Utah Phillips Quotes

I'm basically a pacifist.

We are advocates of the abolition of war, we do not want war; but war can only be abolished through war.

Peace is the alternative to war, and nonviolence should be seen as the antidote to violence, not simply as its opposite. Nonviolence is more concerned with saving life than with saving face.

No more war, war never again! Peace, it is peace which must guide the destinies of people and of all mankind.

It is no longer a choice between violence and nonviolence in this world; it's nonviolence or nonexistence. That is where we are today.

I consider violence an uneconomical way of attaining an end. There are always better substitutes, though they may sometimes be a little less direct.

You don't fight for peace sister,' Nahara told me, 'You embrace it.

I would go to war with words, not weapons. I would die talking before I lifted a weapon.

A pacifist will often - at least nowadays - be an internationalist and vice versa. But history shows us that a pacifist need not think internationally.

I am a pacifist.

I'm a pacifist.

And when it is done, we ought to follow the example by disarming ourselves.

I am not only a pacifist but a militant pacifist. I am willing to fight for peace. Nothing will end war unless the people themselves refuse to go to war.

I'm against all war.

War will disappear only when men shall take no part whatever in violence and shall be ready to suffer every persecution that their abstention will bring them. It is the only way to abolish war.

My voice is still [i.e. silent] for war.

The peace of the man who has forsworn the use of the bullet seems to me not quite peace.

Unless now the world adopts nonviolence, it will spell certain suicide for mankind.

… the moral equivalent of war

Pacifism is patriotism.

I do hereby pledge myself never to enlist or enter into any army or navy, or to yield my voluntary support or sanction to the preparation for or prosecution of any war, by whomsoever or for whatsoever proposed, declared, or waged.

I did, in the presence of the Lord God, declare that I denied the wearing or drawing of a carnal sword, or any other outward weapon, against him or any man; and that I was sent of God to stand a witness against all violence, and against the works of darkness; and to turn people from darkness to light; and to bring them from the causes of war and fighting, to the peaceable gospel.

You cannot sit down at the negotiating table and still preach violence in the streets.

A sword in hand is a sure sign of a violent mind; but one does not become non-violent merely by throwing the sword away.

What shaped my politics regarding war and peace was Martin Luther King Jr., the most extraordinary person that I ever heard. And when he began to talk about the issues of war and peace with such eloquence and such passion, I was drawn to that like a magnet.