C. S. Lewis Quotes

Man invents war. Man discovers peace. He invents war from without. He discovers peace from within. War man throws. Peace man sows. The smile of war is the flood of human blood. The smile of peace is the love, below, above.

So war and peace start in the human heart. Whether that heart is open or whether that heart closes has global implications.

Peace on earth would mean the end of civilization as we know it.

The havoc wrought by war, which one compares with the havoc wrought by nature, is not an unavoidable fate before which man stands helpless. The natural forces that are the cause of war are human passions, which it lies in our power to change. What are culture and civilization if not the taming of blind forces within us as well as in nature?

War may sometimes be a necessary evil. But no matter how necessary, it is always an evil, never a good. We will not learn how to live together in peace by killing each other's children.

Nations like individuals, when driven to choose between desperate courses, might at times be compelled to take the chance of destruction, often destroying themselves or suffering irreparable harm.

Wars: You know how you start, but you never know how you end.

By the way, two wars are in an endless state of sorrow. Egypt about burned to the ground and all you people care about is my bullshit... Pathetic. Shame, shame shame

Women tend to be more interested in reconciliation. A Kenyan woman leader said to me, "You know, in a war, men and women want different things. The men care a lot about territory. And they care where the borders are. And they want this whole state. The women," she said, "they want a safe place." And she put her fingers like this, "They want a safe place for their children to go to school without being shot, for their daughters to not be raped."

Human beings seem unable to live without war, but they are also unable to live without love.

If civilization has an opposite, it is war. Of these two things, you have either one, or the other. Not both.

It seems to me that there are two great enemies of peace - fear and selfishness.

I'm not a pacifist. I think the suffering of innocent people can be a catalyst for moral action. But empathy puts too much weight on the scale in favor of war. Empathy can really lead to violence.

You can't come away with this cosmic perspective thinking that you are better than others and want to fight. That's why you'll never have astrophysicists leading nations into war.

War makes thieves and peace hangs them.

As a result of my philosophy, I wasn't even upset about Hitler. I was willing to go to war to knock him off, but I didn't hate him. I hated what he was doing.

We make war that we may live in peace.

War will exist until that distant day when the conscientious objector enjoys the same reputation and prestige that the warrior does today.

When life is victorious, there is birth; when it is thwarted, there is death. A warrior is always engaged in a life-and-death struggle for Peace.

Alfred Nobel's discoveries are characteristic; powerful explosives can help men perform admirable tasks. They are also a means to terrible destruction in the hands of the great criminals who lead peoples to war.

You either get tired fighting for peace, or you die.

We know more about war than we know about peace, more about killing than we know about living.

The alternative to peace is war, which will expose everyone to mass casualties, misery and a loss of perspective for many years to come.

I think 'Make love, not war' might be the most profound statement that's ever been made.

Thus, it was to seek true civilization and true justice for all the peoples of the world, and to view this as the destruction of personal freedom and respect is to be assailed by the hatred and emotion of war, and to make hasty judgments.