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Quotes about war and peace

540 quotes from 231 people

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At eleven o’clock this morning came to an end the cruellest and most terrible War that has ever scourged mankind. I hope we may say that thus, this fateful morning, came to an end all wars.
David Lloyd George1863–1945Speech in the House of Commons (11 November 1918)
Beautiful that war and all its deeds of carnage, must in time be utterly lost;
That the hands of the sisters Death and Night incessantly softly wash again and ever again, this soiled world.
Walt Whitman1819–1892Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919), Drum-Taps. Reconciliation
They wrote in the old days that it is sweet and fitting to die for ones country. But in modern war there is nothing sweet nor fitting in your dying. You will die like a dog for no good reason.
Ernest Hemingway1899–1961Notes on the Next War (1935)
- Patriotism
All the business of war, and indeed all the business of life, is to endeavour to find out what you don’t know by what you do; that’s what I called “guessing what was at the other side of the hill.”
Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington1769–1852Remark to John Wilson Croker (4 September 1852), in L. J. Jennings (ed.), The Croker Papers
- Knowledge
I made one great mistake in my life⁠—when I signed the letter to President Roosevelt recommending that atom bombs be made; but there was some justification⁠—the danger that the Germans would make them.
Albert Einstein1879–1955Recorded by Linus Pauling, “Note to Self regarding a meeting with Albert Einstein. November 16, 1954”
We can gain no lasting peace if we approach it with suspicion and mistrust or with fear. We can gain it only if we proceed with the understanding, the confidence, and the courage which flow from conviction.
Franklin D. Roosevelt1882–1945Fourth inaugural address (1945)
Nuclear weapons are like a rifle hanging on the wall in a play. We did not write the play, we are not staging it and we do not know what the author intends. Anyone could take the rifle from the wall at any time.
Mikhail Gorbachev1931–2022What Is at Stake Now (2020)
May the conscience and the common sense of the peoples be awakened, so that we may reach a new stage in the life of nations, where people will look back on war as an incomprehensible aberration of their forefathers!
Albert Einstein1879–1955The World As I See It (1949)
I have always said that a conference was held for one reason only, to give everybody a chance to get sore at everybody else. Sometimes it takes two or three conferences to scare up a war, but generally one will do it.
Will Rogers1879–1935Daily Telegram number 2159, Mr. Rogers Has An Idea How Conferences End (5 July 1933)
- Comedy
By its very nature, non-violence cannot ‘seize’ power, nor can that be its goal. But non-violence can do more; it can effectively control and guide power without capturing the machinery of government. That is its beauty.
Mahatma Gandhi1869–1948Young India (Feb. 7, 1931) p. 162
- Power
A conquering army on the border will not be stopped by eloquence.
Otto von Bismarck1815–1898Speech to North German Reichstag (24 September 1867)
The victor will always be the judge, and the vanquished the accused.
Hermann Göring1893–1946Nuremberg Diary (1947), p. 4 (1995 edition)
- Justice
No protracted war can fail to endanger the freedom of a democratic country.
Alexis de Tocqueville1805–1859Democracy in America, Volume II (1840), Book Three, Chapter XXII.
- Freedom
My argument is that War makes rattling good history; but Peace is poor reading.
Thomas Hardy1840–1928The Dynasts (1904–1908), Pt. II, sc. v, Spirit Sinister
- History
I do not find it easy to send the flower of our youth, our finest young men, into battle.
Lyndon B. Johnson1908–1973(28 July 1965)
- Youth