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Quotes about war and peace

540 quotes from 231 people

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Cannot swords be turned to plowshares? Can we and all nations not live in peace? In our obsession with antagonisms of the moment, we often forget how much unites all the members of humanity.
Ronald Reagan1911–2004Address to United Nations General Assembly (21 September 1987)
I urge you to beware the temptation of pride⁠—the temptation of blithely declaring yourselves above it all and label both sides equally at fault, to ignore the facts of history and the aggressive impulses of an evil empire, to simply call the arms race a giant misunderstanding and thereby remove yourself from the struggle between right and wrong and good and evil.
Ronald Reagan1911–2004The Evil Empire (1983)
- Good & Evil
We are not youth any longer. We don’t want to take the world by storm. We are fleeing. We fly from ourselves. From our life. We were eighteen and had begun to love life and the world; and we had to shoot it to pieces.
Erich Maria Remarque1898–1970All Quiet on the Western Front (1929), Chapter VIn context
- Youth
It is just as much a matter of chance that I am still alive as that I might have been hit. In a bomb-proof dug-out I may be smashed to atoms and in the open may survive ten hours’ bombardment unscathed. No soldier outlives a thousand chances. But every soldier believes in Chance and trusts his luck.
Erich Maria Remarque1898–1970All Quiet on the Western Front (1929), Chapter VIIn context
- Luck
A word of command has made these silent figures our enemies; a word of command might transform them into our friends.
Erich Maria Remarque1898–1970All Quiet on the Western Front (1929), Chapter VIIIIn context
- Enemies
Why do they never tell us that you are just poor devils like us, that your mothers are just as anxious as ours, and that we have the same fear of death, and the same dying and the same agony⁠—. Forgive me, comrade; how could you be my enemy?
Erich Maria Remarque1898–1970All Quiet on the Western Front (1929), Chapter IXIn context
- Enemies
A hospital alone shows what war is.
Erich Maria Remarque1898–1970All Quiet on the Western Front (1929), Chapter XIn context
- Health
He fell in October 1918, on a day that was so quiet and still on the whole front, that the army report confined itself to the single sentence: All quiet on the Western Front.
Erich Maria Remarque1898–1970All Quiet on the Western Front (1929), Chapter XIIIn context
Take the diplomacy out of war and the thing would fall flat in a week.
Will Rogers1879–1935
When the Judgment Day comes civilization will have an alibi, “I never took a human life, I only sold the fellow the gun to take it with.”
Will Rogers1879–1935Daily Telegram #926, A General Digging Out Of Old War Contracts (15 July 1929)
- Guns
You can’t say civilization don’t advance, however, for in every war they kill you in a new way.
Will Rogers1879–1935The Autobiography of Will Rogers (1949)
- Comedy
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
On this tenth day of June, 1940, the hand that held the dagger has struck it into the back of its neighbor.
Franklin D. Roosevelt1882–1945Noting Italy’s declaration of war against France on that day, during the commencement address at the University of Virginia, Charlottesville (June 10, 1940); reported in The Public Papers and Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt, 1940 (1941), p. 263
We must be the great arsenal of Democracy.
Franklin D. Roosevelt1882–1945The Great Arsenal of Democracy (1940)
- Democracy
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)