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; but when those who are concerned in the government of a country, make it their study to sow discord and cultivate predjudices between nations, it becomes the more unpardonable.

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

War is big business. It's a lot of money going to and fro, and unfortunately a lot of angst, and a lot of fear, and a lot of doubt. And eventually a lot of wonderful people, like soldiers, like men and women that are out there trying to do the best they can, they come back being wounded on many levels.

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.

War is a business in which a lot of people watch a few people get killed and are damn glad it wasn't them.

Many powerful people don't want peace, because they live off war.

War is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious.

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.

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

The munitions manufacturers and the war lords are in the saddle.

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.

Let's face it, war in its essence is another form of capitalism.

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.

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

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.

We pacifists have not ceased to point to the grave danger of armaments and to insist on their curtailment.

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

The unvarnished truth is that we have spent the last decade funding the machinery of war, and our children have been sacrificed.

War is the trade of Kings.

We cannot have peace if we are only concerned with peace. War is not an accident. It is the logical outcome of a certain way of life. If we want to attack war, we have to attack that way of life.

We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity. We weren't punctilious about locating and punishing only Hitler and his top officers. We carpet-bombed German cities; we killed civilians. That's war. And this is war.

One of the main purveyors of violence in this world has been this country.

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.