War Prevention Quotes

Dearest Madam: We your servants join together and thoughts it better to write you a nice loving letter which will tell you about all our wishes. We wish to have your laws in our towns … Plenty wars here in our country. Plenty murder and plenty idol worshippers …. We have spoken to the English consul plenty times about having an English government here. We never have an answer from you, so we wish to write you ourselves.

In vain do they worship peace at home, who cannot defend themselves against foreigners.

I would like to see invented a substance or a machine with such terrible power of mass destruction that war would thereby be made impossible forever.

I should like to express the appreciation of countless Germans, who regard me as their spokesman, for the wise and beneficial public support which you have given to a policy that we all hope will contribute to the enduring pacification of Europe. Just as we are fanatically determined to defend ourselves against attack, so do we reject the idea of taking the initiative in bringing about a war. I am convinced that no one who fought in the front trenches during the world war, no matter in what European country, desires another conflict.

I am totally against the war but violence is part of mankind and it's going to happen, but as musicians I think we've got to step up and say 'come on'.

There was nothing I knew that would indicate that if we could do it [create an atomic bomb], they [the Germans] couldn’t do it. Therefore I thought it was very important to try and cooperate. I felt I should do it in order to protect civilization. …

It is entirely clear that there is only one way in which great wars can be permanently prevented, and that is the establishment of an international government with a monopoly of serious armed force.

If we can reduce the risk of friction likely to lead to war, this is probably all we can reasonably hope to achieve.

Against war one might say that it makes the victor stupid and the vanquished malicious. In its favor, that in producing these two effects it barbarizes, and so makes the combatants more natural. For culture it is a sleep or a wintertime, and man emerges from it stronger for good and for evil.

History is filled with tragic examples of wars that result from diplomatic impasse. Whether in our local communities or in international relations, the skillful use of our communicative capacities to negotiate and resolve differences is the first evidence of human wisdom.

I am Catalan. Catalonia had the first democratic Parliament much before England. And it was in my country where there was a beginning of united nations. At that time—the eleventh Century—they met in Toulouse—today in France—to speak about peace, because the Catalonian people of that time were already against war. That is why, the United Nations, which work only for the ideal of peace, are in my heart, because everything relating to peace goes directly there.

The strength of a civilization is not measured by its ability to fight wars, but rather by its ability to prevent them.

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

War should be the last resort, not the first response.

Our shared historical experiences led myself and Mitterrand to the decision that we must do everything to prevent further wars.

There has never been a war yet which, if the facts had been put calmly before the ordinary folk, could not have been prevented. The common man is the greatest protection against war.

Shoot the dictator and prevent the war? But the dictator is merely the tip of the whole festering boil of social pus from which dictators emerge; shoot him and there'll be another one along in a minute. Shoot him too? Why not shoot everyone and invade Poland?

A certain degree of preparation for war ... affords also the best security for the continuance of peace.

You cannot prevent and prepare for war at the same time.

There's no such thing as an anti-war film.

In the 21st century nations don't invade other nations.

It’s not a very nice solution, but a wall is a hell of a lot better than a war

You cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war.

It is important also to consider, that the surest means of avoiding war is to be prepared for it in peace.

This is a time for action — not for war, but for mobilization of every bit of peace machinery. It is also a time for facing the fact that you cannot use a weapon, even though it is the weapon that gives you greater strength than other nations, if it is so destructive that it practically wipes out large areas of land and great numbers of innocent people.