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.

Law is always better than war.

Clean fighting solves everything. It ends all bad blood and any ill feelings people have. That’s my thoughts.

War is evil, but it is often the lesser evil.

I simply can’t build my hopes on a foundation of confusion, misery and death… I think… peace and tranquillity will return again.

With those attacks, the terrorists and their supporters declared war on the United States. And war is what they got.

We seek peace, knowing that peace is the climate of freedom.

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.

I do like to have guns around. I don’t like to carry them. But I like – if somebody is going to come into my house and I have not put out the welcome mat, I want to stop them.

The argument that resistance to the war should remain strictly nonviolent seems to me overwhelming.

Anger and intolerance are the enemies of correct understanding.

The greatest destroyer of peace is abortion because if a mother can kill her own child, what is left for me to kill you and you to kill me? There is nothing between.

The problem in defense is how far you can go without destroying from within what you are trying to defend from without.

I think the perception of peace is what distracts most people from really having it.

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

One time, this guy was bothering my mother, and me and my brothers had a stern talking with the guy and a little bit of physicality with him. So he disappeared. But I’m not a magician.

Christmas is joy, religious joy, an inner joy of light and peace.

God is day and night, winter and summer, war and peace, surfeit and hunger.

Peace in the world starts with peace in oneself. If everyone lives mindfully, everyone will be more healthy, feel more fulfilled in their daily lives and there will be more peace.

Smiling is very important. If we are not able to smile, then the world will not have peace. It is not by going out for a demonstration against nuclear missiles that we can bring about peace. It is with our capacity of smiling, breathing, and being peace that we can make peace.

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

A disagreement or incident involving someone who’s not that important to you, like a guy who cut you off in traffic or a rude cashier, is something that should roll off your shoulders. Save the effort for resolving conflicts with the people you cherish.

I have known war as few men now living know it. It’s very destructiveness on both friend and foe has rendered it useless as a means of settling international disputes.

If you want peace, you don’t talk to your friends. You talk to your enemies.

There are many people who feel that it is useless and futile to continue talking about peace and non-violence against a government whose only reply is savage attacks on an unarmed and defenseless people.

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.

I’m all about peace. I’m all about unity. I’m all about love.

Their is no defense against criticism except obscurity.

Only aim to do your duty, and mankind will give you credit where you fail.

Anger is the enemy of non-violence and pride is a monster that swallows it up.

Non-violence requires a double faith, faith in God and also faith in man.

You must not fight too often with one enemy, or you will teach him all your art of war.

Gratitude is a duty which ought to be paid, but which none have a right to expect.

Avoid popularity if you would have peace.

Nothing good ever comes of violence.

In a false quarrel there is no true valor.

Better than a thousand hollow words, is one word that brings peace.

Guilt for being rich, and guilt thinking that perhaps love and peace isn’t enough and you have to go and get shot or something.

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.

We sleep safe in our beds because rough men stand ready in the night to visit violence on those who would do us harm.

America is a Nation with a mission – and that mission comes from our most basic beliefs. We have no desire to dominate, no ambitions of empire. Our aim is a democratic peace – a peace founded upon the dignity and rights of every man and woman.

Unless both sides win, no agreement can be permanent.

Like the old soldier of the ballad, I now close my military career and just fade away, an old soldier who tried to do his duty as God gave him the light to see that duty. Goodbye.

Only the prepared speaker deserves to be confident.

For peace is not mere absence of war, but is a virtue that springs from, a state of mind, a disposition for benevolence, confidence, justice.

India can live without nuclear weapons. That’s our dream, and it should be the dream of the U.S. also.

I can not believe that war is the best solution. No one won the last war, and no one will win the next war.

The peasant must always be helped technically, economically, morally and culturally. The guerrilla fighter will be a sort of guiding angel who has fallen into the zone, helping the poor always and bothering the rich as little as possible in the first phases of the war.

The happiness and peace attained by those satisfied by the nectar of spiritual tranquillity is not attained by greedy persons restlessly moving here and there.

The only way to get the best of an argument is to avoid it.

Wars are poor chisels for carving out peaceful tomorrows.

He is happiest, be he king or peasant, who finds peace in his home.

Who wants to leave the door open to being dominated physically by another human being? Jiu Jitsu gives you the ability to not be dominated by that person, and to me, that’s real peace of mind. I don’t have to worry about that when I’m walking around in the world.

Time was when they that feared the Lord spake often to one another; I am afraid that now they more often speak one against another.

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

Even if a snake is not poisonous, it should pretend to be venomous.

The Marine Corps is the Navy’s police force and as long as I am President that is what it will remain. They have a propaganda machine that is almost equal to Stalin’s.

You either get tired fighting for peace, or you die.

Allow the president to invade a neighboring nation whenever he shall deem it necessary to repel an invasion,and you allow him to do so whenever he may choose to say he deems it necessary for such purpose – and you allow him to make war at pleasure.

Fear is not a lasting teacher of duty.

Man must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love.