Thomas Paine Quotes

That there are men in all countries who get their living by war, and by keeping up the quarrels of Nations is as shocking as it is true.

The State thrives on war - unless, of course, it is defeated and crushed - expands on it, glories in it.

Come you masters of war You that build all the guns You that build the death planes You that build the big bombs You that hide behind walls You that hide behind desks I just want you to know I can see through your masks.

It has too often been too easy for rulers and governments to incite man to war.

I don't like war. I particularly don't like the celebration of war, which I think the administration is a little bit guilty of.

We decry violence all the time in this country, but look at our history. We were born in a violent revolution, and we've been in wars ever since. We're not a pacific people.

The old saying that war is a racket has taken on an even more shameful meaning.

Remember that politics, colonialism, imperialism and war also originate in the human brain.

I hate those men who would send into war youth to fight and die for them; the pride and cowardice of those old men, making their wars that boys must die.

What this country needs what every country needs occasionally is a good hard bloody war to revive the vice of patriotism on which its existence as a nation depends.

To make a people great it is necessary to send them to battle even if you have to kick them in the ass.

There have been many examples in the world of people doing crazy things because they want to keep war going.

The sponsors of war closely resemble the weapons they create. And smart bombs, depleted uranium, land mines, rockets and tanks, rather than protect 'widows and orphans and strangers at the gate', are designed precisely to create 'widows and orphans', to transform strangers into enemies and enemies into corpses.

Patriotism is nationalism, and always leads to war.

To fight, you must be brutal and ruthless, and the spirit of ruthless brutality will enter into the very fibre of national life.

Oh you tell me that there's danger to the land you call your own, And you watch them build the war machine right beside your home, And you tell me that you're ready to go marchin' to the war, I know you're set for fighting, but what are you fighting for?

Americans ... have wrought a country that has after more than two centuries yet to evidence a single year during which it was not making war upon someone, somewhere, for some reason.

The very existence of armaments and great armies psychologically accustoms us to accept the philosophy of militarism. They inevitably increase fear and hate in the world.

Modern wars are seldom fought without hatred between nations; this serves more or less as a substitute for hatred between individuals.

The root of the evil is not the construction of new, more dreadful weapons. It is the spirit of conquest.

A state always calls itself fatherland when it is ready for murder.

If only the authorities could be made to realize that the forces leading them on in the armament race are just insane.

It is idle to say that nations can struggle to outdo each other in building armaments and never use them. History demonstrates the contrary, and we have but to go back to the last war to see the appalling effect of nations competing in great armaments.

This is a war universe. War all the time. That is its nature. There may be other universes based on all sorts of other principles, but ours seems to be based on war and games.

I do not wish a foreign army to spill the blood of my people.