Great Throughts Treasury

This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.

Related Quotes

Jules de Gaultier, born Jules Achille de Gaultier de Laguionie

Imagination is the one weapon in the war against reality.

Imagination | Reality | War |

Cicero, fully Marcus Tullius Cicero, anglicized as Tully NULL

Let war be so carried on that no other object may seem to be sought but the acquisition of peace.

Object | Peace | War |

Cicero, fully Marcus Tullius Cicero, anglicized as Tully NULL

Laws are silent in times of war (in midst of arms).

War |

Margaret Chase Smith

Are we so devoid of spiritual and moral force and intellectual ingenuity that we cannot possibly prevent war by any means other than military preparedness?

Force | Ingenuity | Means | War | Ingenuity |

Cicero, fully Marcus Tullius Cicero, anglicized as Tully NULL

Most people believe the achievements of war more important than those of peace, but this is a mistake.

Important | Mistake | Peace | People | War |

Cicero, fully Marcus Tullius Cicero, anglicized as Tully NULL

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

Peace | War |

Max Lerner, fully Maxwell "Max" Alan Lerner, aka Mikhail Lerner

The way to prevent war is to bend every energy toward preventing it, not to proceed by the dubious indirection of preparing for it.

Energy | War |

Nelson Mandela, fully Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela

We speak here of the challenge of the dichotomies of war and peace, violence and non-violence, racism and human dignity, oppression and repression and liberty and human rights, poverty and freedom from want.

Challenge | Freedom | Liberty | Oppression | Poverty | Right | Time | War |

Norman Mailer, fully Norman Kingsley Mailer

The war between being and nothingness is the underlying illness of the twentieth century. Boredom slays more of existence than war.

Existence | War |

Norman Thomas, fully Norman Mattoon Thomas

War and Christianity are incompatible; you cannot conquer war by war; cast our Satan by Satan; or do the enormous evil of war that good may come of it.

Evil | Good | Satan | War |

Ralph Nader

Our flag stands for "liberty and justice for all." Our flag must never be misused or defiled as a bandana for war crimes, as a gag against the people's freedom of speech and conscience or as a fig leaf to hide the shame of charlatans in high public office, who violate our Constitution, our laws and our founding fathers' framework for accountable, responsive government.

Conscience | Freedom of speech | Freedom | Government | Justice | Liberty | Office | People | Public | Shame | Speech | War |

Pythagoras, aka Pythagoras of Samos or Pythagoras the Samian NULL

It is only necessary to make war with five things: with the maladies of the body, the ignorances of the mind, with the passions of the body, with the seditions of the city, and the discord of families.

Body | Mind | War |

Ralph Waldo Emerson

All history is the decline of war, though the slow decline. All that society has yet gained is mitigation; the doctrine of the right of war still remains.

Doctrine | History | Right | Society | War | Society |

Robert Lynd, fully Robert Wilson Lynd

The belief in the possibility of a short decisive war appears to be one of the most ancient and dangerous of human illusions.

Belief | War |

Ruth Benedict, born Ruth Fulton

War in our own civilization is as good an illustration as one can take of the destructive lengths to which the development of a culturally selected trait may go. If we justify war, it is because all peoples always justify the traits of which they find themselves possessed, not because war will bear an objective examination of its merits.

Civilization | Good | Justify | War | Will |

Philip Sidney, fully Sir Philip Sidney

It is cruelty in war that buyeth conquest,

Conquest | Cruelty | War | Cruelty |

Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt

A just war is in the long run far better for a nation’s soul than the most prosperous peace obtained by acquiescence toward wrong or injustice. Moreover, though it is criminal for a nation not to prepare for war, so that it may escape the dreadful consequences of being defeated in war, it must always be remembered that even to be defeated in war is far better than never to have fought at all.

Better | Consequences | Injustice | Injustice | Peace | Soul | War | Wrong |