This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"If a child who wanted to be a teacher I would bid him Godspeed as if he were going to war. For indeed the war against prejudice, greed and ignorance is eternal, and those who dedicate themselves to it give their lives not less because they may live to see some faction of the battle won." - James Hilton
"Whatever therefore is consequent to a tie of war, where every man is enemy to every man; the same is consequent to the time, wherein men live without other security, than what their own strength, and their own invention shall furnish them withal. In such a condition, there is no place for industry; because the fruit thereof is uncertain: and consequently no culture of the earth; no navigation, nor use of commodities that may be imported by sea; no commodious building; no instruments of moving, and removing, such things as require much force; no knowledge of the face of the earth; no account of time; no arts; no letters; no society; and which is worst of all, continual fear, and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short." - Thomas Hobbes
"The answer to the accumulating casualties of the welfare state’s “war” on poverty is the home-grown, grass-roots, all-volunteer army of ordinary people armed with food, books, skills and a determination to make a difference. The entrepreneurial creativity that catapulted this nation to a position of global leadership can now be harnessed to do for community what it did for productivity. When we provide imaginative, entrepreneurial alternatives to the welfare state, we won’t need to confront it. It will simply wither away. And the rewards of this work are a bounty of spiritual renewal: an abundance of love, meaning and connectedness." - Arianna Huffington, born Arianna Stassinopoulos
"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 convention of politics to murder or be murdered in quarrels not their own." - Aldous Leonard Huxley
"War permits no excuses." - Ibycus NULL
"War is an instrument entirely inefficient toward redressing wrong; and multiplies, instead of indemnifying losses." - Thomas Jefferson
"War is as much a punishment to the punisher as to the sufferer." - Thomas Jefferson
"The first casualty when war comes is truth." - Hiram Warren Johnson
"In this age when there can be no losers in peace and no victors in war - we must recognize the obligation to match national strength with national restraint." - Lyndon Johnson, fully Lyndon Baines Johnson, aka LBJ
"Mankind must put an end to war or war will put an end to mankind." - John F. Kennedy, fully John Fitzgerald "Jack" Kennedy
"No man who witnessed the tragedies of the last war, no man who can imagine the unimaginable possibilities of the next war can advocate war out of irritability or frustration or impatience." - John F. Kennedy, fully John Fitzgerald "Jack" Kennedy
"The mere absence of war is not peace." - John F. Kennedy, fully John Fitzgerald "Jack" Kennedy
"There is no such thing as an inevitable war. If war comes it will be from failure of human wisdom." - Andrew Bonar Law
"Who can reflect on the sacredness of human life, in view of its eternal destinies, without coming to the conclusion that war, with its attendants, hatred, destruction and slaughter is incompatible with the high dictates of religion?" - Leone Levi
"Money is the sinews of war." - Libanius NULL
"War as a useful extension of diplomacy is obsolete. No aggressor can hope to come out a winner." - Murray D. Lincoln, fully Murray Danforth Lincoln
"For as long as a time as we can see into the future, we shall be living between war and peace, between a war that cannot be fought and a peace that cannot be achieved. The great issues which divide the world cannot be decided by a war that could be won, and they cannot be settled by a treaty that can be negotiated... the power which used to deal with the division and conflicts of the past, namely, organized war, has become an impossible instrument to use." - Walter Lippmann
"To those to whom war is necessary it is just." - Livy, formally Titus Livius, aka Titus Livy NULL
"The perfect condition of slavery... is nothing else but the state of war continued between a lawful conqueror and a captive, for if once compact enter between them, and make an agreement for a limited power on the one side, and obedience on the other, the state of war and slavery ceases as long as the compact endures; for, as has been said, no man can by agreement pass over to another that which hath not in himself - a power over his own life." - John Locke
"War is no more inevitable than the plague is inevitable. War is no more a part of human nature than the burning of witches is a human act." - Nancy Gentile Ford
"The wounds of civil war are deepest." - Lucan, full name Marcus Annaeus Lucanus NULL
"In time of peace we should think of war." - Lucian, aka Lucian of Samosata or Lucianus Samosatensis NULL
"I know war as few other men now living know it, and nothing to me is more revolting. I have long advocated its complete abolition, as its very destructiveness on both friend and foe has rendered it useless as a method for settling international disputes." - Douglas MacArthur
"The great question is: can war be outlawed? If so, it would mark the greatest advance in civilization since the Sermon on the Mount." - Douglas MacArthur
"War’s very object is victory, not prolonged indecision. In war there is no substitute for victory." - Douglas MacArthur
"Every one may begin a war at his pleasure, but cannot so finish it. A prince, therefore, before engaging in any enterprise, should well measure his strength, and govern himself accordingly." - Niccolò Machiavelli, formally Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli
"He who makes war his profession cannot be otherwise than vicious. War makes thieves, and peace brings them to the gallows." - Niccolò Machiavelli, formally Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli
"War is a profession by which a man cannot live honorably; an employment by which the soldier, if he would reap any profit, is obliged to be false, rapacious, and cruel!" - Niccolò Machiavelli, formally Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli
"War appears to be as old as mankind, but peace is a modern invention." - Henry Maine, fully Sir Henry James Sumner Maine
"One believes in the coming of war if one does not sufficiently abhor it." - Thomas Mann, fully Paul Thomas Mann
"War is only a cowardly escape from the problems of peace." - Thomas Mann, fully Paul Thomas Mann
"Violence and war never solve problems; they only make them more acute. They create new dilemmas and new paradoxes." - Frederick Mayer
"Anti-Semitism is a social disease. Anti-Semitism is an excellent diagnostic device to use in studying the health and well-being of society. For it is a harbinger of war, the fear of inadequacy that, in moments of crisis, breeds havoc and social panic." - Carey McWilliams
"I believe that religion, generally speaking, has been a curse to mankind-that its modest and greatly overestimated services on the ethical side have been more than overcome by the damage it has done to clear and honest thinking. I believe that all government is evil, in that all government must necessarily make war upon liberty." - H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken
"Instead of hating the people you think are war-makers, hate the appetites and the disorder in your own soul, which are the causes of war." - Thomas Merton
"The immediate cause of World War III is the preparation of it." - C. Wright Mills, fully Charles Wright Mills
"There will be no veterans of World War III." - Walter Mondale, fully Walter Frederick "Fritz" Mondale
"War hath no fury like a non-combatant." - Charles Edward Montague
"A victory is no victory unless it put an end to the war." - Michel de Montaigne, fully Lord Michel Eyquem de Montaigne
"The only good histories are those that have been written by the very men who were in command in the affairs, or who were participants in the conduct of them or who at least have had the fortune to conduct others of the same sort... What can you expect of a doctor discussing war, or a schoolboy discussing the intentions of princes?" - Michel de Montaigne, fully Lord Michel Eyquem de Montaigne
"The institutions of a country depend in great measure on the nature of its soil and situation. Many of the wants of man are awakened or supplied by these circumstances. To these wants, manners, laws, and religion must shape and accommodate themselves. The division of land, and the rights attached to it, alter with the soil; the laws relating to its produce, with its fertility. The manners of its inhabitants are in various ways modified by its position. The religion of a miner is not the same as the faith of a shepherd, nor is the character of the ploughman so war-like as that of the hunter. The observant legislator follows the direction of all these various circumstances. the knowledge of the natural advantages or defects of a country thus form an essential part of political science and history." - Justus Möser
"Peace is produced by war." - Cornelius Nepos
"The atomic bomb made the prospect of future war unendurable. It has led us up those last few steps to the mountain pass; and beyond there is a different country." - Robert Oppenheimer, fully Julius Robert Oppenheimer
"He who is the author of a war lets loose the whole contagion of hell and opens a vein that bleeds a nation to death." - Thomas Paine