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.

As I’ve said, there were patriots who supported this war, and patriots who opposed it. And all of us are united in appreciation for our servicemen and women, and our hopes for Iraqis‘ future.

War is mainly a catalogue of blunders.

We are eager to tunnel under the Atlantic and bring the Old World some weeks nearer to the New, but perchance the first news that will leak through into the broad, flapping American ear will be that the Princess Adelaide has the whooping cough.

I have a scheme for stopping war. It’s this – no nation is allowed to enter a war till they have paid for the last one.

History teaches that war begins when governments believe the price of aggression is cheap.

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.‘

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.

As long as war is regarded as wicked, it will always have its fascination. When it is looked upon as vulgar, it will cease to be popular.

War is never a solution; it is an aggravation.

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

I think war is so incredibly backward, and I don’t think it’s intelligent, and it’s not sane. So why would you want to support it?

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

Law is always better than war.

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

Countries which receive aid do graduate. Within a generation, Korea went from being a big recipient to being a big aid donor. China used to get quite a bit of aid; now it’s aid-neutral.

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

My fellow Americans, I am pleased to tell you I just signed legislation which outlaws Russia forever. The bombing begins in five minutes.

You can think of the entire Internet as a place where ideas embodied in cyberspace are having a war, and it’s not much different than the war of gods in heaven, which has been taking place since there’s been human beings.

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

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

War is the domain of physical exertion and suffering.

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

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

We cannot be both the world’s leading champion of peace and the world’s leading supplier of the weapons of war.

There is no glory in battle worth the blood it costs.

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

Marriage is an adventure, like going to war.

The first panacea for a mismanaged nation is inflation of the currency; the second is war. Both bring a temporary prosperity; both bring a permanent ruin. But both are the refuge of political and economic opportunists.

I think really, China, Chinese, I think they really have a long history of civilization, rich culture.

I can tell you this: If I’m ever in a position to call the shots, I’m not going to rush to send somebody else’s kids into a war.

The most shocking fact about war is that its victims and its instruments are individual human beings, and that these individual beings are condemned by the monstrous conventions of politics to murder or be murdered in quarrels not their own.

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

When people speak to you about a preventive war, you tell them to go and fight it. After my experience, I have come to hate war.

Nowhere is it written that there must be conflict between the United States and China.

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

Germany has reduced savagery to a science, and this great war for the victorious peace of justice must go on until the German cancer is cut clean out of the world body.

The United States is afraid of China; it is not a military threat to anyone and is the least aggressive of all the major military powers.

Human beings will be happier – not when they cure cancer or get to Mars or eliminate racial prejudice or flush Lake Erie but when they find ways to inhabit primitive communities again. That’s my utopia.

The Chinese government wants me to say that for many centuries Tibet has been part of China. Even if I make that statement, many people would just laugh. And my statement will not change past history. History is history.

War is a contagion.

In war, events of importance are the result of trivial causes.

When the rich wage war, it’s the poor who die.

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

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?‘

You say it is the good cause that hallows even war? I say unto you: it is the good war that hallows any cause.

Literature is my Utopia. Here I am not disenfranchised. No barrier of the senses shuts me out from the sweet, gracious discourses of my book friends. They talk to me without embarrassment or awkwardness.

On the way back from Mumbai to go meet with President Xi in China, I stopped in Singapore to meet with a guy named Lee Kuan Yew, who most foreign policy experts around the world say is the wisest man in the Orient.

In war there is no prize for runner-up.

When America stopped importing from China, China stopped importing from the rest of the world. This affects Asian countries as well as Australia, Brazil, and other suppliers of raw materials.

The lessons of history would suggest that civilisations move in cycles. You can track that back quite far – the Babylonians, the Sumerians, followed by the Egyptians, the Romans, China. We’re obviously in a very upward cycle right now, and hopefully that remains the case. But it may not.

The United States supports a strong, united Ukraine with productive and peaceful relationships with both the East and the West, with both Russia and Europe.

War should be the only study of a prince. He should consider peace only as a breathing-time, which gives him leisure to contrive, and furnishes as ability to execute, military plans.

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

No war is over until the enemy says it’s over.

War is the business of barbarians.

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

The U.S. military is not war weary. Our military draws strength from confronting our enemies when clear policy objectives are set and we are fully resourced for the fight.

Unconditional war can no longer lead to unconditional victory. It can no longer serve to settle disputes… can no longer be of concern to great powers alone.

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.

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.