War quotes
17K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
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Browse quotes that often appear alongside war — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
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"It's just the stupidest law possible... You're just making criminals out of people who aren't engaged in criminal activity. And we're spending zillions of dollars trying to fight a war we can't win! We could make zillions, just legalize it and tax it like we do liquor. It's stupid."
"Unless a nation's life faces peril, war is murder."
"During war, the laws are silent."
"When will mankind be convinced and agree to settle their difficulties by arbitration?"
"War is always a struggle in which each contender tries to annihilate the other. Besides using force, they will have recourse to all possible tricks and stratagems to achieve the goal."
"Beware the leader who bangs the drums of war in order to whip the citizenry into a patriotic fervor."
"I've got a war in my mind"
"India had barely become independent, in 1947, when Pakistan invaded Kashmir, which at the time was ruled by a maharajah. The maharajah fled, and the people of Kashmir, led by Sheikh Abdullah, asked for Indian help. Lord [Louis] Mountbatten, who was still governor general, replied that he wouldn't be able to supply aid to Kashmir unless Pakistan declared war, and he didn't seem bothered by the fact that the Pakistanis were slaughtering the population."
"The war on drugs was an ideology the government came up with, and there never really was a war on drugs. I mean, to stop the importation of drugs into the United States of America is an impossibility."
"A fleet of British ships at war are the best negotiators."
"The poor go to war, to fight and die for the delights, riches, and superfluities of others."
"To know your Enemy, you must become your Enemy."
"The whole secret of existence is to have no fear."
"He who wishes to be obeyed must know how to command."
"There is simply no comparison between a man who is armed and one who is not. It is simply unreasonable to expect that an armed man should obey one who is unarmed, or that an unarmed man should remain safe and secure when his servants are armed."
"More than an end to war, we want an end to the beginning of all wars - yes, an end to this brutal, inhuman and thoroughly impractical method of settling the differences between governments."
"I am not only a pacifist but a militant pacifist. I am willing to fight for peace. Nothing will end war unless the people themselves refuse to go to war."
"All war propaganda consists, in the last resort, in substituting diabolical abstractions for human beings. Similarly, those who defend war have invented a pleasant sounding vocabulary of abstractions in which to describe the process of mass murder."
"When I pray for peace, I pray not only that the enemies of my own country may cease to want war, but above all that my country will cease to do the things that make war inevitable."
"All wars are won or lost before they are ever fought."
