This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"Peace is not the elimination of the causes of war. Rather it is a mastery of great human forces and the creation of an environment in which human aims may be pursued constructively." - James Herbert Case, Jr.
"For the poor of this world, two major ways of expiring are available: either by the absolute indifference of your fellow-men in peace-time, or by the homicidal passion of these same when war breaks out." - Louis-Ferdinand Céline, pen name Louis-Ferdinand Destouches
"It takes at least two to make a peace, but one can make a war." - Neville Chamberlain, fully Arthur Neville Chamberlain
"In war, whichever side may call itself the victor, there are no winners, but all are losers." - Neville Chamberlain, fully Arthur Neville Chamberlain
"The chief evil of war is more evil. War is the concentration of all human crimes. Here is its distinguishing, accursed brand. Under its standard gather violence, malignity, rage, fraud, perfidy, rapacity, and lust. If it only slew man, it would do little. It turns man into a beast of prey." - William Ellery Channing
"War is the concentration of all human crimes. It turns man into a beast of prey." - William Ellery Channing
"What distinguishes war is, not that man is slain, but that he is slain, spoiled, crushed by the cruelty, the injustice, the treachery, the murderous hand of man." - William Ellery Channing
"All that happens in the world of nature and man - every war, every peace, every horn of prosperity, every horn of adversity, every election, every death, every life, every success and every failure, all change, all permanence, the perished leer, the unutterable glory of stars - all things speak truth in the thoughtful spirit." - Rufus Choate
"One is left with the horrible feeling now that war settles nothing; that to win a war is as disastrous as to lose one." - Agatha Christie, fully Dame Agatha Miller Christie
"If the aim of the military action is an equivalent for the political object, that action will in general diminish as the political object diminishes. The more this object comes to the front, the more will this be so. This explains how, without self-contradiction, there can be wars of all degrees of importance and energy, from a war of extermination down to a mere state of armed observation." - Carl von Clausewitz, fully Carl Philipp Gottfried von Clausewitz, also Karl von Clausewitz
"War is an act of force, and to the application of that force there is no limit. Each of the adversaries forces the hand of the other, and a reciprocal action results which in theory can have no limit." - Carl von Clausewitz, fully Carl Philipp Gottfried von Clausewitz, also Karl von Clausewitz
"War is a continuation of policy by other means. It is not merely a political act but a real political instrument." - Carl von Clausewitz, fully Carl Philipp Gottfried von Clausewitz, also Karl von Clausewitz
"No nation ever had an army large enough to guarantee it against attack in time of peace or insure it victory in time of war." - Calvin Coolidge, fully John Calvin Coolidge, Jr.
"War destroys man, but luxury destroys mankind; at once corrupts the body and the mind." - John Crowne
"It is good... to try in imagination to give to any one species an advantage over another. Probably in no single instance should we know what to do. This ought to convince us of our ignorance on the mutual relations of all organic beings; a conviction as necessary as it is difficult to acquire. All that we can do, is to keep steadily in mind that each organic being is striving to increase in a geometrical ration; that each at some period of its life, during some season of the year, during each generation or at intervals, has to struggle for life and to suffer great destruction. When we reflect on this struggle, we may console ourselves with the full belief, that the war of nature is not incessant, that no fear is felt, that death is generally prompt, and that the vigorous, the healthy, and the happy survive and multiply." - Charles Darwin, fully Charles Robert Darwin
"It is interesting to contemplate a tangled bank, clothed with many plants of many kinds, with birds singing on the bushes, with various insects flitting about, and with worms crawling through the damp earth, and to reflect that these elaborately constructed forms, so different from each other, and dependent upon each other in so complex a manner, have all been produced by laws acting around us. These laws, taken in the largest sense, being Growth with Reproduction; Inheritance which is almost implied by reproduction; Variability from the indirect and direct action of the conditions of life and from use and disuse: a Ratio of Increase so high as to lead to a Struggle for Life, and as a consequence to Natural Selection, entailing Divergence of Character and the Extinction of less-improved forms, Thus, from the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows. There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and wonderful have been, and are being evolved." - Charles Darwin, fully Charles Robert Darwin
"Man-made barriers, laws, social customs and prejudices continue to keep a majority of women in an inferior position without full control of our lives and bodies. From infancy throughout life, in personal and public relations, in the family, in the schools, in every occupation and profession, too often we find our individuality, our capabilities, our earning powers diminished by discriminatory practices and outmoded ideas of what a woman is, what a woman can do, and what a woman must be... We lack effective political and economic power We have only minor and insignificant roles in making, interpreting and enforcing our laws, in running our political parties, businesses, unions, schools and institutions, in directing the media, in governing our country, in deciding issues of war or peace. We do not seek special privileges, but we demand as a human right a full voice and role for women in determining the destiny of our world, our nation, our families and our individual lives." - Declaration of American Women NULL
"The more horrible a depersonalized scientific mass war becomes, the more necessary it is to find universal ideal motives to justify it." - John Dewey
"The only way to abolish war (is) to make peace heroic." - John Dewey
"To suppose there is some one unchanging native force which generates war is as naive as the usual assumption that our enemy is actuated solely by the meaner of the tendencies named and we only by the nobler." - John Dewey
"The "price of peace" can never reach such dimensions as to equal the smallest fraction of war's deadly cost." - Abba Eban, born Aubrey Solomon Meir Eban
"It is not true that there are no enjoyments in the ways of sin; there are, many and various. But the great and radical defect of them all is, that they are transitory and insubstantial, at war with reason and conscience, and always leave a sting behind... They may and often do satisfy us for a moment; but it is death in the end. It is the bread of heaven and the water of life that can so satisfy that we shall hunger no more and thirst no more forever." - Tyron Edwards
"I have come to hate war not only because it kills off the flower of every nation, but because it destroys spiritual as well as material values." - Ilya Ehrenburg, fully Ilya Grigoryevich Ehrenburg
"As long as there are sovereign nations possessing great power, war is inevitable." - Albert Einstein
"In war it serves that we may poison and mutilate each other. In peace it has made our lives hurried and uncertain. Instead of freeing us in great measure from spiritually exhausting labor, it has made men into slaves of machinery, who for the most part complete their monotonous long days' work with disgust and must continually tremble for their poor rations." - Albert Einstein
"Our schoolbooks glorify war and hide its horrors. They inculcate hatred in the veins of the children. I would teach peace rather than war. I would inculcate love rather than hate." - Albert Einstein
"To my mind, to kill in war is not a whit better than to commit ordinary murder." - Albert Einstein
"There is nothing that war has ever achieved we could not better achieve without it." - Henry Havelock Ellis
"Probably no nation is rich enough to pay for both war and education" - Abraham Flexner
"Nations... borrow billions for war; no nation has ever borrowed largely for education. Probably no nation is rich enough to pay for both war and civilization. We must make our choice; we cannot have both." - Abraham Flexner
"What causes war is not patriotism, not that human beings are willing to die in defense of their dearest ones. It is the false doctrine, fostered by the few, that war spells gain." - Henry Ford
"The tragedy of war is that it uses man's best to do man's worst." - Harry Emerson Fosdick
"A people living under the... threat of war and invasion is very easy to govern. It demands no social reforms. It doesn't not haggle over armaments and military expenditures. It pays without discussion, it ruins itself, and that is a fine thing for the financiers and manufacturers for whom patriotic terrors are an abundant source of gain." - Anatole France, pen name of Jacques Anatole Francois Thibault
"War is not an art, and accident alone decides the outcome of battles. If two generals confront each other and both are stupid, one necessarily must win." - Anatole France, pen name of Jacques Anatole Francois Thibault
"May we never see another war! For in my opinion, there never was a good war or a bad peace." - Benjamin Franklin
"There was never a good war or a bad peace." - Benjamin Franklin
"Either man is obsolete or war is. War is the ultimate tool of politics. Political leaders look out only for their own side. Politicians are always realistically maneuvering for the next election. They are obsolete as fundamental problem-solvers." - Buckminster Fuller, fully Richard Buckminster "Bucky" Fuller
"The thing for which we prepare and which we earnestly expect usually comes upon us. Food is prepared to be eaten; clothing is made to be worn; munitions of war are produced to be used in warfare. Just as truly, preparations made for purposes of peace help to bring about the peaceful condition for which they are prepared." - Francis J. Gable
"During war we imprison the rights of man." - Hippolyte Jean Giraudoux
"I have never advocated war, except as a means of peace." - Ulysses S. Grant, fully Ulysses Simpson Grant, born Hiram Ulysses Grant
"War determines not who is right but who is left." - Sidney Greenberg
"The principles of war, not merely one principle, can be condensed into a single word - "Concentration." But the truth this needs to be amplified as the concentration of strength against weakness. And for real value, it needs to be explained that the concentration of strength against weakness depends on the dispersion of your opponent's strength." -
"Never think that war, no matter how necessary, nor how justified, is not a crime. Ask the infantry and ask the dead." - Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway