Dar Williams Quotes

War can be avoided, and it ought to be avoided. I want no war.

The great lesson to be learned in the battered towns of England and the ruined cities of Germany is that the best way to win a war is to prevent it from occurring.

To discover a system for the avoidance of war is a vital need of our civilisation.

I consider even a victorious war as an evil, from which statesmanship must endeavor to spare nations.

War represents the supreme failure of nations to resolve their differences. From a strictly pragmatic standpoint, it is the most inefficient waste of lives and resources ever conceived.

More than just an end to war, we want an end to the beginnings of all wars.

The way to prevent war is to bend every energy toward preventing it, not to proceed by the dubious indirection of preparing for it.

So let us persevere. Peace need not be impracticable, and war need not be inevitable. By defining our goal more clearly, by making it seem more manageable and less remote, we can help all peoples to see it, to draw hope from it, and to move irresistibly toward it.

There is no time left for anything but to make peace work a dimension of our every waking activity.

I spent a lot of time when I was president, trying to end wars, prevent killing, and promote understanding. What I have seen is that peace works better than conflict, and one of the best manifestations of it is in travel and tourism.

We can achieve much more in peace than we can ever achieve in these needless, unconstitutional, undeclared wars.

If we do not want to die together in war, we must learn to live together in peace.

The fact that war belongs to the past, does not mean it has to be part of the future.

Today the real test of America's power and wisdom is not our capacity to make war but our capacity to prevent it. Prevention must be our overriding objective. It can be done. Surrendering to the inevitability of combat only paves the way for its occurring.

The methods of peace propaganda which aim at establishing peace doctrine by argument and by creating a feeling favorable to peace in general seem to fall short of reaching the springs of human action and of dealing with the causes of the conduct which they seek to modify.

Preventing a war is tantamount to winning a war.

We should seek by all means in our power to avoid war, by analysing possible causes, by trying to remove them, by discussion in a spirit of collaboration and good will.

The duty of defense is maintain peace and avoid war.

... the greatest moral victory in the history of civilization if it actually keeps out of a war.

I have been apt to think that there has never been, nor ever will be, any such thing as a good war, or a bad peace.

Whenever you have a possibility of going in two ways, either for peace or for war, for peaceful methods of for military methods, in the present age there is a strong prejudice for the peaceful ones. War seldom ever leads to good results.

No achievement can be higher than that of working in harmony with other nations so that the lash of war may be lifted from our backs and a peace of lasting friendship descend upon us.

I am the friend of peace and mean to preserve it for America so long as I am able. . . . No course of my choosing or of their (nations at war) will lead to war. War can come only by the wilful acts and aggressions of others.

Maybe I couldn't be dafter, But I keep wondering if this time we settle our differences before a war instead of after.

It is very important for I think those of us who desperately want peace, who see war as, at some level, a break-down, a manifestation of human weakness, to understand that sometimes it’s also necessary – and you know, to – to be able to balance two ideas at the same time; that we are constantly striving for peace, we are doubling up on our diplomacy, we are going to actively engage, we are going to try to see the world through other people’s eyes and not just our own.