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.

We will never have true civilization until we have learned to recognize the rights of others.

A siege is an act of war.

War does not determine who is right – only who is left.

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.

War has always been the grand sagacity of every spirit which has grown too inward and too profound; its curative power lies even in the wounds one receives.

Love does not begin and end the way we seem to think it does. Love is a battle, love is a war; love is a growing up.

War is a game that is played with a smile. If you can’t smile, grin. If you can’t grin, keep out of the way till you can.

I know war as few other men now living know it, and nothing to me is more revolting. I have long advocated its complete abolition, as its very destructiveness on both friend and foe has rendered it useless as a method of settling international disputes.

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.

Diplomats are just as essential to starting a war as soldiers are for finishing it… You take diplomacy out of war, and the thing would fall flat in a week.

What is absurd and monstrous about war is that men who have no personal quarrel should be trained to murder one another in cold blood.

If you destroyed half the pharmaceutical production in the United States, we’d think it’s a pretty serious problem. In fact, we’d probably go to war.

Many intelligence reports in war are contradictory; even more are false, and most are uncertain.

All empires come to an end, and the American one is no exception.

This is an important book, the critic assumes, because it deals with war. This is an insignificant book because it deals with the feelings of women in a drawing-room.

Washington still refuses to provide evidence to support the claims in 1990 that a huge Iraqi military build-up on the Saudi border justified war.

No people is wholly civilized where a distinction is drawn between stealing an office and stealing a purse.

We’ve gotta become the Martians. I’m a Martian – I tell you to become Martians. And we’ve gotta go to Mars and civilize Mars and build a whole civilization on Mars and then move out, 300 years from now into the universe. And when we do that, we have a chance of living forever.

You will kill 10 of our men, and we will kill 1 of yours, and in the end it will be you who tire of it.

There’s no doubt that usually a president’s public image is enhanced by going to war. That never did appeal to me.

War is the greatest plague that can afflict humanity, it destroys religion, it destroys states, it destroys families. Any scourge is preferable to it.

Nothing can be more abhorrent to democracy than to imprison a person or keep him in prison because he is unpopular. This is really the test of civilization.

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.

In the twenty-first century, the robot will take the place which slave labor occupied in ancient civilization.

Iraq is no diversion. It is a place where civilization is taking a decisive stand against chaos and terror, we must not waver.

If you go on with this nuclear arms race, all you are going to do is make the rubble bounce.

War is a way of shattering to pieces… materials which might otherwise be used to make the masses too comfortable and… too intelligent.

Serious sport has nothing to do with fair play. It is bound up with hatred, jealousy, boastfulness, disregard of all rules and sadistic pleasure in witnessing violence. In other words, it is war minus the shooting.

The quickest way of ending a war is to lose it.

The sinews of war are infinite money.

America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between.

Oceania was at war with Eurasia; therefore Oceania had always been at war with Eurasia.

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.

The civilized man has built a coach, but has lost the use of his feet.

In my dreams I hear again the crash of guns, the rattle of musketry, the strange, mournful mutter of the battlefield.

The best security for civilization is the dwelling, and upon properly appointed and becoming dwellings depends, more than anything else, the improvement of mankind.

When we are sick, we want an uncommon doctor; when we have a construction job to do, we want an uncommon engineer, and when we are at war, we want an uncommon general. It is only when we get into politics that we are satisfied with the common man.

If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.

War is a quarrel between two thieves too cowardly to fight their own battle.

It is our duty still to endeavor to avoid war; but if it shall actually take place, no matter by whom brought on, we must defend ourselves. If our house be on fire, without inquiring whether it was fired from within or without, we must try to extinguish it.

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

The end of the human race will be that it will eventually die of civilization.

I am never going to have anything more to do with politics or politicians. When this war is over I shall confine myself entirely to writing and painting.

War settles nothing.

The essential act of war is destruction, not necessarily of human lives, but of the products of human labor.

The diversity of India, of our civilization, is actually a thing of beauty, which is something we are extremely proud of.

The United States is not, and never will be, at war with Islam.

War contains so much folly, as well as wickedness, that much is to be hoped from the progress of reason.

There is hardly such a thing as a war in which it makes no difference who wins. Nearly always one side stands more or less for progress, the other side more or less for reaction.

The atomic bomb made the prospect of future war unendurable. It has led us up those last few steps to the mountain pass; and beyond there is a different country.

Of all the enemies of public liberty, war is perhaps the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other.

War is a poor chisel to carve out tomorrow.

War had always seemed to me to be a purely human behavior. Accounts of warlike behavior date back to the very first written records of human history; it seemed to be an almost universal characteristic of human groups.

We used to wonder where war lived, what it was that made it so vile. And now we realize that we know where it lives… inside ourselves.

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

In wartime, truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies.

Increased means and increased leisure are the two civilizers of man.

Patriotism is the willingness to kill and be killed for trivial reasons.

It is an unfortunate fact that we can secure peace only by preparing for war.

But does that mean that war and violence are inevitable? I would argue not because we have also evolved this amazingly sophisticated intellect, and we are capable of controlling our innate behavior a lot of the time.