindfully. Seek peace. When you have peace within, real peace with others will be possible." - Thich Nhat Hanh

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"We are a peace-loving nation." Oh really?
Countries that the United States has bombed since the end of World War II: China, 1945-1946; Korea, 1950-1953; China, 1950-1953; Guatemala, 1954; Indonesia, 1958; Cuba, 1959-1960; Guatemala, 1960; Congo, 1964; Peru, 1965; Laos, 1964-1973; Vietnam, 1961-1973; Cambodia, 1967-1970; Guatemala, 1967-1969; Grenada, 1983; Libya, 1986; El Salvador, 1980s; Nicaragua, 1980s; Panama, 1989; Iraq 1991-2000, and 2002-present; Sudan, 1998; Afghanistan, 1998, and 2001-present; Yugoslavia, 1999.

Killing by the Numbers:
20% Maximum rate of U.S. soldiers who shot to kill while under fire during World War II
55% Firing rate in the Korean War, due to "improved" psychological conditioning by the military
95% Firing rate in the Vietnam War
16% Rate of U.S. veterans from the Iraq war who suffer from depression or post-traumatic stress disorder
Source: Christian Science Monitor

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Other Ways We Kill "We kill at every step, not only in wars, riots, and executions. We kill when we close our eyes to poverty, suffering, and shame. In the same way all disrespect for life, all hard-heartedness, all indifference, all contempt is nothing else than killing. With just a little witty skepticism we can kill a good deal of the future in a young person. Life is waiting everywhere, the future is flowering everywhere, but we only see a small part of it and step on much of it with our feet." - Hermann Hesse, German poet and novelist

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No one in the world can change truth. What we can and should do is seek truth and serve it when we have found it. The real conflict is within. Beyond the armies of occupation and the hectacombs of the extermination camps, two irreconcilable armies lie in the depth of every soul. And of what use are the victories of the battlefield if we are defeated in our innermost selves? - Father Maximillian Kolbe (Polish priest, murdered at Auschwitz in 1941)

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[francis]

Notable Quotes

Theodore Roosevelt
"Let us speak courteously, deal fairly, and keep ourselves armed and ready."

H.L. Mencken
"The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule."

Samuel Adams
"If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom ... go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels nor arms. May your chains set lightly upon you and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen."

Frederic Bastiat
"Everyone wants to live at the expense of the state. They forget that the state wants to live at the expense of everyone"

Thomas Paine
"The balance of power is the scale of peace. The same balance would be preserved were all the world not destitute of arms, for all would be alike; but since some will not, others dare not lay them aside. Horrible mischief would ensue were one half the world deprived of the use of them… the weak will become a prey to the strong."

James Madison
"Americans [have] the right and advantage of being armed - unlike citizens of other countries whose governments are afraid to trust the people with arms."

Patrick Henry
"Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect every one who approaches that jewel. Unfortunately, nothing will preserve it but downright force. Whenever you give up that force, you are ruined."

Benjamin Franklin
"They that can give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety."

Winston Churchill
"An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last."

Mahatma Ghandi, 1927
"Among the many misdeeds of the British rule in India, history will look upon the Act depriving a whole nation of arms as the blackest."

Thomas Jefferson
"It behooves every man who values liberty of conscience for himself, to resist invasions of it in the case of others: or their case may, by change of circumstances, become his own."

H.L. Mencken
“The men the American people admire most extravagantly are the most daring liars; the men they detest most violently are those who try to tell them the truth.”

George Orwell
"In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act!"

Japanese Admiral Yamamoto, 1941
"You cannot invade the mainland United States. There would be a rifle behind each blade of grass."

C.S. Lewis
"It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satisfied; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience."

Sen. Hubert H. Humphrey
"The right of citizens to bear arms is just one guarantee against arbitrary government, one more safeguard against the tyranny which now appears remote in America, but which historically has proven to be always possible."

Sigmund Freud
"A fear of weapons is a sign of retarded sexual and emotional maturity."

Heinrich Himmler
"Germans who wish to use firearms should join the SS or the SA -- ordinary citizens don't need guns, as their having guns doesn't serve the state."

Thomas Jefferson
"The beauty of the second amendment is that it will not be needed until they try to take it."

Walter Mondale
"Gun bans don't disarm criminals, gun bans attract them."

George Mason, Virginia's U.S. Constitution ratification convention, 1788
"[W]hen the resolution of enslaving America was formed in Great Britain, the British Parliament was advised by an artful man, who was Governor of Pennsylvania, to disarm the people; that it was the best and most effectual way to enslave them; but that they should not do it openly, but weaken them, and let them sink gradually.". . . I ask, who are the militia? They consist now of the whole people, except a few public officers."

Julia Ward Howe, lyricist to Battle Hymn of the Republic
"As He died to make men holy, let us live to make men free."

Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged
"The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws."

Thomas Jefferson
"No free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms."

George Washington, speech to Congress on Jan. 7, 1790 (in Boston Independent Chronicle)
"A free people ought... to be armed..."

Samuel Adams
"..it does not require a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority keen to set brush fires in people's minds..."

Edmund Burke
"The true danger is when liberty is nibbled away, for expedience, and by parts."

Col. Jeff Cooper, Firearms Pioneer
"The rifle itself has no moral stature, since it has no will of its own. Naturally, it may be used by evil men for evil purposes, but there are more good men than evil, and while the latter cannot be persuaded to the path of righteousness by propaganda, they can certainly be corrected by good men with rifles."

William Pitt, speech to the House of Commons
"Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves."

John Locke
"I have no reason to suppose that he, who would take away my Liberty, would not when he had me in his Power, take away everything else."

Winston Churchill
"A man who gets the reputation of rising at dawn can sleep to noon."

John F. Kennedy
"Today, we need a nation of Minutemen, citizens who are not only prepared to take arms, but citizens who regard the preservation of freedom as the basic purpose of their daily life and who are
willing to consciously work and sacrifice for that freedom."

Theodore Roosevelt
"The things that will destroy America are prosperity-at-any price, peace-at-any-price, safety-first instead of duty first, the love of soft living and the get-rich-quick theory of life."

Unknown soldier (but too good to pass up)
"For those who have fought for it, freedom has a special flavor the protected will never know."

Frederick Douglass, abolitionist
"Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have the exact measure of the injustice and wrong which will be imposed on them."

George Orwell
"That rifle hanging on the wall of the working-class flat or labourer's cottage is the symbol of democracy. It is our job to see that it stays there."

Machiavelli
"The unarmed man is not just defenseless - he is also contemptible."

Col. Jeff Cooper, Firearms Pioneer
"Personal weapons are what raised mankind out of the mud, and the rifle is the queen of personal weapons."