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

I had a lovers quarrel with the world.

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.

If there is not the war, you don’t get the great general; if there is not a great occasion, you don’t get a great statesman; if Lincoln had lived in a time of peace, no one would have known his name.

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

I am not only a pacifist but a militant pacifist. I am willing to fight for peace. Nothing will end war unless the people themselves refuse to go to war.

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

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.

Could I have but a line a century hence crediting a contribution to the advance of peace, I would yield every honor which has been accorded by war.

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

War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.

Thieves respect property. They merely wish the property to become their property that they may more perfectly respect it.

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.

Mankind must put an end to war before war puts an end to mankind.

In war, you can only be killed once, but in politics, many times.

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.

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.

I think a lot of people, including me, clammed up when a civilian asked about battle, about war. It was fashionable. One of the most impressive ways to tell your war story is to refuse to tell it, you know. Civilians would then have to imagine all kinds of deeds of derring-do.

The TV business is uglier than most things. It is normally perceived as some kind of cruel and shallow money trench through the heart of the journalism industry, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free and good men die like dogs, for no good reason.

The invasion of Iraq, particularly, gave a big shot in the arm to the jihadi extremists.

Probably the battle of Waterloo was won on the playing-fields of Eton, but the opening battles of all subsequent wars have been lost there.

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

When you are winning a war almost everything that happens can be claimed to be right and wise.

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.

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.

War is not an independent phenomenon, but the continuation of politics by different means.

In war the heroes always outnumber the soldiers ten to one.

Politics is the womb in which war develops.

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.

We lived in a tall, narrow Victorian house, which my parents had bought very cheaply during the war, when everyone thought London was going to be bombed flat. In fact, a V-2 rocket landed a few houses away from ours. I was away with my mother and sister at the time, but my father was in the house.

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 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.

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.

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

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

Treating your adversary with respect is striking soft in battle.

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.

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

Marriage is an adventure, like going to war.

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.

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

The only defensible war is a war of defense.

The test of a man or woman’s breeding is how they behave in a quarrel.

The time to take counsel of your fears is before you make an important battle decision. That’s the time to listen to every fear you can imagine! When you have collected all the facts and fears and made your decision, turn off all your fears and go ahead!

You can’t make war in the Middle East without Egypt and you can’t make peace without Syria.

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

People do not make wars; governments do.

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.

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.

Peace is not the absence of war, but a virtue based on strength of character.

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

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?‘

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.

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.

The American claim that the bombing of North Vietnam was directed against military targets does not withstand direct investigation.

War is not an exercise of the will directed at an inanimate matter.

The executive has no right, in any case, to decide the question, whether there is or is not cause for declaring war.

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

These capitalists generally act harmoniously and in concert to fleece the people; and now that they have got into a quarrel with themselves, we are called upon to appropriate the people’s money to settle the quarrel.

War is an instrument entirely inefficient toward redressing wrong; and multiplies, instead of indemnifying losses.

A faction willing to take the risks of making war on the ossified status quo in the Middle East can be described as many things, but not as conservative.