Quotes on War

To sing of Wars, of Captains, and of Kings/Of Cities founded, Common-wealths begun/For my mean Pen are too superior things.

We can make war so terrible and make them so sick of war that generations pass away before they again appeal to it.

War is cruelty, and you cannot refine it.

Any excuse will serve a tyrant.

As we speak, Iran has rolled back its nuclear program, shipped out its uranium stockpile, and the world has avoided another war.

We demand a non-violent world where human security is the basis of our common global security. People have the right to live in a world where the basic needs of all peoples are addressed. No more military attacks. No more war.

Men of sense often learn from their enemies. It is from their foes, not their friends, that cities learn the lesson of building high walls and ships of war.

Laws are the terms by which independent and isolated men united to form a society, once they tired of living in a perpetual state of war where the enjoyment of liberty was rendered useless by the uncertainty of its preservation. They sacrificed a portion of this liberty so that they could enjoy the remainder in security and peace.

I never thought that the child who was a famous symbol of war would one day be invited to become a symbol of peace.

[However], the sufferer from depression has no option, and therefore finds himself, like a walking casualty of war, thrust into the most intolerable social and family situations. There he must ... present a face approximating the one associated with ordinary events and companionship. He must try to utter small talk and be responsive to questions, and knowingly nod, and frown and, God help him, even smile.

Frequent punishments are always a sign of weakness or laziness on the part of a government.

Truth and non-violence are not cloistered virtues but applicable as much in the forum and the legislatures as in the market place.

All wars are civil wars because all men are brothers... Each one owes infinitely more to the human race than to the particular country in which he was born.

As we have seen, the wireless and the airplane have made the world so small and nations so dependent on each other that the only alternative to war is the United States of the World.

When I was a young boy, during the aftermath of World War II, Germany was broken and in ruins. Many people were hungry, sick, and dying. I remember well the humanitarian shipments of food and clothing that came from the Church in Salt Lake City.

I don't think anybody who carries a rifle carries the future. Because I don't believe that you can really change the world by killing and shooting. You have the change it by creating and competing.

Wars are just to those to whom they are necessary.

I feel like I gave my son to this country in an illegal and immoral war, and I'll never get him back.

Society can give its young men almost any job and they'll figure how to do it. They'll suffer for it and die for it and watch their friends die for it, but in the end, it will get done. That only means that society should be careful about what it asks for. ... Soldiers themselves are reluctant to evaluate the costs of war, but someone must. That evaluation, ongoing and unadulterated by politics, may be the one thing a country absolutely owes the soldiers who defend its borders.

Any war or conflict you enter where you are likely to lose more Americans and expend more treasure is something worthy of very detailed debate. There ought to be a lot of skepticism. There ought to be a lot of discussion.

Victory attained by violence is tantamount to a defeat for it is momentary.