This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"All diplomacy is a continuation of war by other means." - Zhou En-lai, also Chou En Lai
"The most disadvantageous peace is better than the most just war." - Desiderius Erasmus Roterodamus, sometimes known as Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam
"War is so cruel a business that it befits beasts and not men… so pestilential that it brings with it general blight upon morals, so iniquitous that is usually conducted by the worst bandits, so impious that it has no accord with Christ." - Desiderius Erasmus Roterodamus, sometimes known as Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam
"A person [man] who experiences no genuine satisfaction in life does not want peace. People court war to escape meaninglessness and boredom to be relieved of fear and frustration." - Nels F. S. Ferré, fully Nels Fredrick Solomon Ferré
"Every war of the future will be a war of religion, for no country will go to war till it can give its cause the color of a Crusade and so secure for its maintenance absolute loyalty of a heroic quality in the whole population." - W. R. Forrester, fully William Roxburgh Forrester
"War is the greatest of all the awful and complex moral situations of the world - second only to the final judgment day… It is a moral pestilence. It is wrong on both sides." - P. T. Forsyth, fully Peter Taylor Forsyth
"Is there really as much difference as we think between the Aztec human sacrifices to their gods and the modern human sacrifices in war to the idols of nationalism and the sovereign state?" - Erich Fromm, fully Erich Seligmann Fromm
"There's never been a true war that wasn't fought between two sets of people who were certain they were in the right. The really dangerous people believe they are doing whatever they are doing solely and only because it is without question the right thing to do. And that is what makes them dangerous." - Neil Gaiman, fully Neil Richard Gaiman
"A soldier is a man whose business it is to kill those who never offended him, and who are the innocent martyrs of other men’s iniquities. Whatever may become of the abstract question of the justifiableness of war, it seems impossible that the soldier should not be a depraved and unnatural thing." - William Godwin
"We shall never stop war, whatever machinery we may devise, until we have learned to think always, with a sort of desperate urgency and an utter self-identification, of single human beings." - Victor Gollancz, fully Sir Victor Gollancz
"War is at first like a young girl with whom every man desires to flirt. And at the last is an old woman. All who meet her feel grieved and hurt." - Samuel ha-Nagid, born Samuel ibn Naghrela or Naghrillah
"The evolution of consciousness requires a wide range of opportunities and a playing field that affords almost unlimited options for development. If human life represents a learning process, then society is the ideal school that affords an extremely wide range of options for numerous levels of consciousness to develop, progress, define, identify, and grasp endless subtleties as well as learn more gross lessons. The ego is extremely tenacious and therefore often seems to require extreme conditions before it lets go of a positionality. It often takes the collective experience of millions of people over many centuries to learn even what appears upon examination to be a simple and obvious truth, namely, that peace is better than war or love is better than hate." - David R. Hawkins, fully David Ramon Hawkins
"Force and fraud are in war the two cardinal virtues." - Thomas Hobbes
"The doctrine of original sin is a theological perversion of natural fact. It is a fact that all human beings begin life with an equipment of instincts, impulses, and desires, at war with one another and often out of harmony with the realities of eth physical, social, and spiritual world. Sin and the sense of sin will always be with us, to torture and weigh down; but… the religion of the future will try to prevent men’s being afflicted with the sense of sin, rather than encourage it, and then attempt to cure it." - Julian Huxley, fully Sir Julian Sorell Huxley
"What we need to discover in the social realm is the moral equivalent of war: something heroic that will speak to men as universally as war does, and yet will be compatible with their spiritual selves as war has proved itself to be incompatible." - William James
"Passive resistance is a sport for gentleman (and ladies) – just like the pursuit of war, a heroic enterprise for the ruling classes but a grievous burden for the rest." - Kenneth Kaunda, fully Kenneth David Kaunda
"War is just like bush-clearing – the moment you stop, the jungle comes back even thicker, but for a little while you can plant and grow a crop in the ground you have won at such a terrible cost." - Kenneth Kaunda, fully Kenneth David Kaunda
"Peace is not merely the absence of war, but the presence of justice." - Martin Luther King, Jr.
"So when in this day I see the leaders of nations again talking peace while preparing for war, I take fearful pause." - Martin Luther King, Jr.
"The source of peace is within us; so also the source of war. And the real enemy is within us, and not outside. The source of war is not the existence of nuclear weapons or other arms. It is the minds of human beings who decide to push the button and to use those arms out of hatred, anger or greed." - Dalai Lama, born Tenzin Gyatso NULL
"Prayer is likely to be undervalued by all but wise people because it is silent and so secret. We are often deceived into thinking that noise is more important than silence. War sounds far more important than the noisesless growing of a crop of what, yet the silent wheat feeds millions, while war destroys them. Nobody but God knows how often prayers have changed the course of history... The highest communion is not asking God for things for ourselves, but letting Him flow down through us, out over the world - in endless benediction." - Frank Charles Laubach
"Much of [Winston Churchill’s] strength as a war leader derived from this very habit of myth-making, of surrounding even the ordinary and the humdrum with enchantment. Like Shakespeare’s Glendower, he could “call spirits from the vast deep” – and the British believed in them." - Ronald Lewin, fully George Ronald Lewin
"We are in the grip of a scientific materialism, caught in a vicious cycle where our security today seems to depend on regimentation and weapons which will ruin us tomorrow… the intellectual achievements of great scientists are being perverted by the material exploitation of industry and war…I have lived to experience the early results of scientific materialism… have watched pride of workmanship leave and human character decline as efficiency of production lines increased… I have seen the science I worshipped and the aircraft I loved destroying the civilization I expected them to save." -
"In frontless war where there are no clear lines on the map to show victory and defeat, the only true measure of progress must be political and nonquantifiable: the impact on the enemy’s will to continue the fight." - Edward Luttwak, fully Edward Nicolae Luttwak
"In war, as it is waged now, with the enormous losses on both sides, both sides will lose. It is a form of mutual suicide; and I believe that the entire effort of modern society should be concentrated on an endeavor to outlaw war as a method of the solution of problems between nations." - Douglas MacArthur
"The history of failure in war can be summed up in two words: Too Late." - Douglas MacArthur
"The next great advance in the evolution of civilization cannot take place until war is abolished." - Douglas MacArthur
"It is better to win the peace and to lose the war." - Bob Marley
"The only alternative to war is peace and the only road to peace is negotiations." - Golda Meir, originally named Goldie Mabovitch, later Goldie Myerson
"The most excellent jihad [holy war, inner struggle that transforms your character] is that for the conquest of the self." - Muhammad, also spelled Mohammad, Mohammed or Mahomet, full name Muhammad Ibn `Abd Allāh Ibn `Abd al-Muttalib NULL
"Eternal peace is a dream, and not even a beautiful one. War is a part of God’s world order. In it are developed the noblest virtues of man: courage and abnegation, dutifulness and self-sacrifice. Without war the world would sink into materialism." - Helmuth von Moltke the Elder, fully Helmuth Karl Bernhard Graf von Molke
"There was never a war that wasn’t inward." - Marianne Moore
"Peace cannot be limited to a mere absence of war, the result of an ever precarious balance of forces. No, peace is something built up day after day, in the pursuit of an order intended by God, which implies a more perfect form of justice among men and women." - Pope Paul VI, born Giovanni Battista Enrico Antonio Maria Montini NULL
"The theory of war as an apt and proportionate means of solving international conflicts is now out of date." - Pope Pius XII, born Eugenio Marìa Giuseppe Giovanni Pacelli NULL
"If the great religions continue to waste their energies in a fratricidal war instead of looking upon themselves as friendly partners in the supreme task of nourishing the spiritual life of mankind, the swift advance of secular humanism and moral materialism is assured." - Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, fully Sir or Dr. Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan
"You can no more win a war than you can win an earthquake." - Jeanette Rankin
"War is one of the scourges with which it has pleased God to afflict men." - Cardinal Richelieu, Armand Jean du Plessis de Richelieu, Cardinal-Duc de Richelieu
"Appeasement does not always lead to war; sometimes it leads to surrender." - William Safire, fully William Lewis Safire
"We are made not only individually, but nationally. We check manslaughter and isolated murders; but what of war and the much-vaunted crime of slaughtering whole peoples?… Deeds that would be punished by loss of life when committed in secret are praised by us because uniformed generals have carried them out." -
"History offers examples of winning in diplomacy after losing in war." - Yoshida Shigeru
"There are two ways of avoiding war: one is to satisfy everyone’s desire, the other, to content oneself with the good. The former is not possible due to the limitations of the world and therefore there remains this second alternative of contentment." - Unto Tähtinen
"The aim and end of war is murder; the weapons employed in war are espionage, treachery and the encouragement of treachery, the ruining of a country, the plundering and robbing of its inhabitants for the maintenance of the army, and trickery and lying which all appear under the heading of the art of war. The military world is characterized by the absence of freedom – in other words, a rigorous discipline – enforced inactivity, ignorance, cruelty, debauchery, and drunkenness." - Leo Tolstoy, aka Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy or Tolstoi