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.

My own feeling is that one should refuse to participate in any activity that implements American aggression – thus tax refusal, draft refusal, avoidance of work that can be used by the agencies of militarism and repression, all seem to me essential.

War is a poor chisel to carve out tomorrow.

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.

In war as in life, it is often necessary when some cherished scheme has failed, to take up the best alternative open, and if so, it is folly not to work for it with all your might.

As long as poverty, injustice and gross inequality persist in our world, none of us can truly rest.

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.

It’s always going to be a fight for anyone who isn’t an older white man. I want to fight for anyone who doesn’t have a fight.

My protest about the post exchange seating bore some results. More seats were allocated for blacks, but there were still separate sections for blacks and for whites. At least I had made my men realize that something could be accomplished by speaking out, and I hoped they would be less resigned to unjust conditions.

My parents met when they were graduate students at UC Berkeley in the 1960s. They were both active in the civil-rights movement.

America means far more than a continent bounded by two oceans. It is more than pride of military power, glory in war, or in victory. It means more than vast expanse of farms, of great factories or mines, magnificent cities, or millions of automobiles and radios.

The United States never lost a war or won a conference.

All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent.

Peace is not an absence of war, it is a virtue, a state of mind, a disposition for benevolence, confidence, justice.

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.

Politics are very much like war. We may even have to use poison gas at times.

It was times like these when I thought my father, who hated guns and had never been to any wars, was the bravest man who ever lived.

We all hoped in 2001 that we could put in place an Afghan government under President Karzai that would be able to control the country, make sure al-Qaeda didn’t come back, and make sure the Taliban wasn’t resurging. It didn’t work out.

My music fights against the system that teaches to live and die.

Get up, stand up, Stand up for your rights. Get up, stand up, Don’t give up the fight.

Patriots always talk of dying for their country and never of killing for their country.

In order to have your voice be heard in Washington, you have to make some little contribution.

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

I don’t oppose all wars. What I am opposed to is a dumb war. What I am opposed to is a rash war.

For way too long the politicians and people in power have got away with not doing anything at all to fight the climate crisis and ecological crisis.

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.

When the tyrant has disposed of foreign enemies by conquest or treaty, and there is nothing more to fear from them, then he is always stirring up some war or other, in order that the people may require a leader.

Communists have always played an active role in the fight by colonial countries for their freedom, because the short-term objects of Communism would always correspond with the long-term objects of freedom movements.

In 1962, war was avoided by Khrushchev’s willingness to accept Kennedy’s hegemonic demands.

I have seen enough of one war never to wish to see another.

On October 15, 1965, an estimated 70,000 people took part in large-scale anti-war demonstrations.

It’s hard to wrap my head around the fact that there are people who can’t or won’t see what Black Lives Matter is trying to accomplish.

I have been working for Africans since I was 18, when I got involved with the Nelson Mandela concerts. I got involved with debt cancellation because Desmond Tutu demanded that the world respond to that situation.

War against a foreign country only happens when the moneyed classes think they are going to profit from it.

There is no question that liberals do an impressive job of expressing concern for blacks. But do the intentions expressed in their words match the actual consequences of their deeds?

People like to talk about war.

I am sometimes sad when I hear the personal stories of Tibetan refugees who have been tortured or beaten. Some irritation, some anger comes. But it never lasts long. I always try to think at a deeper level, to find ways to console.

When I look back on what I did for the Left, I’m in a small way quite proud of some of it – I only wish I’d done more.

I used to always fight for human rights. I still fight for Leonard Peltier, who’s spent 35 years in jail for a crime he didn’t commit.

The question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be… The nation and the world are in dire need of creative extremists.

Well the protester I think is a very powerful thing. It’s basically a mechanism of democracy that, along with capitalism, scientific innovation, those things have built the modern world. And it’s wonderful that the new tools have empowered that protestor so that state secrets, bad developments are not hidden anymore.

I’ve never written a political song. Songs can’t save the world. I’ve gone through all that.

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

What I’m asking for is hard. It’s easier to be cynical; to accept that change isn’t possible, and politics is hopeless, and to believe that our voices and actions don’t matter. But if we give up now, then we forsake a better future.

An unjust peace is better than a just war.

For 25 years countless people have come to the U.N. climate conferences begging our world leaders to stop emissions and clearly that has not worked as emissions are continuing to rise. So I will not beg the world leaders to care for our future. I will instead let them know change is coming whether they like it or not.

War is the province of danger.

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

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.

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.

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.

The sweltering summer of the Negro’s legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn of freedom and equality.

The only excuse for war is that we may live in peace unharmed.

Peoples do not defy repression and death, nor do they remain for nights on end protesting energetically, just because of merely formal matters.

We have two evils to fight, capitalism and racism. We must destroy both racism and capitalism.

I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its futility, its stupidity.

Some of the most moving experiences I’ve had are just in black churches in the South, during the Civil Rights Movement, where people were getting beaten, killed, really struggling for the most elementary rights.

People tell me that they are so hopeful when they see me and other children ‚school-striking,‘ and they say, ‚Oh the children are going to save us.‘ But no, we aren’t. We are too young to be able to do that. We don’t have time to wait for us to grow up and fix this in the future.

My first wish is to see this plague of mankind, war, banished from the earth.

It is not enough to say we must not wage war. It is necessary to love peace and sacrifice for it.