Antiwar Quotes - Page 5

• All wars are civil wars, because all men are brothers.

  Francois Fenelon

  Brother, War, Hippie

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• War is not an adventure. It is a disease. It is like typhus.

  Antoine de Saint-Exupery

  Travel, War, Adventure

  Antoine de Saint Exupery (1942). “Flight to Arras”

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• What a cruel thing is war: to separate and destroy families and friends, and mar the purest joys and happiness God has granted us in this world; to fill our hearts with hatred instead of love for our neighbors, and to devastate the fair face of this beautiful world.

  Robert E. Lee

  Beautiful, Peace, War

  Robert E. Lee (2016). “The Life and Letters of Robert E. Lee (Abridged)”, p.206, BIG BYTE BOOKS

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• A tyrant... is always stirring up some war or other, in order that the people may require a leader.

  Plato

  War, Order, Tyrants

  Plato (2012). “The Republic and Other Works”, p.260, Anchor

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• My mental faculties remained in suspended animation while I obeyed the orders of the higher-ups. This is typical with everyone in the military service.

  Smedley Butler

  Peace, Military, War

  "War Is A Racket". Smedley Butler's speech in the U.S. (1933); later published as a book "War Is a Racket", www.businessinsider.com. 1935.

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• The life of the nation is secure only while the nation is honest, truthful, and virtuous.

  Frederick Douglass

  Honesty, Integrity, War

  Speech on the twenty-third anniversary of emancipation in the District of Columbia,Washington, D.C., Apr. 1885

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• War is never a solution; it is an aggravation.

  Benjamin Disraeli

  Peace, War, Aggravation

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• 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.

  Smedley Butler

  Peace, War, Loss

  Smedley Butler, Mark Twain, Bertrand Russell (2015). “War is a Racket!: And Other Essential Reading”, p.5, The Forlorn Press

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• War grows out of the desire of the individual to gain advantage at the expense of his fellow man.

  Napoleon Hill

  War, Men, Desire

  Napoleon Hill (2008). “The Law of Success: The Master Wealth-Builder's Complete and Original Lesson Plan forAchieving Your Dreams”, p.581, Penguin

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• Studies by Medical Corps psychiatrists of combat fatigue cases... found that fear of killing, rather than fear of being killed, was the most common cause of battle failure, and that fear of failure ran a strong second.

  Samuel Lyman Atwood Marshall

  Strong, War, Battle

  Samuel Lyman Atwood Marshall (1954). “Men Against Fire: The Problem of Battle Command in Future War”

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• War is the business of barbarians.

  Napoleon Bonaparte

  Peace, War, Barbarians

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• The belief in the possibility of a short decisive war appears to be one of the most ancient and dangerous of human illusions.

  Robert Wilson Lynd

  Peace, Military, War

  "Searchlights and Nightingales". Book by Robert Wilson Lynd, 1939.

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• 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. The statesman who yields to war fever must realize that once the signal is given, he is no longer the master of policy but the slave of unforeseeable and uncontrollable events.

  Winston Churchill

  Peace, Military, War

  Winston Churchill (2010). “My Early Life: 1874-1904”, p.227, Simon and Schuster

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• Over grown military establishments are under any form of government inauspicious to liberty, and are to be regarded as particularly hostile to republican liberty.

  George Washington

  Military, War, 4th Of July

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• The slightest acquaintance with history shows that powerful republics are the most warlike and unscrupulous of nations.

  Ambrose Bierce

  Peace, Powerful, War

  Ambrose Bierce (1912). “The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce ...: Antepenultimata”

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• What is more immoral than war?

  Marquis de Sade

  Peace, War, Immoral

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• All the war-propaganda, all the screaming and lies and hatred, comes invariably from people who are not fighting.

  George Orwell

  Peace, War, Lying

  George Orwell (2016). “Homage to Catalonia / Down and Out in Paris and London”, p.69, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• I dream of giving birth to a child who will ask: "Mother, what was war?"

  Eve Merriam

  Mother, Dream, Veterans Day

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• It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets.

  Voltaire

  Peace, Crazy, War

  "Rights". Book by Voltaire, 1771.

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• 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. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes; and armies, debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few... No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.

  James Madison

  Inspirational, War, Army

  "Political Observations" by James Madison, founders.archives.gov. April 20, 1795.

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• All war represents a failure of diplomacy.

  Tony Benn

  War, Failure, Diplomats

  Tony Benn's Speech in House of Commons, hansard.millbanksystems.com. February 28, 1991.

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• You can't say civilization don't advance... in every war they kill you in a new way.

  Will Rogers

  Death, War, Civilization

  Quoted in N.Y. Times, 23 Dec. 1929

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• Kings had always been involving and impoverishing their people in wars, pretending generally, if not always, that the good of the people was the object

  Abraham Lincoln

  Peace, Kings, War

  Abraham Lincoln (2011). “Lincoln on War”, p.36, Algonquin Books

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• Any man who has once acclaimed violence as his method must inexorably choose falsehood as his principle.

  Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

  Peace, War, Lying

  Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's Nobel Lecture, www.nobelprize.org. 1970.

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• An empire founded by war has to maintain itself by war.

  Baron de Montesquieu

  Peace, War, Empires

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