It is my conviction that killing under the cloak of war is nothing but an act of murder.

My father belongs to the generation that fought the war in the 1940s. When I was a kid my father told me stories – not so many, but it meant a lot to me. I wanted to know what happened then, to my father’s generation. It’s a kind of inheritance, the memory of it.

War is regarded as nothing but the continuation of state policy with other means.

No body can be healthful without exercise, neither natural body nor politic, and certainly, to a kingdom or estate, a just and honourable war is the true exercise.

No iron chain, or outward force of any kind, can ever compel the soul of a person to believe or to disbelieve.

The only defensible war is a war of defense.

War is mainly a catalogue of blunders.

For a war to be just three conditions are necessary – public authority, just cause, right motive.

We have always said that in our war with the Arabs we had a secret weapon – no alternative.

Have we not come to such an impasse in the modern world that we must love our enemies – or else? The chain reaction of evil – hate begetting hate, wars producing more wars – must be broken, or else we shall be plunged into the dark abyss of annihilation.

People do not make wars; governments do.

The most successful war seldom pays for its losses.

I venture to say no war can be long carried on against the will of the people.

To be prepared for war is one of the most effective means of preserving peace.

I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.

I was so upset with what was going on in the world. I just couldn’t stand the idea of being people tortured and that we even had such a thing as war. I hated the older generation, who had not done anything about it. Punk was a call-to-arms for me.

I don’t think we handled the aftermath of the fall of Baghdad as well as we might have. But that’s now history.

War is so complex; human nature is so complex. There’s no filmmaker who has ever figured it out perfectly.

When I first went to places where people were suffering from war and persecution, I felt ashamed of my feelings of sadness. I could see more possibilities in my life.

One of the problems of organizing in the North, in the rich countries, is that people tend to think – even the activists – that instant gratification is required. You constantly hear: ‚Look I went to a demonstration, and we didn’t stop the war so what’s the use of doing it again?‘

The Washington leadership has put aside non-proliferation programmes and devoted its energies and resources to driving the country to war by extraordinary deceit, then trying to manage the catastrophe it created in Iraq.

Follow your honest convictions and be strong.

The object of war is not to die for your country but to make the other bastard die for his.

As this long and difficult war ends, I would like to address a few special words to the American people: Your steadfastness in supporting our insistence on peace with honor has made peace with honor possible.

Russia isn’t going to start a war. They can’t afford it. I think Mr. Putin can be dealt with if we stop screaming at him. You can work with the guy. You just have to know who he is.

We have practiced diplomacy since the very beginning of the nation. Sometimes it has not worked, and we’ve had to go to war. I always believe you should try to find peace and reconciliation before conflict. That has been the approach I’ve taken.

We have always held to the hope, the belief, the conviction that there is a better life, a better world, beyond the horizon.

It is the cause, not the death, that makes the martyr.

I understand how every healthy child, every new road, puts a country on a better path, but instability and war will arise from time to time, and I’m not an expert on how you get out of those things.

Reactionaries often describe both Marx and Lenin as theorists, without taking into consideration that their utopias inspired Russia and China – the two countries called upon to lead a new world which will allow for human survival if imperialism does not first unleash a criminal, exterminating war.

We make war that we may live in peace.

Older men declare war. But it is the youth that must fight and die.

The dropping of bombs on people – isn’t that terrorism?

What convinces is conviction. Believe in the argument you’re advancing. If you don’t you’re as good as dead. The other person will sense that something isn’t there, and no chain of reasoning, no matter how logical or elegant or brilliant, will win your case for you.

It is not only the living who are killed in war.

‚Bombing Afghanistan back into the Stone Age‘ was quite a favourite headline for some wobbly liberals. The slogan does all the work. But an instant’s thought shows that Afghanistan is being, if anything, bombed out of the Stone Age.

If atomic bombs are to be added as new weapons to the arsenals of a warring world, or to the arsenals of nations preparing for war, then the time will come when mankind will curse the names of Los Alamos and of Hiroshima.

I do not believe that civilization will be wiped out in a war fought with the atomic bomb. Perhaps two-thirds of the people of the earth will be killed.

Conviction is worthless unless it is converted into conduct.

The constitution vests the power of declaring war in Congress; therefore no offensive expedition of importance can be undertaken until after they shall have deliberated upon the subject and authorized such a measure.

A number of analysts have observed that although bin Laden was finally killed, he won some major successes in his war against the U.S.

Those who can win a war well can rarely make a good peace and those who could make a good peace would never have won the war.

Strike against war, for without you no battles can be fought!

Let us recollect that peace or war will not always be left to our option; that however moderate or unambitious we may be, we cannot count upon the moderation, or hope to extinguish the ambition of others.

The basic fact about human existence is not that it is a tragedy, but that it is a bore. It is not so much a war as an endless standing in line.

Fortune, which has a great deal of power in other matters but especially in war, can bring about great changes in a situation through very slight forces.

In war there is no substitute for victory.

The earth is bountiful, and where her bounty fails, nitrogen drawn from the air will refertilize her womb. I developed a process for this purpose in 1900. It was perfected fourteen years later under the stress of war by German chemists.

War may sometimes be a necessary evil. But no matter how necessary, it is always an evil, never a good. We will not learn how to live together in peace by killing each other’s children.

In remembering the appalling suffering of war on both sides, we recognise how precious is the peace we have built in Europe since 1945.

War contributes greatly to global warming, which shouldn’t surprise us. All those bombs going off, all those rockets, all those planes and helicopters. All that fuel of various kinds being used. It pollutes the air and water of this very fragile and interconnected planet.

In time of war the laws are silent.

I saw what happened when a dictator was allowed to take over a piece of a country and the country went down the tubes. And I saw the opposite during the war when America joined the fight.

Anyone who thinks must think of the next war as they would of suicide.

We must concentrate not merely on the negative expulsion of war but the postive affirmation of peace.

Experience has shown how deeply the seeds of war are planted by economic rivalry and social injustice.

A war is a horrible thing, but it’s also a unifier of countries.

War will never cease until babies begin to come into the world with larger cerebrums and smaller adrenal glands.

Even philosophers will praise war as ennobling mankind, forgetting the Greek who said: ‚War is bad in that it begets more evil than it kills.‘

Each nation feels superior to other nations. That breeds patriotism – and wars.

Throughout my career, I learned plenty about war on the battlefield, but I learned even more about the importance of finding peace. And that is what the State Department and U.S.A.I.D. do: prevent the wars that we can avoid so that we fight only the ones we must.