When people are laughing, they're generally not killing each other.

- Alan Alda

I don't believe in war as a solution to any kind of conflict, nor do I believe in heroism on the battlefield because I have never seen any.

- Thor Heyerdahl

As far as I am concerned, war itself is immoral.

- Omar N. Bradley

Preventive war was an invention of Hitler. Frankly, I would not even listen to anyone seriously that came and talked about such a thing.

- Dwight D. Eisenhower

I believe that the entire effort of modern society should be concentrated on the endeavor to outlaw war as a method of the solution of problems between nations.

- Douglas MacArthur

I'd like to see the government get out of war altogether and leave the whole field to private individuals.

- Joseph Heller

The cry has been that when war is declared, all opposition should be hushed. A sentiment more unworthy of a free country could hardly be propagated.

- William Ellery Channing

War loves to seek its victims in the young.

- Sophocles

It's our tendency to approach every problem as if it were a fight between two sides. We see it in headlines that are always using metaphors for war. It's a general atmosphere of animosity and contention that has taken over our public discourse.

- Deborah Tannen

There is something strangely inconsistent about a nation and a press that would praise you when you say, "Be nonviolent toward Jim Clark," but will curse and damn you when you say, "Be nonviolent toward little brown Vietnamese children." There is something wrong with that press.

- Martin Luther King, Jr.

(from "Christmas Bells" poem)

- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Those who have experienced the most, have suffered so much that they have ceased to hate. Hate is more for those with a slightly guilty conscience, and who by chewing on old hate in times of peace wish to demonstrate how great they were during the war.

- Thor Heyerdahl

Lost terrible silent comrades, we, who might have died, salute you.

- Richard Aldington

Even if we are spared destruction by war, our lives will have to change if we want to save life from self-destruction.

- Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

War is so unjust and ugly that all who wage it must try to stifle the voice of conscience within themselves.

- Leo Tolstoy

For every Crusade and Revolution and Civil War, there have always been those who argued, with great clarity, that violence not only was immoral but that it was even a less effective means of achieving laudable goals.

- Mark Kurlansky



The real and lasting victories are those of peace and not of war.

- Ralph Waldo Emerson



When a war breaks out, people say: "It's too stupid, it can't last long." But though a war may be "too stupid," that doesn't prevent its lasting.

- Albert Camus



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.

- Albert Einstein



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.

- Aldous Huxley



In war, truth is the first casualty.

- Aeschylus



I suggest that if you know history, then you might not be so easily fooled by the government when it tells you you must go to war for this or that reason -- that history is a protective armor against being misled.

- Howard Zinn



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 a purpose -- and you allow him to make war at pleasure.

- Abraham Lincoln



What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty or democracy?

- Mohandas K. Gandhi



Now these questions are not new. War, in one form or another, appeared with the first man. At the dawn of history, its morality was not questioned; it was simply a fact, like drought or disease -- the manner in which tribes and then civilizations sought power and settled their differences.

- Barack Obama



People never lie so much as after a hunt, during a war or before an election.

- Otto von Bismarck



I refuse to accept the idea that man is mere flotsam and jetsam in the river of life, unable to influence the unfolding events which surround him. I refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become a reality.

- Martin Luther King, Jr.



Peace is not the absence of war but the presence of justice.

- Harrison Ford



Jaw jaw is better than war war.

- Winston Churchill



I am passionately interested in understanding how my country works. And if you want to know about this thing called the United States of America you have to know about the Civil War.

- Ken Burns



Dream always of a peaceful, warless, disarmed world.

- Robert Muller



We will not learn how to live together in peace by killing each other's children.

- Jimmy Carter



War is so complex it's beyond the ability of the human mind to comprehend. Our judgment, our understanding, are not adequate. And we kill people unnecessarily.

- Robert S. McNamara



We want to live at any price; so we cannot burden ourselves with feelings which, though they might be ornamental enough in peace-time, would be out of place here.

- Erich Maria Remarque



If we are going to stop wars on this earth, we are going to have to make war on hunger our number one priority.

- David W. Brooks



Before a war military science seems a real science, like astronomy; but after a war it seems more like astrology.

- Rebecca West



When people don't understand that the government doesn't have their interests in mind, they're more susceptible to go to war.

- Howard Zinn



One certain effect of war is to diminish freedom of expression.

- Howard Zinn



I am willing to accept that there might be rare circumstances where applications of force might be effective,

- Howard Zinn



People like Eugene Debs, Helen Keller, Emma Goldman, Jack London and Upton Sinclair were wonderful writers who joined the movement against war and injustice, against capitalism and corporate power. That was a very exciting period in American history.

- Howard Zinn



We need to decide that we will not go to war, whatever reason is conjured up by the politicians or the media, because war in our time is always indiscriminate, a war against innocents, a war against children

- Howard Zinn



Historically, the most terrible things -- war, genocide, and slavery -- have resulted not from disobedience, but from obedience.

- Howard Zinn



Warmaking doesn't stop warmaking. If it did, our problems would have stopped millennia ago.

- Colman McCarthy



We cannot have peace if we are only concerned with peace. War is not an accident. It is the logical outcome of a certain way of life. If we want to attack war, we have to attack that way of life.

- A. J. Muste



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

- Isaac Asimov