This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"If an international system could be established which would remove the fear of war, the improvement in everyday mentality of everyday people would be enormous and very rapid. Fear, at present, overshadows the world." - Bertrand Russell, fully Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell
"It is a strange and tedious war when violence attempts to vanquish truth. All the efforts of violence cannot weaken truth, and only serve to give it fresh vigor. All the lights of truth cannot arrest violence, and only serve to exasperate it." - Blaise Pascal
"There is internal war in man between reason and the passions... But having both, he cannot be without strife, being unable to be a peace with the one without being at war with the other. Thus he is always divided against and opposed to himself." - Blaise Pascal
"The most powerful cause of error is the war existing between the senses and reason." - Blaise Pascal
"Sometime they'll give a war and nobody will come." - Carl Sandburg
"For what are the triumphs of war, planned by ambition, executed by violence, and consummated by devastation? The means are the sacrifice of many, the end, the bloated aggrandizement of the few." - Charles Caleb Colton
"War kills men, and men deplore the loss; but war also crushes bad principles and tyrants, and so saves societies." - Charles Caleb Colton
"The pressure that has been brought to bear upon the native people, since the cessation of armed conflict, in the attempt to force conformity of custom and habit has caused a reaction more destructive than war, and the injury has not only affected the Indian, but has extended to the white population as well. Tyranny, stupidity, and lack of vision have brought about the situation now alluded to as the “Indian Problem.”" -
"Telling us to obey instinct is like telling us to obey "people." People say different things: so do instincts. Our instincts are at war.... Each instinct, if you listen to it, will claim to be gratified at the expense of the rest...." - C. S. Lewis, fully Clive Staples "C.S." Lewis, called "Jack" by his family
"To the diplomat of the middle of the twentieth century, war is something that must be averted at almost any cost." - Dag Hammarskjöld
"There are two kinds of crimes: those committed by people who are caught and convicted, and those committed by people who are not. Which category a particular crime falls into is directly related to the wealth, power, and prestige of the criminal. The former category includes such crimes as purse snatching, mugging, armed robbery and breaking and entering. The latter category includes war atrocities, embezzlement, most political actions, and budget appropriations." - Dick Gregory
"They have not wanted peace at all; they have wanted to be spared war - as though the absence of war was the same as peace." - Dorothy Thompson
"We have peace as we abhor pusillanimity; but not peace at any price. There is a peace more destructive of the manhood of living man than war is destructive of his material body. Chains are worse than bayonets." - Douglas William Jerrold
"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron." - Dwight Eisenhower, fully Dwight David "Ike" Eisenhower
"As never before, the essence of war is fire, famine and pestilence. They contribute to its outbreak; they are among its weapons; they become its consequences." - Dwight Eisenhower, fully Dwight David "Ike" Eisenhower
"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who are cold and not clothed. This world in arms ins not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children... This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron." - Dwight Eisenhower, fully Dwight David "Ike" Eisenhower
"I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its futility, its stupidity." - Dwight Eisenhower, fully Dwight David "Ike" Eisenhower
"War is no longer a lively adventure or expedition into romance, matching man against man in the test of the stout-hearted. Instead, it is aimed against the cities mankind has built. Its goal is their total destruction and devastation." - Dwight Eisenhower, fully Dwight David "Ike" Eisenhower
"War never leaves, where it found a nation." - Edmund Burke
"War suspends the rules of moral obligation, and what is long suspended is in danger of being totally abrogated. Civil wars strike deepest of all into the manners of the people. They vitiate their politics; they corrupt their morals; they pervert their natural taste and relish of equity and justice. By teaching us to consider our fellow-citizens in a hostile light, the whole body of our nation becomes gradually less dear to us. The very nature of affection and kindred, which were the bond of charity, whilst we agreed, become new incentives to hatred and rage, when the communion of our country is dissolved." - Edmund Burke
"In the purer ages of the commonwealth, the use of arms was reserved for those ranks of citizens who had a country to love, a property to defend, and some share in enacting those laws, which it was their interest, as well as duty, to maintain. But in proportion as the public freedom was lost in extent of conquest, war was gradually improved into an art, and degraded into a trade." - Edward Gibbon
"War in its fairest form implies a perpetual violation of humanity and justice." - Edward Gibbon
"If we could have ended the war by showing the power of science without killing a single person, all of us would be much happier, more reasonable, and much safer." - Edward Teller
"Man started out as a "weak thing of the world" and evolved "to confound the things that are mighty." And within the human species, too, the weak often develop aptitudes and devises which enable them not only to survive but to prevail over the strong. Indeed, the formidableness of the human species stems from the survival of its weak. Were it not for the compassion that moves us to care for the sick, the crippled, and the old there would probably would have been neither culture or civilization. The crippled warrior who had to stay behind while the manhood of the tribe went out to war was the storyteller, teacher, and artisan. The old and the sick had a hand in the development of the arts of healing and of cooking. One thinks of the venerable sage, the unhinged medicine man, the epileptic prophet, the blind bard, and the witty hunchback and dwarf." - Eric Hoffer
"There is no possibility of a holy war." - Francis Bacon
"The motto of war is: "Let the strong survive; let the weak die." The motto of peace is: "Let the strong help the weak to survive."" - Franklin D. Roosevelt, fully Franklin Delano Roosevelt, aka FDR
"Wilson said that America’s doughboys fought for the Fourteen Points. Roosevelt said the GI was fighting for the Four Freedoms. Johnson and Humphrey sent men out to die for the planting of dams in Vietnam. Nixon preaches a war of generosity. Each time we have fought in this century, our leaders have denied that we did it for ourselves." - Garry Wills
"All progress means war with Society." - George Bernard Shaw
"War makes thieves, and peace hangs them." - George Herbert
"The quickest way of ending a war is to lose it." - George Orwell, pen name of Eric Arthur Blair
"To call war the soil of courage and virtue is like calling debauchery the soil of love." - George Santayana
"To delight in war is a merit in the soldier, a dangerous quality in the captain, and a positive crime in the statesman." - George Santayana
"It is war that wastes a nation's wealth, chokes its industries, kills its flower, narrows its sympathies, condemns it to be governed by adventurers and leave the puny, deformed and unmanly to breed the next generation." - George Santayana
"A great and lasting war can never be supported on this principle (patriotism) alone. It must be aided by a prospect of interest, or some reward." - George Washington
"Both houses of Congress have, by their joint Committee, requested me “To recommend to the People of the United States, a Day of Public Thanksgiving and Prayer, to be observed by acknowledging with grateful Hearts the many Signal Favours of Almighty God, especially by affording them an opportunity peaceably to establish a Form of Government for their Safety and Happiness”... That we may then all unite in rendering unto him our sincere and humble thanks for his kind Care and Protection of the People of this Country previous to their becoming a Nation; for the signal and manifold Mercies, and the favourable Interpositions of his Providence in the Course & Conclusion of the late War; for the great Degree of Tranquillity, Union, and Plenty, which we have since enjoyed; for the peaceable and rational Manner in which we have been enabled to establish Constitutions of Government for our Safety and Happiness, and particularly the national one now lately instituted; for the civil and religious Liberty with which we are blessed, and the means we have of acquiring and diffusing useful knowledge; and in general, for all the great and various Favours which he hath been pleased to confer upon us... to enable us all, whether in public or private Stations, to perform our several and relative duties properly and punctually... to promote the Knowledge and Practice of true Religion and Virtue, and the increase of Science among them and us; and generally to grant unto all mankind such a Degree of temporal Prosperity as He alone knows to be best." - George Washington
"To be prepared for war is one of the most effectual means of preserving the peace." - George Washington
"I know [patriotism] exists, and I know it has done much in the present contest. But a great and lasting war can never be supported on this principle alone. It must be aided by a prospect of interest, or some reward." - George Washington
"Marriage is like a war. There are moments of chivalry and gallantry that attend the victorious advances and strategic retreats, the birth or death of children, the momentary conquest of loneliness, the sacrifice that ennobles him who makes it. But mostly there are the long dull sieges, the waiting, the terror and boredom. Women understand this better than men; they are better able to survive attrition." - Helen Hayes
"Who are the really disloyal? Those who inflame racial hatreds, who sow religious and class dissensions. those who subvert the Constitution by violating the freedom of the ballot box. Those who make a mockery of majority rule by the use of the filibuster. Those who impair democracy by denying equal educational facilities. Those who frustrate justice by lynch law or by making a farce of jury trials. Those who deny freedom of speech and of the press and of assembly. Those who demand special favors against the interest of the commonwealth. Those who regard public office as a source of private gain. Those who exalt the military over the civil. Those who for selfish and private purposes stir up national antagonisms and expose the world to the ruin of war." - Henry Steele Commager
"Thorough selfishness destroys or paralyzes enjoyment. A heart made selfish by the contest for wealth is like a citadel stormed in war, utterly shattered." - Henry Ward Beecher
"God is day and night, winter and summer, war and peace, satiety and hunger." - Heraclitus or Heraclitus of Ephesus NULL
"In peace, sons bury their fathers; in war, fathers bury their sons." - Herodotus NULL
"No one is fool enough to choose war instead of peace. For in peace sons bury their fathers, but war violates the order of nature, and fathers bury sons." - Herodotus NULL
"The "war on terror" is being used to create an atmosphere of hysteria, in which the claim of "national security" becomes an excuse to throw aside the guarantees of the Bill of Rights and to give new powers to the FBI." - Howard Zinn
"It isn’t a population that demands war… it is the leaders who demand war and who prepare the population for war… If there was a spontaneous urge to kill, why would we need a draft!" - Howard Zinn
"Our problem is that people are obedient all over the world, in the face of poverty and starvation and stupidity, and war and cruelty. Our problem is that people are obedient while the jails are full of petty thieves, and all the while the grand thieves are running the country. That's our problem. We recognize this for Nazi Germany, that the people obeyed Hitler. People obeyed; that was wrong." - Howard Zinn
"The unique ability of humans to imagine gives enormous power to idealism, an imagining of a better state of things not yet in existence. That power has been misused to send young men to war. But the power of idealism can also be used to attain justice, to end the massive violence of war." - Howard Zinn
"War doesn't solve fundamental things." - Howard Zinn