This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"We should take our example not from our political and military leaders shouting “Retaliate!” and “War!” but from the doctors and nurses and medical students and firefighters and police officers who have been saving lives in the midst of mayhem – whose first thoughts are not violence, but healing; not vengeance, but compassion." - Howard Zinn
"The determination of what constitutes right in war, is the most difficult problem of the right of nations and international law. It is very difficult even to form a conception of such a right, or to think of any law in this lawless state without falling into a contradiction." - Immanuel Kant
"What if someone gave a war & Nobody came? Life would ring the bells of Ecstasy and Forever be Itself again." - Allen Ginsberg, fully Irwin Allen Ginsberg
"Battles are never the end of war; for the dead must be buried and the cost of the conflict must be paid." - James A. Garfield
"War makes the thief, and peace brings him to the gallows." - James Howell
"Of all the evils to public liberty, war is perhaps the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes. And armies, and debts, and taxes, are the known instruments for bringing the many under the dominion of the few. In war, too, the discretionary power of the executive is extended; its influence in dealing out offices, honors, and emoluments is multiplied; and all the means of seducing the minds are added to those of subduing the force of the people! No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare." - James Madison
"Peace is not merely an absence of war. It is also a state of mind." - Jawaharlal Nehru
"Peace is not a relationship of nations. It is a condition of mind brought about by a serenity of soul. Peace is not merely the absence of war. It is also a state of mind. Lasting peace can come only to peaceful people." - Jawaharlal Nehru
"When the rich wage war, it’s the poor who die." - Jean-Paul Sartre
"As peace is of all goodness, so war is an emblem, a hieroglyphic, of all misery." - John Donne
"The world will never have lasting peace so long as men reserve for war the finest human qualities. Peace, no less than war, requires idealism and self-sacrifice and a righteous and dynamic faith." - John Foster Dulles
"Mankind will never win lasting peace so long as men use their full resources only in tasks of war. While we are yet at peace, let us mobilize the potentialities, particularly the moral and spiritual potentialities, which we usually reserve for war." - John Foster Dulles
"You have to take chances for peace, just as you must take chances in war. Some say that we were brought to the verge of war. Of course we were brought to the verge of war. The ability to get to the verge without getting into the war is the necessary art... If you try to run away from it, if you are scared to go to the brink, you are lost. We've had to look it square in the face... We walked to the brink and we looked it in the face. We took strong action." - John Foster Dulles
"The ability to get to the verge without getting into war is the necessary art. If you cannot master it, you inevitably get into war. If you try to run away from it, if you are scared to go to the brink, you are lost." - John Foster Dulles
"But this is human life: the war, the deeds, the disappointment, the anxiety, imagination's struggles, far and nigh, all human; bearing in themselves this god, that they are still the air, the subtle food, to make us feel existence." - John Keats
"War remains the decisive human failure." - John Kenneth Galbraith, aka "Ken"
"Peace to corrupt no less than war to waste." - John Milton
"The soul, secured in her existence, smiles at the drawn dagger and defies its point. The stars shall fade away, the sun himself grow dim with age, and Nature sink in years; but thou shalt flourish in immortal youth, unhurt amidst the war of elements, the wrecks of matter, and the crush of worlds." - Joseph Addison
"'You put stock in winning wars, 'the grubby iniquitous old man scoffed. 'The real trick lies in losing wars, and in knowing which wars can be lost. Italy has been losing wars for centuries, and just see how splendidly we've done nonetheless. France wins wars and is in a continual state of crisis. Germany loses and prospers. Look at our own recent history. Italy won a war in Ethiopia and promptly stumbled into serious trouble. Victory gave us such insane delusions of grandeur that we helped start a world war we hadn't a chance of winning. But now that we are losing again, everything has taken a turn for the better, and we will certainly come out on top again if we succeed in being defeated.'" - Joseph Heller
"What man knows is everywhere at war with what he wants." - Joseph Wood Krutch
"Imagination is the one weapon in the war against reality." - Jules de Gaultier, born Jules Achille de Gaultier de Laguionie
"War is both the product of an earlier corruption and a producer of new corruptions." - Lewis Mumford
"Ants are so much like human beings as to be an embarrassment. They farm fungi, raise aphids as livestock, launch armies into war, use chemical sprays to alarm and confuse enemies, capture slaves, engage in child labor, exchange information ceaselessly. They do everything but watch television." - Lewis Thomas
"The essence of war is violence. Moderation in war is imbecility." - Lord Fisher, aka Lord John Arbutnoth Fisher, fully Admiral of the Fleet John Arbuthnot "Jacky" Fisher, 1st Baron Fisher of Kilverstone
"All occurrences of violence, negativity, conflict crisis, or problems in any society are just the expression of growth of stress in collective consciousness. When the level of stress becomes sufficiently great, it bursts out into large-scale violence, war, and civil uprising necessitating military action." - Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, born Mahesh Prasad Varma
"The law is silent during war." - Cicero, fully Marcus Tullius Cicero, anglicized as Tully NULL
"An unjust peace is better than a just war." - Cicero, fully Marcus Tullius Cicero, anglicized as Tully NULL
"I prefer the most unfair peace to the most righteous war." - Cicero, fully Marcus Tullius Cicero, anglicized as Tully NULL
"Laws are silent in times of war (in midst of arms)." - 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." - 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." - Cicero, fully Marcus Tullius Cicero, anglicized as Tully NULL
"The only excuse for war is that we may live unharmed in peace." - Cicero, fully Marcus Tullius Cicero, anglicized as Tully NULL
"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?" - Margaret Chase Smith
"War is one of the greatest plagues that can afflict humanity: it destroys religion, it destroys states, it destroys families. Any scourge, in fact, is preferable to it." - Martin Luther
"War is the greatest plague that can afflict mankind... Any scourge is preferable to it." - Martin Luther
"War is the greatest plague that can afflict humanity; it destroys religion, it destroys states, it destroys families. Any scourge is preferable." - Martin Luther
"The way to prevent war is to bend every energy toward preventing it, not to proceed by the dubious indirection of preparing for it." - Max Lerner, fully Maxwell "Max" Alan Lerner, aka Mikhail Lerner
"War is the business of barbarians." - Napoleon Bonaparte, Napoleon I
"We must laugh at man to avoid crying for him." - Napoleon Bonaparte, Napoleon I
"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." - Nelson Mandela, fully Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela
"War is an invention of the human mind. The human mind can invent peace with justice." - Norman Cousins
"The war between being and nothingness is the underlying illness of the twentieth century. Boredom slays more of existence than war." - Norman Mailer, fully Norman Kingsley Mailer
"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." - Norman Thomas, fully Norman Mattoon Thomas
"Life is a manifestation of love, and a warrior must always be more focused on promoting peace than on provoking war." - Paulo Coelho
"Peace is not just the absence of war. It involves mutual respect and confidence between peoples and nations. It involves collaboration and binding agreements. Like a cathedral, peace must be constructed patiently and with unshakable faith." - Pope John Paul II, born Karol Józef Wojtyła, aka Saint John Paul the Great NULL
"If you are asked, what is more ancient than gods? It is fear and hope." - Pythagoras, aka Pythagoras of Samos or Pythagoras the Samian NULL