Pacifist Quotes - Page 3

• Gert: Wake me when the fight scene's over. Kitty Pryde: Oy, tell me about it. Hey, I'm Kitty. You the token pacifist of your group? Gert: Not exactly. Pacifists are like vegans, I'm more of a vegetarian. I enjoy fish and occasional maulings.

  Brian K. Vaughan

  Fighting, Groups, Hey

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• We were a savage little lot, Liverpool kids, not pacifist or vegetarian or anything. But I feel I've gone beyond that, and that it was immature to be so prejudiced and believe in all the stereotypes.

  Paul McCartney

  Believe, Kids, Immature

  Interview with Barbara Ellen, www.theguardian.com. July 17, 2010.

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• I always have a high regard for the individual and have an insuperable distaste for violence and clubmanship. All these motives made me into a passionate pacifist and anti-militarist. I am against any nationalism, even in the guise of mere patriotism. Privileges based on position and property have always seemed to me unjust and pernicious, as did any exaggerated personality cult.

  Albert Einstein

  Personality, Passionate, Unjust

  "My Credo" by Albert Einstein, 1932.

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• If you take guns away from legal gun owners then the only people who would have guns would be the bad guys. Even a pacifist would get violent if someone were trying to kill him or her. You would fight for your life, whatever your beliefs. You'd use a rock or tear one of these chairs out of the floor. Hey, maybe I've been watching too many Bruce Willis movies!

  Bruce Willis

  Fighting, Gun, Rocks

  "Willis Speaks Out For Guns", www.contactmusic.com. April 30, 2006.

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• They just want to continue playing their little game of power. And I feel that us people have the responsibility and also the obligation to demand to our leaders to give us the pacifist solutions. To give us a world in peace.

  Shakira

  Responsibility, Games, People

  "Shakira Calls For Peace, Explains Mongoose Mystery" by Corey Moss, www.mtv.com. February 4, 2003.

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• Talk of world peace is heard today only among the white peoples, and not among the much more numerous coloured races. This is a perilous state of affairs. When individual thinkers and idealists talk of peace, as they have done since time immemorial, the effect is negligible. But when whole peoples become pacifistic it is a symptom of senility. Strong and unspent races are not pacifistic. To adopt such a position is to abandon the future, for the pacifist ideal is a terminal condition that is contrary to the basic facts of existence. As long as man continues to evolve, there will be wars.

  Oswald Spengler

  Strong, War, Men

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• Indeed; peace literature is almost exclusively read, though to good effect, by pacifists, while what is needed is the canvassing of those who have not so far been won to the cause.

  Fredrik Bajer

  Literature, Causes, Needed

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• When are we left-wingers going to learn that we are losing the cultural and political battle with conservatives because we are fractured into narcissistic special-interest groups? Why should an antiwar protestor be so concerned about her dietary identity? The political opinions of vegetarians and meat-eaters are, after all, equally important. And what does it tell us about vegetarians that it would never occur to meat-eaters to carry a sign that reads "Pacifist Pork Chop Lover for Peace" or "Backyard Rib Barbecuer for International Nuclear Disarmament"?

  Sherman Alexie

  Political Opinions, Nuclear Disarmament, Unity

  "Lefties Need to Love, Love, Love the White Working Class". Article by Sherman Alexie, www.thestranger.com. April 17, 2003.

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• In the wars against Revolutionary and Napoleonic France, as in so many later conflicts, British women seem to have been no more markedly pacifist than men. Instead, and exactly like so many of their male countrymen, some women found ways of combining support for the national interest with a measure of self-promotion. By assisting the war effort, women demonstrated that their concerns were by no means confined to the domestic sphere. Under cover of a patriotism that was often genuine and profound, they carved out for themselves a real if precarious place in the public sphere.

  Linda Colley

  Real, War, Mean

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• The Anarchists' uncompromising rejection of the State, the subject of Marxian sneers for its "absolutist" and "Utopian" character, makes much better sense in the present era than the Marxist relativist and historical approach. The pacifists also seem to be more realistic than the Marxist both in their understanding of modern war and also in their attempts to do something about it.

  Dwight Macdonald

  War, Character, Rejection

  Dwight Macdonald (194?). “Root is man: progressivism vrs. radicalism”

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• In so far as it takes effect at all, pacifist propaganda can only be effective against those countries where a certain amount of freedom of speech is still permitted; in other words it is helpful to totalitarianism.

  George Orwell

  Country, Freedom Of Speech, Helpful

  George Orwell (1998). “The complete works of George Orwell”

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• I want to put any number of assorted 'ists' - such as relativists, deconstructionists, destructivists, postmodernists, the more maudlin kind of pacifists and feminists - firmly in their place.

  Martin Van Creveld

  Numbers, Feminist, Want

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• Jesus himself, and most of the message of the Gospels, is a message of service to the poor, a critique of the rich and the powerful, and a pacifist doctrine. And it remained that way, that's what Christianity was up... until Constantine. :Constantine shifted it so the cross, which was the symbol of persecution of somebody working for the poor, was put on the shield of the Roman Empire. It became the symbol for violence and oppression, and that's pretty much what the church has been until the present.

  Noam Chomsky

  Jesus, Powerful, Church

  "Science in the Dock". Science & Theology News Interview, chomsky.info. March 1, 2006.

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• When people want to inspire you to turn against some group of people, they'll often use empathy. When Obama wanted to bomb Syria, he drew our attention to the victims of chemical warfare. And in both of the Iraq wars, politicians said, "Look at the horrific things that are happening." I'm not a pacifist. I think the suffering of innocent people can be a catalyst for moral action. But empathy puts too much weight on the scale in favor of war. Empathy can really lead to violence.

  Paul Bloom

  War, Thinking, People

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• Pacifists become militants. Freedom fighters become tyrants. Blessings become curses. Help becomes hindrance. More becomes less.

  Tim Ferriss

  Blessing, Tyrants, Helping

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• Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King are great examples of fantastic nonviolents who died violently. I can never work that out. We're pacifists, but I'm not sure what it means when you're such a pacifist that you get shot. I can never understand that.

  John Lennon

  Love, Peace, Kings

  John Lennon, Yōko Ono, David Sheff, G. Barry Golson (1981). “The Playboy interviews with John Lennon and Yōko Ono”, Putnam Pub Group

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• We pacifists have not ceased to point to the grave danger of armaments and to insist on their curtailment.

  Ludwig Quidde

  Danger, Graves, Armament

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• The main problem with pacifism is that it doesn’t work in all situations. The main problem with pacifists is that they’re convinced it does.

  Burt Prelutsky

  Doe, Problem, Pacifism

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• I'm not a pacifist at all; I think there is a notion of "just war" that can be persuasively argued. I think in the face of Nazis, in the face of apartheid, that I would have joined those armies. But that's the last, last resort.

  Cornel West

  War, Army, Thinking

  Source: genius.com

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• I'm not a pacifist. I'm not that brave.

  Phil Donahue

  Peace, Brave

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• He who cherishes the value of cultures cannot fail to be a pacifist.

  Albert Einstein

  Peace, Culture, Failing

  Albert Einstein (2010). “The Ultimate Quotable Einstein”, p.245, Princeton University Press

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• While I am a convinced pacifist there are circumstances in which I believe the use of force is appropriate - namely, in the face of an enemy unconditionally bent on destroying me and my people.

  Albert Einstein

  Believe, Destroying Me, People

  Albert Einstein (2010). “The Ultimate Quotable Einstein”, p.259, Princeton University Press

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• Bye-bye, Elan. P.S., Next time you implicate someone falsely, try to pick a pacifist.

  J.R. Ward

  Bye, Trying, Next

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• India was not a pacifist country at all. India placed great emphasis on the higher value on... on violence. But it was never a substitute for not doing anything, or for cowardice.

  Subramanian Swamy

  Country, India, Violence

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• If I rule out violent anarchism, there remains pacifist, anti-nationalist, anti-capitalist, moral, and anti-democratic anarchism (i.e., that which is hostile to the falsified democracy of bourgeois states). There remains the anarchism which acts by means of persuasion, by the creation of small groups and networks, denouncing falsehood and oppression, aiming at a true overturning of authorities of all kinds as people at the bottom speak and organize themselves.

  Jacques Ellul

  Mean, People, Democracy

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