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Quotes about war and peace

540 quotes from 231 people

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I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. My sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history, naval architecture, navigation, commerce and agriculture in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry, and porcelain.
John Adams1735–1826Letter to Abigail Adams (12 May 1780)
We’re in a war, dammit! We’re going to have to offend somebody!
John Adams1735–1826
Great is the guilt of an unnecessary war.
John Adams1735–1826
From hence, let fierce contending nations know,
What dire effects from civil discord flow.
Joseph Addison1672–1719Cato, A Tragedy (1713), Act V, scene iv
Armageddon is not a foreign policy.
Madeleine Albright1937–2022Speech at Harvard forum (April 11, 2007)
- Politics
In the name of the great Jehovah, and the Continental Congress!
Ethan Allen1738–1789A Narrative of Colonel Ethan Allen’s Captivity (1779), on demanding the surrender of Fort Ticonderoga (10 May 1775)
- America
The arms race is a race between nuclear weapons and ourselves.
Martin Amis1949–2023Einstein’s Monsters (1987), “Introduction: Thinkability”
Weapons are like money; no one knows the meaning of enough.
Martin Amis1949–2023Einstein’s Monsters (1987), “Introduction: Thinkability”
- Money
You can do a lot with diplomacy, but with diplomacy backed up by force you can get a lot more done.
Kofi Annan1938–2018Press conference regarding the use of force to gain compliance from Saddam Hussein (24 February 1998)
- Politics
For war from now on is the Women’s affair.
Aristophanes446–386 BCLysistrata (411 BC), spoken by LysistrataIn context
- Women
If, when yarn we are winding, It chances to tangle, then, as perchance you may know, through the skein
This way and that still the spool we keep passing till it is finally clear all again:
So to untangle the War and its errors, ambassadors out on all sides we will send
This way and that, here, there and round about⁠—soon you will find that the
War has an end.
Aristophanes446–386 BCLysistrata (411 BC), spoken by LysistrataIn context
- Politics
We make war that we may live in peace.
Aristotle384–322 BCNicomachean Ethics, Book X, 1177b.4
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.
Matthew Arnold1822–1888Dover Beach (1867), st. 4In context
Peace at Home, Peace in the World.
Mustafa Kemal Atatürk1881–1938His maxim, later the motto of the Republic of Turkey; as quoted in Uluğ İğdemir, Atatürk (1963), p. 200
Unless a nation’s life faces peril, war is murder.
Mustafa Kemal Atatürk1881–1938“Adana Çiftçileriyle Konuşma” (16 March 1923); English translation as delivered in an address by Talat S. Halman (10 November 1995), quoted in The Turkish Times (1 December 1995)