This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
No international Eighteenth Amendment will get rid of war or the instruments of war until civilization finds a way for accomplishing what war has done in the past. Simply to prohibit war is not going to get rid of it. Wars must be anticipated and the causes got rid of by a readiness to accept peaceful means of settlement.
Throughout history there has never been an evitable war. The greatest danger of war always lies in the widespread acceptance of its inevitability.
In war and affairs of state, many things seem to be just and reasonable at first sight; yet nothing of the kind ought to be finally decided without pondering in a hundred different lights.
The object of government in peace and in war is not the glory of rulers or of races, but the happiness of the common man.
Glory | Government | Man | Object | Peace | War | Government | Happiness |
Yellow Emperor's Canon of Internal Medicine NULL
To administer medicine to diseases which have already developed and thereby suppress bodily chaos which has already occurred is comparable to the behavior of those who would begin to dig a well after they have grown thirsty, or those who would begin to cast weapons after they have engaged in battle.
Chinua Achebe, formally Albert Chinụalụmọgụ Achebe
After a war life catches desperately at passing hints of normalcy like vines entwining a hollow twig.
If we fight a war and win it with H-bombs, what history will remember is not the ideals we were fighting for but the methods we used to accomplish them. These methods will be compared to the warfare of Genghis Khan who ruthlessly killed every last inhabitant of Persia.
Omar Bradley, fully Omar Nelson Bradley
The world has achieved brilliance without wisdom, power without conscience. Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants. We know more about war than we know about peace, more about killing than we know about living.
Christian Century Editorial NULL
The ancient theory of the just war breaks down when victory is impossible, when the weapons are so undiscriminating as to destroy both sides.
Omar Bradley, fully Omar Nelson Bradley
We have too many men of science, and too few men of God. We have grasped the mystery of the atom and rejected the Sermon on the Mount. The world has achieved brilliance without wisdom, power without conscience. Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical midgets. We know more about war than we know of peace, more about killing than we know about living.
Conscience | God | Men | Mystery | Peace | Power | Science | War | Wisdom | World |
Those very characteristics which are demanded by war – the ability to tolerate uncertainty, spontaneity of thought and action, having a mind open to the receipt of novel, and perhaps threatening information – are the antitheses of those possessed by people attracted to the controls, and orderliness, of militarism.
Ability | Action | Mind | Orderliness | People | Thought | Uncertainty | War | Thought |
Angus Dun and Karl Paul Reinhold Niebuhr
The occasions to which the concept of the just war can be rightly applied have become highly restricted. A war to “defend the victims of wanton aggression” where the demands of justice join the demands of order, is today the clearer case of a just war… The concept of a just war does not provide moral justification for initiating a war of incalculable consequences to end such oppression.
Aggression | Consequences | Justice | Justification | Oppression | Order | War |
All diplomacy is a continuation of war by other means.