This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"The monks have no sadness. They wage war on the devil as though they were performing a dance." - John Chrysotom
"I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones." - Albert Einstein
"You cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war." - Albert Einstein
"Weapons didn't defeat slavery. Nor did war, nor politics, nor even the Emancipation Proclamation. Slavery fell because it offended the human spirit, broke the human heart, and thus could not stand." - Aaron Freeman
"If we are to reach peace in this world and if we are to carry on a real war against war, we shall have to begin with the children; and if they will grow up in their natural innocence, we won't have to struggle; we won't have to pass fruitless idle resolutions, but we shall go from love to love and peace to peace, until at last all the corners of the world are covered with that peace and love for which consciously or unconsciously the whole world is hungering." -
"The seduction of war is insidious because so much of what we are told about it is true; It does create a sense of comradeship, which obliterates our alienation and makes us, for perhaps the only time of our life, feel we belong. War allows us to rise above our small stations in life. We find nobility in a cause and feelings of selflessness and even bliss. And at a time of soaring deficits and financial scandals and the very deterioration of our domestic fabric, war is a fine diversion. War, for those who enter into combat, has a dark beauty, filled with the monstrous and the grotesque. The Bible calls it the "lust of the eye" and warns believers against it. War gives us a distorted sense of self; it gives us meaning." - Chris Hedges
"Every modern war has had its root in exploitation." - Helen Keller. aka Helen Adams Keller
"There's no honorable way to kill, no gentle way to destroy. There is nothing good in war. Except its ending." - Abraham Lincoln
"It is fatal to enter any war without the will to win it." - Douglas MacArthur
"The only way human beings can win a war is to prevent it." - George Marshall, fully George Catlett Marshall, Jr.
"Most teachers do not like controversy. A study some years ago found that 92 percent of teachers did not initiate discussion of controversial issues, 89 percent didn't discuss controversial issues when students brought them up, and 79 percent didn't believe they should. Among the topics that teachers felt children were interested in discussing but that most teachers believed should not be discussed in the classroom were the Vietnam War, politics, race relations, nuclear war, religion, and family problems such as divorce." - Jack L. Nelson & William B. Stanley
"Religion and science both profess peace (and the sincerity of the professors is not being doubted), but each always turns out to have a dominant part in any war that is going or contemplated." - Howard Nemerov
"When war is declared, truth is the first casualty." - Arthur Ponsonby, 1st Baron Ponsonby of Shulbrede
"Why will you take by force what you may obtain by love? Why will you destroy us who supply you with food? What can you get by war?... We are unarmed, and willing to give you what you ask, if you come in friendly manner... I am not so simple as not to know it is better to eat good meat, sleep comfortably, live quietly with my women and children, laugh and be merry with the English, and being their friend, trade for their copper and hatchets, than to run away from them... Take away your guns and swords, the cause of all our jealousy, or you may die in the same manner." - Powhatan, proper name was Wahunsenacawh, also spelled Wahunsonacock NULL
"War ends nothing." - Mongo Proverbs
"If you sow pride, you will reap war." - Philippine Proverbs, aka Philipino, Filipino, Ilocano and Tagalog Proverbs, Salawikain or Sawikain
"Before going to war say one prayer, before going to sea say two, before getting married – three." - Polish Proverbs
"The opposite of war is not peace; it is creation." - Jonathan Larson
"Sacredness of human life! The world has never believed it! It has been with life that we settled our quarrels, won wives, gold, and land, defended ideas, imposed religions. We have held that a death toll was a necessary part of every human achievement, whether sport, war, or industry. A moment's rage over the horror of it; and we have sunk into indifference." -
"Let's face it. Let's talk sense to the American people. Let's tell them the truth, that there are no gains without pains, that we are now on the eve of great decisions, not easy decisions, like resistance when you're attacked, but along, patient, costly struggle which alone can assure triumph over the great enemies of man - war, poverty and tyranny - and the assaults upon human dignity which are the most grievous consequences of each." - Adlai Ewing Stevenson
"Let's face it. Let's talk sense to the American people. Let's tell them the truth, that there are no gains without pains, that we are now on the eve of great decisions, not easy decisions, like resistance when you're attacked, but along, patient, costly struggle which alone can assure triumph over the great enemies of man - war, poverty and tyranny - and the assaults upon human dignity which are the most grievous consequences of each." -
"Let's face it. Let's talk sense to the American people. Let's tell them the truth, that there are no gains without pains, that we are now on the eve of great decisions, not easy decisions, like resistance when you're attacked, but along, patient, costly struggle which alone can assure triumph over the great enemies of man - war, poverty and tyranny - and the assaults upon human dignity which are the most grievous consequences of each." -
"We used to wonder where war lived, what it was that made it so vile. And now we realize that we know where it lives, that it is inside ourselves." - Albert Camus
"In a state of war each sincere citizen feels responsibility to society in the abstract, and none to the people he kills." - Alex Comfort, fully Alexander Comfort
"War can protect; it cannot create." - Alfred North Whitehead
"We believe that the most basic of all changes in human social organization have been the result of three processes. Starting 8,000 to 10,000 years ago, agriculture was invented in the Middle East – probably by a woman. That’s the First Wave. Roughly 250 years ago, the Industrial Revolution triggered a Second Wave of change. Brute-force technologies amplified human and animal muscle power and gave rise to an urban, factory-centered way of life. Sometime after World War II, a gigantic Third Wave began transforming the planet, based on tools that amplify mind rather than muscle. The Third Wave is bigger, deeper and faster than the other two. This is the civilization of the computer, the satellite and Internet." - Alvin Toffler
"In a civil war the firing line is invisible; it passes through the hearts of men." - Antoine de Saint-Exupery
"War is not an adventure. It is a disease." - Antoine de Saint-Exupery
"Men of sense often learn from their enemies. Prudence is the best safeguard. This principle cannot be leaned from a friend, but an enemy extorts it immediately. It is from their foes, not their friends, that cities learn the lesson of building high walls and ships of war. And this lesson saves their children, their homes, and their properties." - Aristophanes NULL
"It is more difficult to organize peace than to win a war; but the fruits of victory will be lost if the peace is not well organized." - Aristotle NULL
"War must be for the sake of peace, business for the sake of leisure, and all things necessary and useful for the sake of things noble." - Aristotle NULL
"The most persistent sound which reverberates through man's history is the beating of war drums." - Arthur Koestler
"A great war always creates more scoundrels than it kills." - Author Unknown NULL
"The only winnable nuclear war is the one we prevent." - Author Unknown NULL
"War is like love, it always finds a way." - Bertolt Brecht
"From childhood upwards, everything is done to make the minds of men and women conventional and sterile. And if, by misadventure, some spark of imagination remains, its unfortunate possessor is considered unsound and dangerous, worthy only of contempt in time of peace and of prison or a traitor’s death in time of war." - Bertrand Russell, fully Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell