PEOPLE'S POWER: UNDI MALAYSIA - Imagining A Tastier Democracy

UNDI MALAYSIA - Imagining A Tastier Democracy

Remember when a lot of people all over town were going crazy over the BIG SURPRISE?

If you’re sick and tired of a broken democracy with no class, it’s time for something FRESH! Come UndiMsia! is our exploration into what a democracy should be – one with healthier values, better priorities, and that sense of integrity we’ve been missing so much.

WHAT WHAT?

Over the next 2 weeks, beginning tomorrow (Wed, 9 August) we will be introducing the candidates on our special FB page – some of these are personalities you already know and love. We feel they possess qualities for a unique brand of democracy for a better Malaysia. Watch never before seen recordings of them discussing their ideas, views, and vision.

AND THEN?

The elimination rounds begin!

YOU get to decide whose ideas best represent the kind of Malaysia we want to see. Just click “LIKE” on the photos and videos of your favourite candidate. Get your friends, neighbours, relatives, pets and rabbis to LIKE them too because every week, the candidates with the fewest number of LIKE’s will be eliminated!

Here’s how it will work:

Week 1 & 2: Two candidates introduced everyday

Week 3: Voting commences. 4 candidates eliminated.

Week 4: Voting continues. 3 candidates eliminated.

Week 5: Last chance to vote on Facebook! 3 candidates eliminated.

The final 10 remaining candidates will go on to compete at the Grand Finale on Malaysia Day (16 September 2011) at Leonardo’s in Bangsar, hosted by the FABULOUS Glamazonian Goddess, Shelah!!!

The show of the year kicks off at 7.30pm. Only YOU can decide who makes it to the finals, so get voting!

WHY SHOULD I GO TO THE EVENT?

- To be part of the FINAL vote and decide who wins the TASTY TITLE!

- To stuff your face with a delicious dinner specially prepared by Leonardo’s Dining Room and Wine Loft.

- To watch a one-night-only performance by the candidates and other special performances by guest stars!

- To pick up a unique booklet of stunning, never-before-published photography of the candidates. Each booklet contains a number of different drawings by Malaysian school children depicting their vision of a better democracy for Malaysia. Filled with passion and spirit, these booklets are not for sale and have been handmade exclusively for the event.

OMG! HOW MUCH AND WHERE CAN I BUY TICKETS??

Our formal invite to all Malaysians is downloadable here. Or you may contactmove@undimsia.com to purchase tickets at RM150 each. Alternatively you can also contact:

Ka Ea – 012 304 1806

Esther – 017 638 2836

Seez – 012 210 3677

Ticket price includes dinner, performances, a booklet and your pledge of support for a better Malaysia. What a bargain!

Your kind contribution to this event will be used to fund UndiMsia!’s voter empowerment initiatives throughout the country.

BE PART OF CHANGE!

MOVE WITH US: email move@UndiMsia.com to join us and check out FB/UndiMsia &Twitter@UndiMsia

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Mahatma Gandhi"s Quotations

Always aim at complete harmony of thought and word and deed. Always aim at purifying your thoughts and everything will be well.
Mahatma Gandhi

As long as you derive inner help and comfort from anything, keep it.
Mahatma Gandhi

Freedom is not worth having if it does not include the freedom to make mistakes.
Mahatma Gandhi

Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony.
Mahatma Gandhi

Hate the sin, love the sinner.
Mahatma Gandhi

Honest differences are often a healthy sign of progress.
Mahatma Gandhi

Honest disagreement is often a good sign of progress.
Mahatma Gandhi

I believe in equality for everyone, except reporters and photographers.
Mahatma Gandhi

I cannot teach you violence, as I do not myself believe in it. I can only teach you not to bow your heads before any one even at the cost of your life.
Mahatma Gandhi

I object to violence because when it appears to do good, the good is only temporary; the evil it does is permanent.
Mahatma Gandhi

I want freedom for the full expression of my personality.
Mahatma Gandhi

In the attitude of silence the soul finds the path in a clearer light, and what is elusive and deceptive resolves itself into crystal clearness. Our life is a long and arduous quest after Truth.
Mahatma Gandhi

Indolence is a delightful but distressing state; we must be doing something to be happy.
Mahatma Gandhi

It is better to be violent, if there is violence in our hearts, than to put on the cloak of nonviolence to cover impotence.
Mahatma Gandhi

It is unwise to be too sure of one's own wisdom. It is healthy to be reminded that the strongest might weaken and the wisest might err.
Mahatma Gandhi

One needs to be slow to form convictions, but once formed they must be defended against the heaviest odds.
Mahatma Gandhi

Strength does not come from physical capacity. It comes from an indomitable will.
Mahatma Gandhi

The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.
Mahatma Gandhi

Whatever you do will be insignificant, but it is very important that you do it.
Mahatma Gandhi

When I despair, I remember that all through history the ways of truth and love have always won. There have been tyrants, and murderers, and for a time they can seem invincible, but in the end they always fall. Think of it--always.
Mahatma Gandhi

You must be the change you want to see in the world.
Mahatma Gandhi

You must not lose faith in humanity. Humanity is an ocean; if a few drops of the ocean are dirty, the ocean does not become dirty.
Mahatma Gandhi

What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty or democracy?
Mahatma Gandhi, "Non-Violence in Peace and War"

Victory attained by violence is tantamount to a defeat, for it is momentary.
Mahatma Gandhi, 'Satyagraha Leaflet No. 13,' May 3, 1919

An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.
Mahatma Gandhi, (attributed)

Freedom is not worth having if it does not connote freedom to err. It passes my comprehension how human beings, be they ever so experienced and able, can delight in depriving other human beings of that precious right.
Mahatma Gandhi, 1931

I think it would be a good idea.
Mahatma Gandhi, when asked what he thought of Western civilization

We must become the change we want to see.
Mahatma Gandhi (1869 - 1948)

I do not want my house to be walled in on all sides and my windows to be stuffed. I want the cultures of all the lands to be blown about my house as freely as possible. But I refuse to be blown off my feet by any.
Mahatma Gandhi (1869 - 1948)

The outward freedom that we shall attain will only be in exact proportion to the inward freedom to which we may have grown at a given moment. And if this is a correct view of freedom, our chief energy must be concentrated on achieving reform from within.
Mahatma Gandhi (1869 - 1948)

It is better to be violent, if there is violence in our hearts, than to put on the cloak of nonviolence to cover impotence.
Mahatma Gandhi (1869 - 1948)

It is unwise to be too sure of one's own wisdom. It is healthy to be reminded that the strongest might weaken and the wisest might err.
Mahatma Gandhi (1869 - 1948)

In the attitude of silence the soul finds the path in a clearer light, and what is elusive and deceptive resolves itself into crystal clearness. Our life is a long and arduous quest after Truth.
Mahatma Gandhi (1869 - 1948)

Adaptability is not imitation. It means power of resistance and assimilation.
Mahatma Gandhi (1869 - 1948)

It is the quality of our work which will please God and not the quantity.
Mahatma Gandhi (1869 - 1948)

Honest differences are often a healthy sign of progress.
Mahatma Gandhi (1869 - 1948)

I am prepared to die, but there is no cause for which I am prepared to kill.
Mahatma Gandhi (1869 - 1948)

Famous Proverbs

If you refuse to be made straight when you are green, you will not be made straight when you are dry.
African Proverb

When you have given nothing, ask for nothing.
Albanian Proverb

Good habits result from resisting temptation.
Ancient Proverb

Dwell not upon thy weariness, thy strength shall be according to the measure of thy desire.
Arab Proverb

Examine what is said, not him who speaks.
Arab Proverb

Make your bargain before beginning to plow.
Arab Proverb

Don't make use of another's mouth unless it has been lent to you.
Belgian Proverb

Seize opportunity by the beard, for it is bald behind.
Bulgarian Proverb

Be not afraid of growing slowly, be afraid only of standing still.
Chinese Proverb

Do not employ handsome servants.
Chinese Proverb

Do not remove a fly from your friend's forehead with a hatchet.
Chinese Proverb

Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.
Chinese Proverb

He who asks is a fool for five minutes, but he who does not ask remains a fool forever.
Chinese Proverb

If you bow at all, bow low.
Chinese Proverb

Keep your broken arm inside your sleeve.
Chinese Proverb

Raise your sail one foot and you get ten feet of wind.
Chinese Proverb

The gem cannot be polished without friction, nor man perfected without trials.
Chinese Proverb

The palest ink is better than the best memory.
Chinese Proverb

To know the road ahead, ask those coming back.
Chinese Proverb

When you drink the water, remember the spring.
Chinese Proverb

When you have only two pennies left in the world, buy a loaf of bread with one, and a lily with the other.
Chinese Proverb

Do not protect yourself by a fence, but rather by your friends.
Czech Proverb

The big thieves hang the little ones.
Czech Proverb

When you go to buy, use your eyes, not your ears.
Czech Proverb

Ask advice only of your equals.
Danish Proverb

He who would leap high must take a long run.
Danish Proverb

A handful of patience is worth more than a bushel of brains.
Dutch Proverb

A full cup must be carried steadily.
English Proverb

Don't fall before you're pushed.
English Proverb

Use soft words and hard arguments.
English Proverb

Write down the advice of him who loves you, though you like it not at present.
English Proverb

Wait until it is night before saying that it has been a fine day.
French Proverb

A country can be judged by the quality of its proverbs.
German Proverb

Charity sees the need not the cause.
German Proverb

Never give advice unless asked.
German Proverb

Who begins too much accomplishes little.
German Proverb

First secure an independent income, then practice virtue.
Greek Proverb

Call on God, but row away from the rocks.
Indian Proverb

Keep five yards from a carriage, ten yards from a horse, and a hundred yards from an elephant; but the distance one should keep from a wicked man cannot be measured.
Indian Proverb

Praise youth and it will prosper.
Irish Proverb

You've got to do your own growing, no matter how tall your grandfather was.
Irish Proverb

If you scatter thorns, don't go barefoot.
Italian Proverb

It is not enough to aim; you must hit.
Italian Proverb

The best armor is to keep out of range.
Italian Proverb

Don't stay long when the husband is not at home.
Japanese Proverb

Fall seven times, stand up eight.
Japanese Proverb

If you believe everything you read, better not read.
Japanese Proverb

Never rely on the glory of the morning nor the smiles of your mother-in-law.
Japanese Proverb

One kind word can warm three winter months.
Japanese proverb

The reverse side also has a reverse side.
Japanese Proverb

When the character of a man is not clear to you, look at his friends.
Japanese Proverb

Ask about your neighbors, then buy the house.
Jewish Proverb

Don't be sweet, lest you be eaten up; don't be bitter, lest you be spewed out.
Jewish Proverb

Don't live in a town where there are no doctors.
Jewish Proverb

Don't look for more honor than your learning merits.
Jewish Proverb

He that can't endure the bad, will not live to see the good.
Jewish Proverb

If God lived on earth, people would break his windows.
Jewish Proverb

Make sure to be in with your equals if you're going to fall out with your superiors.
Jewish Proverb

Rejoice not at thine enemy's fall - but don't rush to pick him up either.
Jewish Proverb

What you don't see with your eyes, don't invent with your mouth.
Jewish Proverb

Worries go down better with soup than without.
Jewish Proverb

Do not throw the arrow which will return against you.
Kurdish Proverb

If the wind will not serve, take to the oars.
Latin Proverb

It is the part of a good shepherd to shear his flock, not to skin it.
Latin Proverb

Never give a child a sword.
Latin Proverb

A smiling face is half the meal.
Latvian Proverb

Don't think there are no crocodiles because the water is calm.
Malayan Proverb

Trumpet in a herd of elephants; crow in the company of cocks; bleat in a flock of goats.
Malayan Proverb

Never criticize a man until you've walked a mile in his moccasins.
Native American Proverb

Hold a true friend with both hands.
Nigerian Proverb

If you wish your merit to be known, acknowledge that of other people.
Oriental Proverb

Use your enemy's hand to catch a snake.
Persian Proverb

Go often to the house of thy friend; for weeds soon choke up the unused path.
Scandinavian Proverb

Better be ill spoken of by one before all than by all before one.
Scottish Proverb

What may be done at any time will be done at no time.
Scottish Proverb

Speak the truth, but leave immediately after.
Slovenian Proverb

Drink nothing without seeing it; sign nothing without reading it.
Spanish Proverb

If you want to be respected, you must respect yourself.
Spanish Proverb

Never advise anyone to go to war or to marry.
Spanish Proverb

Take hold lightly; let go lightly. This is one of the great secrets of felicity in love.
Spanish Proverb

Whoever gossips to you will gossip about you.
Spanish Proverb

Don't let your sorrow come higher than your knees.
Swedish Proverb

Don't throw away the old bucket until you know whether the new one holds water.
Swedish Proverb

Buy on the rumor; sell on the news.
Wall Street Proverb

Be honorable yourself if you wish to associate with honorable people.
Welsh Proverb

Complain to one who can help you.
Yugoslav Proverb

If you wish to know what a man is, place him in authority.
Yugoslav Proverb

Friendship Quotes

He who has a thousand friends has not a friend to spare,And he who has one enemy will meet him everywhere.
Ali ibn-Abi-Talib (602 AD - 661 AD), A Hundred Sayings

Misfortune shows those who are not really friends.
Aristotle (384 BC - 322 BC), Eudemian Ethics

Without friends no one would choose to live, though he had all other goods.
Aristotle (384 BC - 322 BC), Nichomachean Ethics

A good friend can tell you what is the matter with you in a minute. He may not seem such a good friend after telling.
Arthur Brisbane, "The Book of Today"

The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances: if there is any reaction, both are transformed.
Carl Jung (1875 - 1961)

Friendship make prosperity more shining and lessens adversity by dividing and sharing it.
Cicero (106 BC - 43 BC), On Friendship, 44 B.C.

The shifts of Fortune test the reliability of friends.
Cicero (106 BC - 43 BC), De Amicitia

It is wise to apply the oil of refined politeness to the mechanisms of friendship.
Colette (1873 - 1954), The Pure and the Impure, 1932

Being friendless taught me how to be a friend. Funny how that works.
Colleen Wainwright, Communicatrix, 11-09-07

Have no friends not equal to yourself.
Confucius (551 BC - 479 BC), The Confucian Analects

Do not protect yourself by a fence, but rather by your friends.
Czech Proverb

You can make more friends in two months by becoming interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get other people interested in you.
Dale Carnegie

My mother used to say that there are no strangers, only friends you haven't met yet. She's now in a maximum security twilight home in Australia.
Dame Edna Everage (1934 - )

Never explain--your friends do not need it and your enemies will not believe you anyway.
Elbert Hubbard (1856 - 1915)

Nothing changes your opinion of a friend so surely as success - yours or his.
Franklin P. Jones, Saturday Evening Post, November 29, 1953
Be courteous to all, but intimate with few, and let those few be well tried before you give them your confidence. True friendship is a plant of slow growth, and must undergo and withstand the shocks of adversity before it is entitled to the appellation.
George Washington (1732 - 1799)

Nobody sees a flower - really - it is so small it takes time - we haven't time - and to see takes time, like to have a friend takes time.
Georgia O'Keeffe (1887 - 1986)

All people want is someone to listen.
Hugh Elliott, Standing Room Only weblog, May 8, 2003

Friendship is certainly the finest balm for the pangs of disappointed love.
Jane Austen (1775 - 1817), Northanger Abbey

When the character of a man is not clear to you, look at his friends.
Japanese Proverb

Go through your phone book, call people and ask them to drive you to the airport. The ones who will drive you are your true friends. The rest aren't bad people; they're just acquaintances.
Jay Leno (1950 - )

In prosperity our friends know us; in adversity we know our friends.
John Churton Collins

True happiness is of a retired nature, and an enemy to pomp and noise; it arises, in the first place, from the enjoyment of one's self, and in the next from the friendship and conversation of a few select companions.
Joseph Addison (1672 - 1719), The Spectator, March 17, 1911

It isn't kind to cultivate a friendship just so one will have an audience.
Lawana Blackwell, The Courtship of the Vicar's Daughter, 1998
A good friend of my son's is a son to me.
Lois McMaster Bujold, Ethan of Athos, 1986

Adversity does teach who your real friends are.
Lois McMaster Bujold, A Civil Campaign, 1999

If you make it plain you like people, it's hard for them to resist liking you back.
Lois McMaster Bujold, Diplomatic Immunity, 2002

Never refuse any advance of friendship, for if nine out of ten bring you nothing, one alone may repay you.
Madame de Tencin

It’s the friends you can call up at four a.m. that matter.
Marlene Dietrich (1901 - 1992)

Don't flatter yourself that friendship authorizes you to say disagreeable things to your intimates. The nearer you come into relation with a person, the more necessary do tact and courtesy become. Except in cases of necessity, which are rare, leave your friend to learn unpleasant things from his enemies; they are ready enough to tell them.
Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809 - 1894), The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table, 1858

I always like to know everything about my new friends, and nothing about my old ones.
Oscar Wilde (1854 - 1900)

The advice of friends must be received with a judicious reserve; we must not give ourselves up to it and follow it blindly, whether right or wrong.
Pierre Charron

Friends have all things in common.
Plato (427 BC - 347 BC), Dialogues, Phaedrus

Prosperity makes friends, adversity tries them.
Publilius Syrus (~100 BC), Maxims

Treat your friend as if he might become an enemy.
Publilius Syrus (~100 BC), Maxims

The ornament of a house is the friends who frequent it.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803 - 1882)

It's a lot like nature. You only have as many animals as the ecosystem can support and you only have as many friends as you can tolerate the bitching of.
Randy K. Milholland, Something Positive Comic, 08-16-05

Sometimes the measure of friendship isn't your ability to not harm but your capacity to forgive the things done to you and ask forgiveness for your own mistakes.
Randy K. Milholland, Something Positive Comic, 11-07-05

The only thing that lasts longer than a friend's love is the stupidity that keeps us from knowing any better.
Randy K. Milholland, Something Positive Comic, 09-07-06

There isn’t much better in this life than finding a way to spend a few hours in conversation with people you respect and love. You have to carve this time out of your life because you aren’t really living without it.
Real Live Preacher, RealLivePreacher.com Weblog, August 27, 2003

When someone allows you to bear his burdens, you have found deep friendship.
Real Live Preacher, RealLivePreacher.com Weblog, January 4, 2003

You can forget a lot of things, but you cannot forget a woman’s name and claim to love her.
Real Live Preacher, RealLivePreacher.com Weblog, October 20, 2003

There was a definite process by which one made people into friends, and it involved talking to them and listening to them for hours at a time.
Rebecca West (1892 - 1983)

Reveal not every secret you have to a friend, for how can you tell but that friend may hereafter become an enemy. And bring not all mischief you are able to upon an enemy, for he may one day become your friend.
Saadi (1184 - 1291)

The friendship that can cease has never been real.
Saint Jerome (374 AD - 419 AD), Letter

To like and dislike the same things, that is indeed true friendship.
Sallust (86 BC - 34 BC), The War with Catiline

If a man does not make new acquaintances as he advances through life, he will soon find himself alone. A man should keep his friendships in constant repair.
Samuel Johnson (1709 - 1784)

Get not your friends by bare compliments, but by giving them sensible tokens of your love.
Socrates (469 BC - 399 BC)

Purchase not friends by gifts; when thou ceasest to give, such will cease to love.
Thomas Fuller (1608 - 1661)

Friends may come and go, but enemies accumulate.
Thomas Jones (1892 - 1969)

We secure our friends not by accepting favors but by doing them.
Thucydides (471 BC - 400 BC), Peloponnesian War

I've learned that all a person has in life is family and friends. If you lose those, you have nothing, so friends are to be treasured more than anything else in the world.
Trey Parker and Matt Stone, South Park, Prehistoric Ice Man, 1999

Don't walk behind me, I may not lead. Don't walk in front of me, I may not follow. Just walk beside me and be my friend.
Unknown, (often attributed to Albert Camus)

I no doubt deserved my enemies, but I don't believe I deserved my friends.
Walt Whitman (1819 - 1892)

We are advertis'd by our loving friends.
William Shakespeare (1564 - 1616)

Kahlil Gibran Quotes (1883 - 1931)

Every man loves two women;the one is the creation of his imagination and the other is not yet born.
Kahlil Gibran

Generosity is giving more than you can, and pride is taking less than you need.
Kahlil Gibran

God made Truth with many doors to welcome every believer who knocks on them.
Kahlil Gibran

I have learnt silence from the talkative, toleration from the intolerant, and kindness from the unkind; yet strange, I am ungrateful to these teachers.
Kahlil Gibran

If indeed you must be candid, be candid beautifully.
Kahlil Gibran

If you cannot work with love but only with distaste, it is better that you should leave your work.
Kahlil Gibran

If you reveal your secrets to the wind you should not blame the wind for revealing them to the trees.
Kahlil Gibran

In the sweetness of friendship; let there be laughter and the sharing of pleasures. For in the dew of little things the heart finds its morning and is refreshed.
Kahlil Gibran

It is well to give when asked, but it is better to give unasked, through understanding.
Kahlil Gibran

Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls; the most massive characters are seared with scars.
Kahlil Gibran

Say not, 'I have found the truth,' but rather, 'I have found a truth.'
Kahlil Gibran

The deeper sorrow carves into your being the more joy you can contain.
Kahlil Gibran

The lights of stars that were extinguished ages ago still reaches us. So it is with great men who died centuries ago, but still reach us with the radiations of their personalities.
Kahlil Gibran

The optomist sees the rose and not its thorns; the pessimist stares at the thorns, oblivious of the rose.
Kahlil Gibran

To understand the heart and mind of a person, look not at what he has already achieved, but at what he aspires to do.
Kahlil Gibran

Yesterday is but today's memory, tomorrow is today's dream.
Kahlil Gibran

In battling evil, excess is good; for he who is moderate in announcing the truth is presenting half-truth. He conceals the other half out of fear of the people's wrath.
Kahlil Gibran, 'Narcotics and Dissecting Knives,' Thoughts and Meditations, 1960

It is well to give when asked but it is better to give unasked, through understanding.
Kahlil Gibran, 'On Giving,' The Prophet, 1923

Yes, there is a Nirvanah; it is leading your sheep to a green pasture, and in putting your child to sleep, and in writing the last line of your poem.
Kahlil Gibran, Essay on Robert Frost, quoted in N. Y.. Times: Obit-Editorial, April 1982

And in the sweetness of friendship let there be laughter and the sharing of pleasures. For in the dew of little things the heart finds its morning and is refreshed.
Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet

You pray in your distress and in your need; would that you might also pray in the fullness of your joy and in your days of abundance.
Kahlil Gibran (1883 - 1931)

Tenderness and kindness are not signs of weakness and despair, but manifestations of strength and resolutions.
Kahlil Gibran (1883 - 1931)

The significance of a man is not in what he attains, but rather what he longs to attain.
Kahlil Gibran (1883 - 1931)

Yes, there is a Nirvanah; it is leading your sheep to a green pasture, and in putting your child to sleep, and in writing the last line of your poem.
Kahlil Gibran (1883 - 1931)

He who does not seek advice is a fool. His folly blinds him to Truth and makes him evil, stubborn, and a danger to his fellow men.
Kahlil Gibran (1883 - 1931)

It is slavery to live in the mind unless it has become part of the body.
Kahlil Gibran (1883 - 1931)

They deem me mad for I will not sell my days for gold; I deem them mad for they think my days have a price.
Kahlil Gibran (1883 - 1931)

I am one of those who believe that spiritual progress is a rule of human life, but the approach to perfection is slow and painful. If a woman elevates herself in one respect and is retarded in another, it is because the rough trail that leads to the mountain peak is not free of ambushes of thieves and lairs of wolves.
Kahlil Gibran (1883 - 1931), The Broken Wings

You give but little when you give of your possessions. It is when you give of yourself that you truly give.
Kahlil Gibran (1883 - 1931)

Marriage is the golden ring in a chain, whose beginning is a glance and whose ending is eternity.
Kahlil Gibran (1883 - 1931)

Give your hearts, but not into each other’s keeping, For only the hand of God can contain your hearts.
Kahlil Gibran (1883 - 1931), The Prophet

You give but little when you give of your posessions. It is when you give of yourself that you truly give.
Kahlil Gibran (1883 - 1931), The Prohpet, 1923

Love is know the pain of too much tenderness.
Kahlil Gibran (1883 - 1931)

Ever has it been that love knows not its own depth until the hour of separation.
Kahlil Gibran (1883 - 1931)

That which seems most feeble and bewildered in you is the strongest and most determined.
Kahlil Gibran (1883 - 1931), The Prophet

You give little when you give of your possessions. It is when you give of yourself that you truly give.
Kahlil Gibran (1883 - 1931)

Forget not that the earth delights to feel your bare feet and the winds long to play with your hair.
Kahlil Gibran (1883 - 1931)

And think not you can direct the course of love, for love, if it finds you worthy, directs your course.
Kahlil Gibran (1883 - 1931), The Prophet

Your soul is oftentimes a battlefield, upon which your reason and your judgment wage war against passion and your appetite.
Kahlil Gibran (1883 - 1931), The Prophet

Love gives naught but itself and takes naught but from itself.Love possesses not nor would it be possessed;For love is sufficient unto love.
Kahlil Gibran (1883 - 1931), The Prophet

You shall be free indeed when your days are not without a care nor your nights without a want and a grief, But rather when these things girdle your life and yet you rise above them naked and unbound.
Kahlil Gibran (1883 - 1931), The Prophet

Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding.
Kahlil Gibran (1883 - 1931), The Prophet

For what is evil but good tortured by its own hunger and thirst?Verily, when good is hungry is seeks food even in dark caves, and when it thirsts it drinks even of dead waters.
Kahlil Gibran (1883 - 1931), The Prophet

Beauty is life when life unveils her holy face.But you are life and you are the veil.Beauty is eternity gazing at itself in a mirror.But you are eternity and you are the mirror.
Kahlil Gibran (1883 - 1931), The Prophet

For what is it to die but to stand naked in the wind and to melt into the sun?And what is it to cease breathing, but to free the breath from its restless tides, that it may rise and expand and seek God unencumbered?
Kahlil Gibran (1883 - 1931), The Prophet

And ever has it been that love knows not its own depth until the final hour of separation.
Kahlil Gibran (1883 - 1931), The Prophet

Quotations by Albert Einstein

Before God we are all equally wise - and equally foolish.
Albert Einstein

Do not worry about your difficulties in Mathematics. I can assure you mine are still greater.
Albert Einstein

Ethical axioms are found and tested not very differently from the axioms of science. Truth is what stands the test of experience.
Albert Einstein

Every day I remind myself that my inner and outer life are based on the labors of other men, living and dead, and that I must exert myself in order to give in the same measure as I have received and am still receiving.
Albert Einstein

Few people are capable of expressing with equanimity opinions which differ from the prejudices of their social environment. Most people are even incapable of forming such opinions.
Albert Einstein

Gravitation cannot be held responsible for people falling in love. How on earth can you explain in terms of chemistry and physics so important a biological phenomenon as first love? Put your hand on a stove for a minute and it seems like an hour. Sit with that special girl for an hour and it seems like a minute. That's relativity.
Albert Einstein

I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.
Albert Einstein

I never think of the future - it comes soon enough.
Albert Einstein

If I had only known, I would have been a locksmith.
Albert Einstein

If you are out to describe the truth, leave elegance to the tailor.
Albert Einstein

Imagination is more important than knowledge...
Albert Einstein

It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education.
Albert Einstein

Laws alone can not secure freedom of expression; in order that every man present his views without penalty there must be spirit of tolerance in the entire population.
Albert Einstein

My religion consists of a humble admiration of the illimitable superior spirit who reveals himself in the slight details we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble mind.
Albert Einstein

Nothing will benefit human health and increase the chances for survival of life on Earth as much as the evolution to a vegetarian diet.
Albert Einstein

Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former.
Albert Einstein

Reading, after a certain age, diverts the mind too much from its creative pursuits. Any man who reads too much and uses his own brain too little falls into lazy habits of thinking.
Albert Einstein

The ideals which have lighted my way, and time after time have given me new courage to face life cheerfully, have been Kindness, Beauty, and Truth. The trite subjects of human efforts, possessions, outward success, luxury have always seemed to me contemptible.
Albert Einstein

The important thing is not to stop questioning.
Albert Einstein

The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing. One cannot help but be in awe when he contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structure of reality. It is enough if one tries merely to comprehend a little of this mystery every day. Never lose a holy curiosity.
Albert Einstein

The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious.
Albert Einstein

The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science.
Albert Einstein

The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is at all comprehensible.
Albert Einstein

The release of atomic energy has not created a new problem. It has merely made more urgent the necessity of solving an existing one.
Albert Einstein

The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources.
Albert Einstein

To punish me for my contempt for authority, fate made me an authority myself.
Albert Einstein

Too many of us look upon Americans as dollar chasers. This is a cruel libel, even if it is reiterated thoughtlessly by the Americans themselves.
Albert Einstein

Truth is what stands the test of experience.
Albert Einstein

Try not to become a man of success but rather to become a man of value.
Albert Einstein

We should take care not to make the intellect our god; it has, of course, powerful muscles, but no personality.
Albert Einstein

Yes, we have to divide up our time like that, between our politics and our equations. But to me our equations are far more important, for politics are only a matter of present concern. A mathematical equation stands forever.
Albert Einstein

As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain; and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality.
Albert Einstein, "Geometry and Experience", January 27, 1921
Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.
Albert Einstein, "Science, Philosophy and Religion: a Symposium", 1941

Everything that is really great and inspiring is created by the individual who can labor in freedom.
Albert Einstein, 'Out of My Later Years,' 1950

It is the duty of every citizen according to his best capacities to give validity to his convictions in political affairs.
Albert Einstein, 'Treasury for the Free World,' 1946

Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen.
Albert Einstein, (attributed)

Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not one bit simpler.
Albert Einstein, (attributed)

If the facts don't fit the theory, change the facts.
Albert Einstein, (attributed)

Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
Albert Einstein, (attributed)

Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.
Albert Einstein, (attributed)

Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.
Albert Einstein, (attributed)

The hardest thing in the world to understand is the income tax.
Albert Einstein, (attributed)

The significant problems we have cannot be solved at the same level of thinking with which we created them.
Albert Einstein, (attributed)

Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge of Truth and Knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the Gods.
Albert Einstein, (attributed)

You cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war.
Albert Einstein, (attributed)

At any rate, I am convinced that He [God] does not play dice.
Albert Einstein, (attriibuted)

If A is success in life, then A equals x plus y plus z. Work is x; y is play; and z is keeping your mouth shut.
Albert Einstein, Observer, Jan. 15, 1950

Great spirits have always found violent opposition from mediocrities. The latter cannot understand it when a man does not thoughtlessly submit to hereditary prejudices, but honestly and courageously uses his intelligence and fulfills the duty to express the results of his thought in clear form.
Albert Einstein, quoted in New York Times, March 19, 1940

The unleashed power of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking and we thus drift toward unparalleled catastrophe.
Albert Einstein, Telegram, 24 May 1946

When you look at yourself from a universal standpoint, something inside always reminds or informs you that there are bigger and better things to worry about.
Albert Einstein, The World as I See It.

You see, wire telegraph is a kind of a very, very long cat. You pull his tail in New York and his head is meowing in Los Angeles. Do you understand this? And radio operates exactly the same way: you send signals here, they receive them there. The only difference is that there is no cat.
Albert Einstein, when asked to describe radio

Imagination is more important than knowledge.
Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955)

Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.
Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955)

A man's ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death.
Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955)

I am enough of an artist to draw freely upon my imagination. Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.
Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955)

The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science.
Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955)

We believe that an informed citizenry will act for life and not for death.
Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955), on atomic energy, Jan. 22, 1947

The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources.
Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955)

If the facts don't fit the theory, change the facts.
Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955)

Any man whose errors take ten years to correct is quite a man.
J. Robert Oppenheimer (1904 - 1967), speaking of Albert Einstein

I never think of the future. It comes soon enough.
Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955)

I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.
Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955)

The individual must not merely wait and criticize, he must defend the cause the best he can. The fate of the world will be such as the world deserves.
Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955)

In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity.
Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955)

The important thing is not to stop questioning.
Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955)

We should take care not to make the intellect our god; it has, of course, powerful muscles, but no personality.
Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955)

When you are courting a nice girl an hour seems like a second. When you sit on a red-hot cinder a second seems like an hour. That's relativity.
Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955)

It is the theory that decides what we can observe.
Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955)

To punish me for my contempt for authority, fate made me an authority myself.
Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955)

It is, in fact, nothing short of a miracle that the modern methods of instruction have not yet entirely strangled the holy curiosity of inquiry.
Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955), "Autobiographical Notes"

Great spirits have always found violent opposition from mediocrities. The latter cannot understand it when a man does not thoughtlessly submit to hereditary prejudices but honestly and courageously uses his intelligence.
Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955)

The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious.It is the source of all art and science.
Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955)

When I examine myself and my methods of thought, I come to the conclusion that the gift of fantasy has meant more to me than any talent for abstract, positive thinking.
Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955)

The whole of science is nothing more than a refinement of everyday thinking.
Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955), Physics and Reality [1936]

If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it?
Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955)

It is only to the individual that a soul is given.
Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955)

The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing. One cannot help but be in awe when he contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structure of reality. It is enough if one tries merely to comprehend a little of this mystery every day. Never lose a holy curiosity.
Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955)

Never regard study as a duty, but as the enviable opportunity to learn to know the liberating influence of beauty in the realm of the spirit for your own personal joy and to the profit of the community to which your later work belongs.
Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955)

A human being is part of a whole, called by us the Universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separated from the rest--a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circles of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.
Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955)

The point is to develop the childlike inclination for play and the childlike desire for recognition and to guide the child over to important fields for society. Such a school demands from the teacher that he be a kind of artist in his province.
Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955), Out of My Later Years

One should guard against preaching to young people success in the customary form as the main aim in life. The most important motive for work in school and in life is pleasure in work, pleasure in its result, and the knowledge of the value of the result to the community.
Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955), On Education

Weakness of attitude becomes weakness of character.
Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955)

The ideals which have always shone before me and filled me with the joy of living are goodness, beauty, and truth. To make a goal of comfort or happiness has never appealed to me; a system of ethics built on this basis would be sufficient only for a herd of cattle.
Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955)

I feel that you are justified in looking into the future with true assurance, because you have a mode of living in which we find the joy of life and the joy of work harmoniously combined. Added to this is the spirit of ambition which pervades your very being, and seems to make the day's work like a happy child at play.
Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955), (referring to America)

All of us who are concerned for peace and triumph of reason and justice must be keenly aware how small an influence reason and honest good will exert upon events in the political field.
Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955)

...one of the strongest motives that lead men to art and science is escape from everyday life with its painful crudity and hopeless dreariness, from the fetters of one's own ever-shifting desires. A finely tempered nature longs to escape from the personal life into the world of objective perception and thought.
Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955)

The hardest thing in the world to understand is the income tax.
Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955)

You see, wire telegraph is a kind of a very, very long cat. You pull his tail in New York and his head is meowing in Los Angeles. Do you understand this? And radio operates exactly the same way: you send signals here, they receive them there. The only difference is that there is no cat.
Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955), when asked to describe radio

I want to know God's thoughts; the rest are details.
Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955)

Theories should be as simple as possible, but not simpler.
Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955)

Too many of us look upon Americans as dollar chasers. This is a cruel libel, even if it is reiterated thoughtlessly by the Americans themselves.
Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955)

The further the spiritual evolution of mankind advances, the more certain it seems to me that the path to genuine religiosity does not lie through the fear of life, and the fear of death, and blind faith, but through striving after rational knowledge.
Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955)

As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain; and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality.
Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955)

I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.
Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955)

Science is a wonderful thing if one does not have to earn one's living at it.
Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955)

He who joyfully marches to music rank and file, has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would surely suffice. This disgrace to civilization should be done away with at once. Heroism at command, how violently I hate all this, how despicable and ignoble war is; I would rather be torn to shreds than be a part of so base an action. It is my conviction that killing under the cloak of war is nothing but an act of murder.
Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955)

Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds.
Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955)

Technological progress is like an axe in the hands of a pathological criminal.
Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955)

God does not care about our mathematical difficulties. He integrates empirically.
Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955)

The grand aim of all science is to cover the greatest number of empirical facts by logical deduction from the smallest number of hypotheses or axioms.
Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955)

To my mind to kill in war is not a whit better than to commit ordinary murder.
Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955)

The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is comprehensible.
Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955)

Let every man be respected as an individual and no man idolized.
Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955)

Concern for man himself and his fate must always form the chief interest of all technical endeavor. Never forget this in the midst of your diagrams and equations.
Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955)

No amount of experimentation can ever prove me right; a single experiment can prove me wrong.
Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955)

I believe that whoever tries to think things through honestly will soon recognize how unworthy and even fatal is the traditional bias against Negroes. What can the man of good will do to combat this deeply rooted prejudice? He must have the courage to set an example by words and deed, and must watch lest his children become influenced by racial bias.
Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955)

Every kind of peaceful cooperation among men is primarily based on mutual trust and only secondarily on institutions such as courts of justice and police.
Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955)

My religion consists of a humble admiration of the unlimitable superior who reveals Himself in the slight details we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble minds. That deeply emotional conviction of the presence of a superior reasoning power, which is revealed in the incomprehensible universe, forms my idea of God
Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955)

It is in fact nothing short of a miracle that the modern methods of instruction have not yet entirely strangled the holy curious of inquiry. It is a very grave mistake to think that the enjoyment of seeing and searching can be promoted by means of coercion and a sense of duty.
Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955)

True art is characterized by an irresistible urge in the creative artist
Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955)

Results from Internet Collections: alt.quotations Archives:
Too many of us look upon Americans as dollar chasers. This is a cruel libel, even if it is reiterated thoughtlessly by the Americans themselves.
Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955), 1929

"I want to know Gods thoughts.... all the rest are just details
Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955)

Each of us visits this Earth involuntarily, and without an invitation. For me, it is enough to wonder at the secrets.
Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955)

"Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.
Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955)

"My religion consists of a humble admiration of the illimitable superior spirit who reveals himself in the slight details we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble mind.
Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955)

"Imagination is more important than knowledge.
Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955)

"My life is a simple thing that would interest no one. It is a known fact that I was born and that is all that is necessary.
Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955)

As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain, and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality.
Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955)

He who joyfully marches to music in rank and file has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would fully suffice. This disgrace to civilization should be done away with at once. Heroism at command, senseless brutality, deplorable patriotism, how violently I hate all this, how despicable and ignoble war is; I would rather be torn to shreds than be part of so base an action! It is my conviction that killing under the cloak of war is nothing but an act of murder.
Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955)

If a cluttered desk signs a cluttered mind, Of what, then, is an empty desk a sign?
Albert Einstein.

Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts.
Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955)

Only a life lived for others is a life worth while.
Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955)

Imagination is more important than knowledge.
Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955)

Nothing in the world makes people so afraid as the influence of independent-minded people.
Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955), 1879-1955

Gravitation cannot be held responsible for people falling in love.
Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955)

Any intelligent fool can make things bigger and more complex ... it takes a touch of genius -- and a lot of courage -- to move in the opposite direction.
Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955)

Never underestimate your own ignorance.
Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955), speech

Try not to become a man of success but rather try to become a man of value.
Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955)

When all think alike, no one thinks very much.
Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955)

Few people are capable of expressing with equanimity opinions which differ from the prejudices of their social environment. Most People are even incapable of forming such opinions.
Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955)

The tragedy of life is what dies in the hearts and souls of people while they live.
Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955)

There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is.
Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955)

My sense of God is my sense of wonder about the Universe.
Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955)

I have deep faith that the principle of the universe will be beautiful and simple.
Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955)

Nationalism is an infantile disease. It is the measles of mankind.
Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955)

Computers are incredibly fast, accurate, and stupid. Human beings are incredibly slow, inaccurate, and brilliant. Together they are powerful beyond imagination.
Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955)

We still do not know one-thousandth of one percent of what nature has revealed to us.
Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955)

I never came upon any of my discoveries through the process of rational thinking.
Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955)

Peace cannot be kept by force. It can only be achieved by understanding.
Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955)

Heroism on command, senseless violence, and all the loathsome nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism -- how passionately I hate them!
Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955)

He who cherishes the values of culture cannot fail to be a pacifist.
Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955)

The aim (of education) must be the training of independently acting and thinking individuals who, however, can see in the service to the community their highest life achievement.
Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955)

The conscientious objector is a revoultionary. On deciding to disobey the law he sacrifices his personal interests to the most important cause of working for the betterment of society.
Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955)

To my mind, to kill in war is not a whit better than to commit ordinary murder.
Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955)

It is characteristic of the military mentality that nonhuman factors (atom bombs, strategic bases, weapons of all sorts, the possession of raw materials, etc) are held essential, while the human being, his desires, and thoughts - in short, the psychological factors - are considered as unimportant and secondary...The individual is degraded...to "human materiel".
Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955)

There are two ways of resisting war: the legal way and the revolutionary way. The legal way involves the offer of alternatinve service not as a privilege for a few but as a right for all. The revolutionary view involves an uncompromising resistance, with a view to breaking the power of militarism in time of peace or the resources of the state in time of war.
Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955)

After a certain high level of technical skill is achieved, science and art tend to coalesce in esthetics, plasticity, and form. The greatest sceintists are always artists as well.
Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955)

Nothing is more destructive of respect for the government and the law of the land than passing laws which cannot be enforced. It is an open secret that the dangerous increase of crime in this counrty is closely related with this.
Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955)

Anger dwells only in the bosom of fools.
Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955)

A man's ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death.
Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955)

The pursuit of knowledge for its own sake, an almost fanatical love of justice, and the desire for personal independence - these are the features of Jewish tradition that make me thank my stars that I belong to it.
Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955), The World As I See It (autobio, 1934)

If there is any religion that could cope with modern scientific needs, it would be Buddhism.
Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955), Gary Young M.D.'s lecture on chaos theory and Buddhism in Oregon State University on 04/17/03 (SGI-USA)

Isn't it strange that I who have written only unpopular books should be such a popular fellow?
Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955)

The human mind is not capable of grasping the Universe. We are like a little child entering a huge library. The walls are covered to the ceilings with books in many different tongues. The child knows that someone must have written these books. It does not know who or how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written. But the child notes a definite plan in the arrangement of the books - a mysterious order which it does not comprehend, but only dimly suspects.
Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955)

The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. It's the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and science. Whoever does not know it can no longer wander, no longer marvel, is as good as dead, and his eyes are dimmed.
Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955)

We should take care not to make the intellect our god; it has, of course, powerful muscles, but no personality.
Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955)

If my theory of relativity proves to be correct, Germany will claim me a German, and France will claim me a citizen of the world. However, if it proves wrong, France will say I’m a German, and Germany will say that I’m a jew.
Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955)

God reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists.
Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955)

So long as there are men there will be wars.
Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955)

One should guard against preaching to young people success in the customary form as the main aim in life. The most important motive for work in school and in life is pleasure in work, pleasure in its result, and the knowledge of the value of the result to the community.
Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955)

It is mathematics that offers the exact natural sciences a certain measure of security which, without mathematics, they could not attain.
Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955)

Let us not forget that knowledge and skills alone cannot lead humanity to a happy and dignified life. ... I claim credit for nothing. Everything is determined, the beginning as well as the end, forces over which we have no control. It is determined for the insects as well as for the stars, Human beings, vegetables or cosmic dust, we all dance to a mysterious tune, intoned in the distance by an invisible piper.
Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955), Dilip Kumar Roy, (famous Indian classical singer), had cited the above quotation of Einstein in one of his letters to his disciple M.S.Subbalakshmi, another famous Indian singer and Magsayee Award

Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance you must keep moving.
Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955)

Wisdom is not a product of schooling, but of the life- long attempt to acquire it.
Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955)

The value of a man resides in what he gives and not in what he is capable of receiving.
Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955)

It's not that I'm so smart , it's just that I stay with problems longer.
Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955)

He who joyfully marches in rank and file has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would suffice.
Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955)

People like us, who believe in physics, know that the distinction between past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.
Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955)

I think and think for months and years. Ninety-nine times the conclusion is false. The hundredth time I am right.
Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955), Sc

No one but a theorist believes his theory; everyone puts faith in a laboratory result but the experimenter himself.
Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955), quoted in Scientific American, September 2004, page 69

So long as there are men there will be wars.
Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955)

Do you remember how electrical currents and 'unseen waves' were laughed at? The knowledge about man is still in its infancy.
Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955)

It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it.
Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955), Letter, 24 March 1954. Quoted in "Albert Einstein: The Human Side," edited by Helen Dukas and Banesh Hoffman

Teaching should be such that what is offered is perceived as a valuable gift and not as a hard duty.
Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955)

The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed.
Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955)

Science is a wonderful thing if one does not have to earn one's living at it.
Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955)

No amount of experimentation can ever prove me right; a single experiment can prove me wrong.
Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955)

Once you can accept the universe as matter expanding into nothing that is something, wearing stripes with plaid comes easy.
Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955), Associated Press, April 15, 2005, "100 Years Ago, Einstein Changed Everything,"

Buddha"s Quotations (563 BC - 483 BC)

If you knew what I know about the power of giving, you would not let a single meal pass without sharing it in some way.
Buddha

Hatred does not cease in this world by hating, but by not hating; this is an eternal truth.
Buddha, The Dhammapada

All that we are is the result of what we have thought.
Buddha (563 BC - 483 BC)

Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it. Do not believe in anything simply because it is spoken and rumored by many. Do not believe in anything simply because it is found written in your religious books. Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of your teachers and elders. Do not believe in traditions because they have been handed down for many generations. But after observation and analysis, when you find that anything agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all, then accept it and live up to it.
The Buddha

We are shaped by our thoughts; we become what we think. When the mind is pure, joy follows like a shadow that never leaves.
Buddha (563 BC - 483 BC), The Dharmapada

Therefore, be ye lamps unto yourselves, be a refuge to yourselves. Hold fast to Truth as a lamp; hold fast to the truth as a refuge. Look not for a refuge in anyone beside yourselves. And those, who shall be a lamp unto themselves, shall betake themselves to no external refuge, but holding fast to the Truth as their lamp, and holding fast to the Truth as their refuge, they shall reach the topmost height.
Buddha (563 BC - 483 BC)

A family is a place where minds come in contact with one another. If these minds love one another the home will be as beautiful as a flower garden. But if these minds get out of harmony with one another it is like a storm that plays havoc with the garden.
Buddha (563 BC - 483 BC)

Do not speak harshly to any one; those who are spoken to will answer thee in the same way. Angry speech is painful: blows for blows will touch thee.
Buddha (563 BC - 483 BC), The Dharmapada

The thought manifests as the word; The word manifests as the deed; The deed develops into habit; And habit hardens into character. So watch the thought and its ways with care, And let it spring from love Born out of concern for all beings.
The Buddha

As the flectcher whittles and makes straight his arrows, so the master directs his straying thoughts.
Buddha (563 BC - 483 BC)

Work out your own salvation. Do not depend on others.
Buddha (563 BC - 483 BC)

Holding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one who gets burned.
Buddha (563 BC - 483 BC)

He is able who thinks he is able.
Buddha (563 BC - 483 BC)

To be idle is a short road to death and to be diligent is a way of life; foolish people are idle, wise people are diligent.
Buddha (563 BC - 483 BC)

To keep the body in good health is a duty otherwise we shall not be able to keep our mind strong and clear.
Buddha (563 BC - 483 BC)

All created things are impermanent. Strive on with diligence.
Buddha (563 BC - 483 BC), Last words before his death

All that we are is the result of what we have thought. If a man speaks or acts with an evil thought, pain follows him. If a man speaks or acts with a pure thought, happiness follows him, like a shadow that never leaves him.
Buddha (563 BC - 483 BC)

Better than a thousand hollow words, is one word that brings peace.
Buddha (563 BC - 483 BC)

Hatred does not cease by hatred, but only by love; this is the eternal rule.
Buddha (563 BC - 483 BC)

Do not dwell in the past, do not dream of the future, concentrate the mind on the present moment.
Buddha (563 BC - 483 BC)

However many holy words you read, However many you speak, What good will they do you, If you do not act upon them?
Buddha (563 - 483 B.C.)

Holding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one who gets burned.
Buddha (563 BC - 483 BC)

Just as treasures are uncovered from the earth, so virtue appears from good deeds, and wisdom appears from a pure and peaceful mind. To walk safely through the maze of human life, one needs the light of wisdom and the guidance of virtue.
Buddha (563 BC - 483 BC)

Just as a candle cannot burn without fire, men cannot live without a spiritual life.
Buddha (563 BC - 483 BC)

The tongue like a sharp knife... Kills without drawing blood.
Buddha (563 BC - 483 BC)

The secret of health for both mind and body is not to mourn for the past, nor to worry about the future, but to live the present moment wisely and earnestly.
Buddha (563 BC - 483 BC)

There are only two mistakes one can make along the road to truth; not going all the way, and not starting.
Buddha (563 BC - 483 BC)

Thousands of candles can be lighted from a single candle, and the life of the candle will not be shortened. Happiness never decreases by being shared.
Buddha (563 BC - 483 BC)

Abraham Lincoln Quotes (1809 - 1865)

Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed is more important than any one thing.
Abraham Lincoln

Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt.
Abraham Lincoln

Discourage litigation. Persuade your neighbors to compromise whenever you can. As a peacemaker the lawyer has superior opportunity of being a good man. There will still be business enough.
Abraham Lincoln

Force is all-conquering, but its victories are short-lived.
Abraham Lincoln

He can compress the most words into the smallest ideas of any man I ever met.
Abraham Lincoln

I am a firm believer in the people. If given the truth, they can be depended upon to meet any national crises. The great point is to bring them the real facts.
Abraham Lincoln

I will prepare and some day my chance will come.
Abraham Lincoln

If I were two-faced, would I be wearing this one?
Abraham Lincoln

If this is coffee, please bring me some tea; but if this is tea, please bring me some coffee.
Abraham Lincoln

If you would win a man to your cause, first convince him that you are his sincere friend.
Abraham Lincoln

It has been my experience that folks who have no vices have very few virtues.
Abraham Lincoln

It is difficult to make a man miserable while he feels worthy of himself and claims kindred to the great God who made him.
Abraham Lincoln

Let me not be understood as saying that there are no bad laws, nor that grievances may not arise for the redress of which no legal provisions have been made. I mean to say no such thing. But I do mean to say that although bad laws, if they exist, should be repealed as soon as possible, still, while they continue in force, for the sake of example they should be religiously observed.
Abraham Lincoln

Most folks are about as happy as they make up their minds to be.
Abraham Lincoln

Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power.
Abraham Lincoln

No man has a good enough memory to make a successful liar.
Abraham Lincoln

No man is good enough to govern another man without that other's consent.
Abraham Lincoln

Tact is the ability to describe others as they see themselves.
Abraham Lincoln

That some should be rich, shows that others may become rich, and, hence, is just encouragement to industry and enterprise.
Abraham Lincoln

The probability that we may fail in the struggle ought not to deter us from the support of a cause we believe to be just.
Abraham Lincoln

Whatever you are, be a good one.
Abraham Lincoln

When the conduct of men is designed to be influenced, persuasion, kind unassuming persuasion, should ever be adopted. It is an old and true maxim that 'a drop of honey catches more flies than a gallon of gall.' So with men. If you would win a man to your cause, first convince him that you are his sincere friend. Therein is a drop of honey that catches his heart, which, say what he will, is the great highroad to his reason, and which, once gained, you will find but little trouble in convincing him of the justice of your cause, if indeed that cause is really a good one.
Abraham Lincoln

When you have got an elephant by the hind leg, and he is trying to run away, it's best to let him run.
Abraham Lincoln

Whenever I hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally.
Abraham Lincoln

You cannot escape the responsibility of tomorrow by evading it today.
Abraham Lincoln

You may deceive all the people part of the time, and part of the people all the time, but not all the people all the time.
Abraham Lincoln

'Tis better to be silent and be thought a fool, than to speak and remove all doubt.
Abraham Lincoln, (attributed)

When I do good, I feel good; when I do bad, I feel bad, and that is my religion.
Abraham Lincoln, (attributed)

You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can not fool all of the people all of the time.
Abraham Lincoln, (attributed)

People who like this sort of thing will find this the sort of thing they like.
Abraham Lincoln, in a book review

Quarrel not at all. No man resolved to make the most of himself can spare time for personal contention.
Abraham Lincoln, in a letter to J. M. Cutts, October 26, 1863

Truth is generally the best vindication against slander.
Abraham Lincoln, letter to Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, July 18, 1864

Character is like a tree and reputation like its shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing.
Abraham Lincoln, Lincoln's Own Stories

I have always found that mercy bears richer fruits than strict justice.
Abraham Lincoln, speech in Washington D.C., 1865

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate -- we can not hallow -- this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here.
Abraham Lincoln, The Gettysburg Address, November 19, 1863

It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced.
Abraham Lincoln, The Gettysburg Address, November 19, 1863

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
Abraham Lincoln, The Gettysburg Address, November 19, 1863

No matter how much the cats fight, there always seem to be plenty of kittens.
Abraham Lincoln (1809 - 1865)

The shepherd drives the wolf from the sheep's throat, for which the sheep thanks the shepherd as his liberator, while the wolf denounces him for the same act as the destroyer of liberty.
Abraham Lincoln (1809 - 1865)

It has been my experience that folks who have no vices have very few virtues.
Abraham Lincoln (1809 - 1865)

Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power.
Abraham Lincoln (1809 - 1865)

The best thing about the future is that it comes one day at a time.
Abraham Lincoln (1809 - 1865)

With malice toward none, with charity for all, ...let us strive on to finish the work we are in, ...to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.
Abraham Lincoln (1809 - 1865), Second Inaugural Address, Mar. 4, 1865

Tact is the ability to describe others as they see themselves.
Abraham Lincoln (1809 - 1865)

And in the end, it's not the years in your life that count. It's the life in your years.
Abraham Lincoln (1809 - 1865)

Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power.
Abraham Lincoln (1809 - 1865)

You cannot escape the responsibility of tomorrow by evading it today.
Abraham Lincoln (1809 - 1865)

I don't know who my grandfather was; I'm much more concerned to know what his grandson will be.
Abraham Lincoln (1809 - 1865)

I will study and get ready, and perhaps my chance will come.
Abraham Lincoln (1809 - 1865)

No matter how much cats fight, there always seem to be plenty of kittens.
Abraham Lincoln (1809 - 1865)

I don't like that man. I must get to know him better.
Abraham Lincoln (1809 - 1865)

My father taught me to work; he did not teach me to love it.
Abraham Lincoln (1809 - 1865)

I am for those means which will give the greatest good to the greatest number.
Abraham Lincoln (1809 - 1865)

You cannot escape the responsibility of tomorrow by evading it today.
Abraham Lincoln (1809 - 1865)

With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds.
Abraham Lincoln (1809 - 1865), Second Inaugural Address, Mar. 4, 1865

With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds. . . to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves, and with all nations.
Abraham Lincoln (1809 - 1865)

Whatever you are, be a good one.
Abraham Lincoln (1809 - 1865)

I like to see a man proud of the place in which he lives. I like to see a man live so that his place will be proud of him.
Abraham Lincoln (1809 - 1865)

It often requires more courage to dare to do right than to fear to do wrong.
Abraham Lincoln (1809 - 1865)

Neither Heaven nor Hell. It is simply Purgatory.
Abraham Lincoln (1809 - 1865)

If this is coffee, please bring me some tea; but if this is tea, please bring me some coffee.
Abraham Lincoln (1809 - 1865)

If I were two-faced, would I be wearing this one?
Abraham Lincoln (1809 - 1865)

People are about as happy as they make up their minds to be.
Abraham Lincoln (1809 - 1865)

It has been my experience that folks who have no vices have very few virtues.
Abraham Lincoln (1809 - 1865)

The provision of the Constitution giving the war-making power to Congress was dictated, as I understand it, by the following reasons. Kings had always been involving and impoverishing their people in wars, pretending generally, if not always, that the good of the people was the object. This, our Convention understood to be the most oppressive of all Kingly oppressions; and they resolved to so frame the Constitution that no one man should hold the power of bringing this oppression upon us.
Abraham Lincoln (1809 - 1865)

Things may come to those who wait, but only the things left by those who hustle.
Abraham Lincoln (1809 - 1865)

It is difficult to make a man miserable while he feels he is worthy of himself and claims kindred to the great God who made him.
Abraham Lincoln (1809 - 1865

Upon the subject of education, not presuming to dictate any plan or system respecting it, I can only say that I view it as the most important subject which we as a people may be engaged in. That everyone may receive at least a moderate education appears to be an objective of vital importance.
Abraham Lincoln (1809 - 1865)

What is conservativism? Is it not the aherence to the old and tried against the new and untried?
Abraham Lincoln (1809 - 1865)

So you're the little woman who wrote the book that made this great war.
Abraham Lincoln (1809 - 1865), on meeting Harriet Beecher Stowe

Those who would deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves; and, under a just God, cannot long retain it.
Abraham Lincoln (1809 - 1865)

The ballot is stronger than the bullet.
Abraham Lincoln (1809 - 1865)

The worst thing you can do for those you love is the things they could and should do themselves.
Abraham Lincoln (1809 - 1865)

Am I not destroying my enemies when I make friends of them?
Abraham Lincoln (1809 - 1865)

Don't pray that God's on our side, pray that we're on his side.
Abraham Lincoln (1809 - 1865)

How many legs does a dog have if you count his tail as a leg? Four. You can call a tail a leg if you want to, but that doesn't make it a leg.
Abraham Lincoln (1809 - 1865)

If I only had an hour to chop down a tree, I would spend the first 45 minutes sharpening my axe.
Abraham Lincoln (1809 - 1865)

To sin by silence when they should protest makes cowards of men.
Abraham Lincoln (1809 - 1865)

The Lord prefers common-looking people. That is why he makes so many of them.
Abraham Lincoln (1809 - 1865)

Do I not destroy my enemies when I make them my friends?
Abraham Lincoln (1809 - 1865)

He has the right to criticize who has the heart to help.
Abraham Lincoln (1809 - 1865)

...and that this country shall have a new birth of freedom, and that this government, of the people, for the people, by the people, shall not perish from the Earth.
Abraham Lincoln (1809 - 1865), Gettysburg Address

I do not believe the Union will disolve, I believe it will become all one thing, or all the other.
Abraham Lincoln (1809 - 1865), A House Divided

When I do good, I feel good. When I do bad, I feel bad. And that is my religion.
Abraham Lincoln (1809 - 1865)

The best thing about the future is that it comes one day at a time.
Abraham Lincoln (1809 - 1865)

Common looking people are the best in the world: that is the reason the Lord makes so many of them.
Abraham Lincoln (1809 - 1865)

If you look for the bad in people, you will surely find it.
Abraham Lincoln (1809 - 1865)

I'm not concerned that you have fallen,I'm concerned that you arise.
Abraham Lincoln (1809 - 1865)

No matter how much cats fight there always seem to be plenty of Kittens.
Abraham Lincoln (1809 - 1865), On Marriage

In this sad world of ours, sorrow comes to all... Perfect relief is not possible, except with time. You cannot now realize that you will ever feel better... And yet this is a mistake. You are sure to be happy again.
Abraham Lincoln (1809 - 1865)

If I were to try to read, much less answer, all the attacks made on me, this shop might as well be closed for any other business. Abraham Lincoln (1809 - 1865)

Most people are about as happy as they make up their minds to be.
Abraham Lincoln (1809 - 1865)

We are not enemies but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic cords of memory shall swell when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of nature.
Abraham Lincoln (1809 - 1865)

Am I not destroying my enemies when I make friends of them?
Abraham Lincoln (1809 - 1865)

Both read the same Bible, and pray to the same God; and each invokes his aid against the other.... The prayers of both could not be answered--that of neither has been answered fully.
Abraham Lincoln (1809 - 1865)

I am not concerned that you have fallen; I am concerned that you arise.
Abraham Lincoln (1809 - 1865)

No man resolved to make the most of himself has time to waste on personal contention.
Abraham Lincoln (1809 - 1865)

John F. Kennedy Quotes (1917 - 1963)

Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or present are certain to miss the future.
John F. Kennedy

Forgive your enemies, but never forget their names.
John F. Kennedy

If we cannot end now our differences, at least we can help make the world safe for diversity.
John F. Kennedy

Let us think of education as the means of developing our greatest abilities, because in each of us there is a private hope and dream which, fulfilled, can be translated into benefit for everyone and greater strength for our nation.
John F. Kennedy

Liberty without learning is always in peril; learning without liberty is always in vain.
John F. Kennedy

Our problems are man-made, therefore they may be solved by man. No problem of human destiny is beyond human beings.
John F. Kennedy

So, let us not be blind to our differences - but let us also direct attention to our common interests and to the means by which those differences can be resolved.
John F. Kennedy

The American, by nature, is optimistic. He is experimental, an inventor and a builder who builds best when called upon to build greatly.
John F. Kennedy

The ancient Greek definition of happiness was the full use of your powers along lines of excellence.
John F. Kennedy

The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie -- deliberate, contrived and dishonest, but the myth, persistent, persuasive, and unrealistic. Belief in myths allows the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought.
John F. Kennedy

The great French Marshall Lyautey once asked his gardener to plant a tree. The gardener objected that the tree was slow growing and would not reach maturity for 100 years. The Marshall replied, 'In that case, there is no time to lose; plant it this afternoon!'
John F. Kennedy

The time to repair the roof is when the sun is shining.
John F. Kennedy

There are risks and costs to a program of action. But they are far less than the long-range risks and costs of comfortable inaction.
John F. Kennedy

Washington is a city of Southern efficiency and Northern charm.
John F. Kennedy

We must use time as a tool, not as a crutch.
John F. Kennedy

We set sail on this new sea because there is knowledge to be gained.
John F. Kennedy

We stand for freedom. That is our conviction for ourselves; that is our only commitment to others.
John F. Kennedy

When we got into office, the thing that surprised me the most was that things were as bad as we'd been saying they were.
John F. Kennedy

The men who create power make an indispensable contribution to the Nation’s greatness, but the men who question power make a contribution just as indispensable, especially when that questioning is disinterested, for they determine whether we use power or power uses us.
John F. Kennedy, Amherst College, Oct 26, 1963 - Source JFK Library, Boston, Mass.

...probably the greatest concentration of talent and genius in this house except for perhaps those times when Thomas Jefferson ate alone.
John F. Kennedy, Describing a dinner for Nobel Prize winners, 1962

Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.
John F. Kennedy, In a speech at the White House, 1962

And so, my fellow americans: ask not what your country can do for you - ask what you can do for your country. My fellow citizens of the world: ask not what America will do for you, but what together we can do for the freedom of man.
John F. Kennedy, Inaugural address, January 20, 1961

If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich.
John F. Kennedy, inaugural address, January 20, 1961

We must never forget that art is not a form of propaganda; it is a form of truth.
John F. Kennedy, October 26, 1963

For in the final analysis, our most basic common link, is that we all inhabit this small planet, we all breathe the same air, we all cherish our children's futures, and we are all mortal.
John F. Kennedy, Speech at The American University, Washington, D.C., June 10, 1963

Our problems are man-made, therefore they may be solved by man. And man can be as big as he wants. No problem of human destiny is beyond human beings.
John F. Kennedy, speech at The American University, Washington, D.C., June 10, 1963

The ignorance of one voter in a democracy impairs the security of all.
John F. Kennedy, speech at Vanderbilt University, May 18, 1963

All of us have in our veins the exact same percentage of salt in our blood that exists in the ocean, and, therefore, we have salt in our blood, in our sweat, in our tears. We are tied to the ocean. And when we go back to the sea -- whether it is to sail or to watch it -- we are going back from whence we came.
John F. Kennedy, Speech given at Newport at the dinner before the America's Cup Races, September 1962

We need men who can dream of things that never were.
John F. Kennedy, speech in Dublin, Ireland, June 28, 1963

The Chinese use two brush strokes to write the word 'crisis.' One brush stroke stands for danger; the other for opportunity. In a crisis, be aware of the danger - but recognize the opportunity.
John F. Kennedy, Speech in Indianapolis, April 12, 1959

Leadership and learning are indispensable to each other.
John F. Kennedy, speech prepared for delivery in Dallas the day of his assassination, November 22, 1963

Mankind must put an end to war or war will put an end to mankind.
John F. Kennedy, Speech to UN General Assembly, Sept. 25, 1961

Too often we... enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought.
John F. Kennedy (1917 - 1963)

And so, my fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you -- ask what you can do for your country.
John F. Kennedy (1917 - 1963), Inaugural Address, Jan. 20, 1961

Mankind must put an end to war, or war will put an end to mankind.
John F. Kennedy (1917 - 1963)

Let us never negotiate out of fear. But let us never fear to negotiate.
John F. Kennedy (1917 - 1963)

Those who make peaceful revolution impossible, make violent revolution inevitable.
John F. Kennedy (1917 - 1963)

Let the word go forth from this time and place, to friend and foe alike, that the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans, born in this century, tempered by war, disciplined by a hard and bitter peace, proud of our ancient heritage, and unwilling to witness or permit the slow undoing of those human rights to which this nation has always been committed, and to which we are committed today, at home and around the world!
John F. Kennedy (1917 - 1963), Inaugural Address, 1961

Our progress as a nation can be no swifter than our progress in education. The human mind is our fundamental resource.
John F. Kennedy (1917 - 1963)

If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich.
John F. Kennedy (1917 - 1963), Inaugural Address, Jan. 20, 1961

Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, to assure the survival and success of liberty.
John F. Kennedy (1917 - 1963)

Washington is a city of Southern efficiency and Northern charm.
John F. Kennedy (1917 - 1963)

When I became President, what surprised me most was that things were just as bad as I'd been saying they were.
John F. Kennedy (1917 - 1963)

Do you realize the responsibility I carry? I'm the only person standing between Nixon and the White House.
John F. Kennedy (1917 - 1963), as given in A. Schlesinger Jr's, "A Thousand Days"

The quality of American life must keep pace with the quantity of American goods. This country cannot afford to be materially rich and spiritually poor.
John F. Kennedy (1917 - 1963)

When power leads man towards arrogance, poetry reminds him of his limitations. When power narrows the area of man's concern, poetry reminds him of the richness and diversity of his existence. When power corrupts, poetry cleanses.
John F. Kennedy (1917 - 1963), Amherst College, Honoring Robert Frost

But peace does not rest in the charters and covenants alone. It lies in the hearts and minds of all people. So let us not rest all our hopes on parchment and on paper, let us strive to build peace, a desire for peace, a willingness to work for peace in the hearts and minds of all of our people. I believe that we can. I believe the problems of human destiny are not beyond the reach of human beings.
John F. Kennedy (1917 - 1963)

If art is to nourish the roots of our culture, society must set the artist free to follow his vision wherever it takes him.
John F. Kennedy (1917 - 1963)

All this will not be finished in the first 100 days. Nor will it be finished in the first 1,000 days, nor in the life of this administration, nor even perhaps in our lifetime on this planet. But let us begin.
John F. Kennedy (1917 - 1963), inaugural address, 1961

The time to repair the roof is when the sun is shining.
John F. Kennedy (1917 - 1963)

I believe this nation should commit itself, to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the earth.
John F. Kennedy (1917 - 1963), in a speech on May 25, 1961

Too often we...enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought.
John F. Kennedy (1917 - 1963)

It's easy, they sank my boat.
John F. Kennedy (1917 - 1963), When asked how he became a war hero

Mankind must put an end to war, or war will put an end to mankind.
John F. Kennedy (1917 - 1963)

We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy - but because they are hard! Because that challenge is one we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone and one we intend to win!
John F. Kennedy (1917 - 1963), Rice University speech on September 12, 1962

We are not afraid to entrust the American people with unpleasant facts, foreign ideas, alien philosophies and competitive values. For a nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people.
John F. Kennedy (1917 - 1963)

There will always be dissident voices heard in the land expresing opposition without alternatives, finding fault but never favor, perceiving gloom on every side, and seeking influence without responsibility.
John F. Kennedy (1917 - 1963), Speech for the Dallas Trade Mart which was never delivered.

We don’t see the end of the tunnel but I must say I don’t think it is darker than it was a year ago, and in some ways lighter.
John F. Kennedy (1917 - 1963), speech in 1962

Mankind must put an end to war, or war will put an end to mankind.
John F. Kennedy (1917 - 1963)

A man may die, nations may rise and fall, but an idea lives on.
John F. Kennedy (1917 - 1963)

Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, to assure the survival and success of liberty.
John F. Kennedy (1917 - 1963)

Conformity is the jailer of freedom, and the enemy of growth.
John F. Kennedy (1917 - 1963)

The Courage that we all prize and seek is not the courage to die decently, but to live manfully.
Thomas Carlyle (1795 - 1881), Proflies in Courage by: John F. Kennedy

We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too.
John F. Kennedy (1917 - 1963)

Change is the law of life; and those who look only to the past or the present are certain to miss the future.
John F. Kennedy (1917 - 1963)

It is our task in our time and in our generation to hand down undiminished to those who come after us, as was handed down to us by those who went before, the natural wealth and beauty which is ours.
John F. Kennedy (1917 - 1963)

My father always told me that all businessmen were sons of bitches, but I never believed it till now. -- (Comment made 10 April 1962 in reaction to news that U.S. Steel was raising prices by $6 per ton, right after the unions negotiated a modest new contract under pressure from JFK to keep inflation down.)
John F. Kennedy (1917 - 1963), "A Thousand Days," by Arthur Schlesinger Jr. [1965]

They are a bunch of bastards - and I'm saying this on my own now, not just because my father told it to me. -- [Comment about businessmen in general, made a few days after the newspaperas printed his statement of 10 April 1962 that his father always told him that businessmen were "sons of bitches."]
President John F. Kennedy, "A Thousand Days," by Arthur Schlesinger Jr. [1965]

Mankind must put an end to war or war will put an end to mankind.
John F. Kennedy (1917 - 1963)

If someone is going to kill me, they are going to kill me.
-- John F. Kennedy (to Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr.), 1962.
John F. Kennedy, "A Thousand Days," by Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr [1965]

If I do the right kind of a job, I don't know whether I am going to be here four years from now.
John F. Kennedy (to Richard M. Nixon, right after the Bay of Pigs invasion, 1961).
John F. Kennedy (1917 - 1963), "A Thousand Days," by Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr [1965]

If I am to die, this is the week for it.
John F. Kennedy (to aide John McClone in response to a CIA report about rumours of an assassination plot), June 1962.
John F. Kennedy (1917 - 1963), "A Thousand Days," by Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr [1965]

Who can tell who will be the President a year from now?
John F. Kennedy, speaking to the president of Harvard about why he did not want to delay signing documents relating to a future JFK Presidential Library, 2 October 1963.
John F. Kennedy (1917 - 1963), "A Thousand Days," by Arthur Schlesinger Jr. [1965]

Victory has a thousand fathers; defeat is an orphan.
John F. Kennedy (1917 - 1963), "A Thousand Days," by Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr [1965]., p289. Comment made by JFK in the aftermath of the failed Bay of Pigs invasion, 1961.

This is the night to go to the theatre, like Abraham Lincoln.
John F. Kennedy (1917 - 1963), 28 October 1962, after receiving word from Khrushchev that he agreed on a plan to end the Cuban Missile Crisis

I think there is a law of equity in these disputes. When one party is clearly wrong, it will eventually give way... They had no business putting those missiles in and lying to me about it. They were in the wrong and knew it. So, when we stood firm, they had to back down. But this doesn't mean at all that they would back down when they felt they were in the right and had vital interests involved.
John F. Kennedy (1917 - 1963), 29 October 1962, reflecting on the Cuban Missile Crisis to Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr.

The trouble with conservatives today is that most of their thinking is so naive. As for the liberals, their thinking is more sophisticated; but their function ought to be to provide new ideas, and they don't come up with any.
John F. Kennedy (1917 - 1963), "A Thousand Days," by Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr [1965]

Now I understand why Henry VIII started his own church.
John F. Kennedy (1917 - 1963), Comment after the Vatican scolded him for supporting separation between church and state during his campaign, 1960.

What a joy, that literacy is no longer prima facie evidence of treason.
John Steinbeck (1902 - 1968), Reply upon learning that he and 49 other eminent artists had been invited to John F. Kennedy's inaugural, 1961

We believe that an artist, in order to be true to himself and his work, must be a free man.
John F. Kennedy (1917 - 1963), Introducing Pablo Casals at a
White House dinner, November 1961, at which he performed publicly for the first time since the Spanish Civil War

Overwhelming nuclear strength cannot stop a guerrilla war.
John F. Kennedy (1917 - 1963), From the speech President Kennedy was to deliver at the Dallas Trade Mart, 22 Nov 1963; he was assassinated on his way to the Trade Mart

I think there is a law of equity in these disputes. When one party is clearly wrong, it will eventually give way... They had no business putting those missiles in and lying to me about it. They were in the wrong and knew it. So, when we stood firm, they had to back down. But this doesn't mean at all that they would back down when they felt they were in the right and had vital interests involved.
John F. Kennedy (1917 - 1963), 29 October 1962, reflecting on the Cuban Missile Crisis to Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr.

The trouble with conservatives today is that most of their thinking is so naive. As for the liberals, their thinking is more sophisticated; but their function ought to be to provide new ideas, and they don't come up with any.
John F. Kennedy (1917 - 1963), "A Thousand Days," by Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr [1965]

Now I understand why Henry VIII started his own church.
John F. Kennedy (1917 - 1963), Comment after the Vatican scolded him for supporting separation between church and state during his campaign, 1960.

What a joy, that literacy is no longer prima facie evidence of treason.
John Steinbeck (1902 - 1968), Reply upon learning that he and 49 other eminent artists had been invited to John F. Kennedy's inaugural, 1961

We believe that an artist, in order to be true to himself and his work, must be a free man.
John F. Kennedy (1917 - 1963), Introducing Pablo Casals at a White House dinner, November 1961, at which he performed publicly for the first time since the Spanish Civil War

Overwhelming nuclear strength cannot stop a guerrilla war.
John F. Kennedy (1917 - 1963), From the speech President Kennedy was to deliver at the Dallas Trade Mart, 22 Nov 1963; he was assassinated on his way to the Trade Mart

Confucius Quotations (551 BC - 479 BC)

Be not ashamed of mistakes and thus make them crimes.
Confucius

Before you embark on a journey of revenge, dig two graves.
Confucius

Everything has its beauty but not everyone sees it.
Confucius

Forget injuries, never forget kindnesses.
Confucius

He who will not economize will have to agonize.
Confucius

I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand.
Confucius

Ignorance is the night of the mind, but a night without moon and star.
Confucius

It does not matter how slowly you go so long as you do not stop.
Confucius

Men's natures are alike, it is their habits that carry them far apart.
Confucius

Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in getting up every time we do.
Confucius

Respect yourself and others will respect you.
Confucius

Study the past if you would define the future.
Confucius

The superior man, when resting in safety, does not forget that danger may come. When in a state of security he does not forget the possibility of ruin. When all is orderly, he does not forget that disorder may come. Thus his person is not endangered, and his States and all their clans are preserved.
Confucius

To be able under all circumstances to practice five things constitutes perfect virtue; these five things are gravity, generosity of soul, sincerity, earnestness and kindness.
Confucius

To see what is right and not to do it is want of courage.
Confucius

To see what is right, and not to do it, is want of courage or of principle.
Confucius

What the superior man seeks is in himself; what the small man seeks is in others.
Confucius

When anger rises, think of the consequences.
Confucius

When we see men of a contrary character, we should turn inwards and examine ourselves.
Confucius

Wheresoever you go, go with all your heart.
Confucius

They must often change who would be constant in happiness or wisdom.
Confucius

By nature, men are nearly alike; by practice, they get to be wide apart.
Confucius, The Confucian Analects

Fine words and an insinuating appearance are seldom associated with true virtue.
Confucius, The Confucian Analects

Have no friends not equal to yourself.
Confucius, The Confucian Analects

He who exercises government by means of his virtue may be compared to the north polar star, which keeps its place and all the stars turn towards it.
Confucius, The Confucian Analects

He who speaks without modesty will find it difficult to make his words good.
Confucius, The Confucian Analects

He with whom neither slander that gradually soaks into the mind, nor statements that startle like a wound in the flesh, are successful may be called intelligent indeed.
Confucius, The Confucian Analects

Hold faithfulness and sincerity as first principles.
Confucius, The Confucian Analects

I am not one who was born in the possession of knowledge; I am one who is fond of antiquity, and earnest in seeking it there.
Confucius, The Confucian Analects

I have not seen a person who loved virtue, or one who hated what was not virtuous. He who loved virtue would esteem nothing above it.
Confucius, The Confucian Analects

If a man takes no thought about what is distant, he will find sorrow near at hand.
Confucius, The Confucian Analects

If a man withdraws his mind from the love of beauty, and applies it as sincerely to the love of the virtuous; if, in serving his parents, he can exert his utmost strength; if, in serving his prince, he can devote his life; if in his intercourse with his friends, his words are sincere - although men say that he has not learned, I will certainly say that he has.
Confucius, The Confucian Analects

Is virtue a thing remote? I wish to be virtuous, and lo! Virtue is at hand.
Confucius, The Confucian Analects

Learning without thought is labor lost; thought without learning is perilous.
Confucius, The Confucian Analects

Recompense injury with justice, and recompense kindness with kindness.
Confucius, The Confucian Analects

The cautious seldom err.
Confucius, The Confucian Analects

The determined scholar and the man of virtue will not seek to live at the expense of injuring their virtue. They will even sacrifice their lives to preserve their virtue complete.
Confucius, The Confucian Analects

The firm, the enduring, the simple, and the modest are near to virtue.
Confucius, The Confucian Analects

The man of virtue makes the difficulty to be overcome his first business, and success only a subsequent consideration.
Confucius, The Confucian Analects

The man who in view of gain thinks of righteousness; who in the view of danger is prepared to give up his life; and who does not forget an old agreement however far back it extends - such a man may be reckoned a complete man.
Confucius, The Confucian Analects

The people may be made to follow a path of action, but they may not be made to understand it.
Confucius, The Confucian Analects

The scholar who cherishes the love of comfort is not fit to be deemed a scholar.
Confucius, The Confucian Analects

The superior man cannot be known in little matters, but he may be entrusted with great concerns. The small man may not be entrusted with great concerns, but he may be known in little matters.
Confucius, The Confucian Analects

The superior man is modest in his speech, but exceeds in his actions.
Confucius, The Confucian Analects

The superior man is satisfied and composed; the mean man is always full of distress.
Confucius, The Confucian Analects

The superior man...does not set his mind either for anything, or against anything; what is right he will follow.
Confucius, The Confucian Analects

There are three things which the superior man guards against. In youth...lust. When he is strong...quarrelsomeness. When he is old...covetousness.
Confucius, The Confucian Analects

Things that are done, it is needless to speak about...things that are past, it is needless to blame.
Confucius, The Confucian Analects

To be able to practice five things everywhere under heaven constitutes perfect virtue...[They are] gravity, generosity of soul, sincerity, earnestness, and kindness.
Confucius, The Confucian Analects

To go beyond is as wrong as to fall short.
Confucius, The Confucian Analects

Virtue is more to man than either water or fire. I have seen men die from treading on water and fire, but I have never seen a man die from treading the course of virtue.
Confucius, The Confucian Analects

Virtue is not left to stand alone. He who practices it will have neighbors.
Confucius, The Confucian Analects

What the superior man seeks is in himself. What the mean man seeks is in others.
Confucius, The Confucian Analects

What you do not want done to yourself, do not do to others.
Confucius, The Confucian Analects

When a man's knowledge is sufficient to attain, and his virtue is not sufficient to enable him to hold, whatever he may have gained, he will lose again.
Confucius, The Confucian Analects

When we see men of worth, we should think of equaling them; when we see men of a contrary character, we should turn inwards and examine ourselves.
Confucius, The Confucian Analects

When you have faults, do not fear to abandon them.
Confucius, The Confucian Analects

When you know a thing, to hold that you know it; and when you do not know a thing, to allow that you do not know it - this is knowledge.
Confucius, The Confucian Analects

With coarse rice to eat, with water to drink, and my bended arm for a pillow - I have still joy in the midst of these things. Riches and honors acquired by unrighteousness are to me as a floating cloud.
Confucius, The Confucian Analects

Without an acquaintance with the rules of propriety, it is impossible for the character to be established.
Confucius, The Confucian Analects

The superior man] acts before he speaks, and afterwards speaks according to his actions.
Confucius, The Confucian Analects

While you are not able to serve men, how can you serve spirits [of the dead]?...While you do not know life, how can you know about death?
Confucius, The Confucian Analects, bk. 11:11

Better a diamond with a flaw than a pebble without.
Confucius (551 BC - 479 BC), Analects

A man who has committed a mistake and doesn't correct it, is committing another mistake.
Confucius (551 BC - 479 BC)

It is only the wisest and the stupidest that cannot change.
Confucius Analects

I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand.
Confucius (551 BC - 479 BC)

Real knowledge is to know the extent of one's ignorance.
Confucius (551 BC - 479 BC)

The superior man acts before he speaks, and afterwards speaks according to his action.
Confucius (551 BC - 479 BC)

I hear and I forget.I see and I believe.I do and I understand.
Confucius (551 BC - 479 BC)

By three methods we may learn wisdom: First, by reflection, which is noblest; Second, by imitation, which is easiest; and third by experience, which is the bitterest.
Confucius (551 BC - 479 BC)

He who learns but does not think, is lost! He who thinks but does not learn is in great danger.
Confucius (551 BC - 479 BC)

The essence of knowledge is, having it, to apply it; not having it, to confess your ignorance.
Confucius (551 BC - 479 BC)

To see what is right and not to do it, is want of courage.
Confucius Analects

If a man take no thought about what is distant, he will find sorrow near at hand
Confucius (551 BC - 479 BC)

A youth is to be regarded with respect. How do you know that his future will not be equal to our present?
Confucius (551 BC - 479 BC), Analects

Tsze-Kung asked, saying, 'Is there one word which may serve as a rule of practice for all one's life?" The Master said, "Is not Reciprocity such a word? What you do not want done to yourself, do not do to others."
Confucius (551 BC - 479 BC)

He who merely knows right principles is not equal to him who loves them.
Confucius (551 BC - 479 BC)

The superior man is modest in his speech but exceeds in his actions.
Confucius (551 BC - 479 BC)

It is not possible for one to teach others who cannot teach his own family.
Confucius (551 BC - 479 BC)

While the gentleman cherishes benign rule, the small man cherishes his native land. While the gentleman cherishes a respect for the law, the small man cherishes generous treatment.
Confucius (551 BC - 479 BC), nalects, IV.11

If a man remembers what is right at the sign of profit, is ready to lay down his life in the face of danger, and does not forget sentiments he has repeated all his life when he has been in straitened circumstances for a long time, he may be said to be a complete man.
Confucius (551 BC - 479 BC), Analects, XIV.12

It is only the benevolent man who is capable of liking or disliking other men.
Confucius (551 BC - 479 BC), Analects, IV.3

In his errors a man is true to type. Observe the errors and you will know the man.
Confucius (551 BC - 479 BC), Analects, IV.7

Do not impose on others what you yourself do not desire.
Confucius (551 BC - 479 BC), Analects, XV.24

To govern is to correct. If you set an example by being correct, who would dare remain incorrect?
Confucius (551 BC - 479 BC)

If language is not correct, then what is said is not what is meant; if what is said is not what is meant, then what must be done remains undone; if this remains undone, morals and art will deteriorate; if justice goes astray, the people will stand about in helpless confusion. Hence there must be no arbitrariness in what is said. This matters above everything.
Confucius (551 BC - 479 BC)

When you see a good man, try to emulate his example, and when you see a bad man, search yourself for his faults.
Confucius (551 BC - 479 BC)

It does not matter how slowly you go, so long as you do not stop.
Confucius (551 BC - 479 BC)

The superior man is modest in his speech, but excels in his actions.
Confucius (551 BC - 479 BC)

Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life.
Confucius (551 BC - 479 BC)

The man who moves a mountain begins by carrying away small stones.
Confucius (551 BC - 479 BC)

Everything has beauty, but not everyone sees it.
Confucius (551 BC - 479 BC)

Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.
Confucius (551 BC - 479 BC)

Do not be desirous of having things done quickly. Do not look at small advantages. Desire to have things done quickly prevents their being done thoroughly. Looking at small advantages prevents great affairs from being accomplished.
Confucius (551 BC - 479 BC)

Humankind differs from the animals only by a little, and most people throw that away.
Confucius (551 BC - 479 BC), Roots of Wisdom 4th edition

Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.
Confucius (551 BC - 479 BC)

Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.
Confucius (551 BC - 479 BC)

Quotations by Lao-tzu (604 BC - 531 BC)

Seek not happiness too greedily, and be not fearful of happiness.
Lao-tzu

A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.
Lao-tzu, The Way of Lao-tzu

He who knows does not speak.He who speaks does not know.
Lao-tzu, The Way of Lao-tzu

He who knows others is wise;He who know himself is enlightened.
Lao-tzu, The Way of Lao-tzu

He who loves the world as his body may be entrusted with the empire.
Lao-tzu, The Way of Lao-tzu

I have three treasures. Guard and keep them:The first is deep love,The second is frugality,And the third is not to dare to be ahead of the world.Because of deep love, one is courageous.Because of frugality, one is generous.Because of not daring to be ahead of the world, one becomes the leader of the world.
Lao-tzu, The Way of Lao-tzu

Manifest plainness,Embrace simplicity,Reduce selfishness,Have few desires.
Lao-tzu, The Way of Lao-tzu

People are difficult to govern because they have too much knowledge.
Lao-tzu, The Way of Lao-tzu

The best [man] is like water.Water is good; it benefits all things and does not compete with them.It dwells in [lowly] places that all disdain.This is why it is so near to Tao.
Lao-tzu, The Way of Lao-tzu

The more laws and order are made prominent,The more thieves and robbers there will be.
Lao-tzu, The Way of Lao-tzu

The softest things in the world overcome the hardest things in the world.Through this I know the advantage of taking no action.
Lao-tzu, The Way of Lao-tzu

The Way of Heaven is to benefit others and not to injure.The Way of the sage is to act but not to compete.
Lao-tzu, The Way of Lao-tzu

There is no calamity greater than lavish desires.There is no greater guilt than discontentment.And there is no greater disaster than greed.
Lao-tzu, The Way of Lao-tzu

To be worn out is to be renewed.
Lao-tzu, The Way of Lao-tzu

To have little is to possess.To have plenty is to be perplexed.
Lao-tzu, The Way of Lao-tzu

To know that you do not know is the best.To pretend to know when you do not know is a disease.
Lao-tzu, The Way of Lao-tzu

To produce things and to rear them,To produce, but not to take possession of them,To act, but not to rely on one's own ability,To lead them, but not to master them -This is called profound and secret virtue.
Lao-tzu, The Way of Lao-tzu

When armies are mobilized and issues are joined,The man who is sorry over the fact will win.
Lao-tzu, The Way of Lao-tzu

When the highest type of men hear Tao,They diligently practice it.When the average type of men hear Tao,They half believe in it.When the lowest type of men hear Tao,They laugh heartily at it.Without the laugh, there is no Tao.
Lao-tzu, The Way of Lao-tzu

When the people of the world all know beauty as beauty,There arises the recognition of ugliness.When they all know the good as good,There arises the recognition of evil.
Lao-tzu, The Way of Lao-tzu

The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao.The name that can be named is not the eternal Name.
Lao-Tzu (604 BC - 531 BC), Tao Te Ching

The journey of a thousand leagues begins from beneath your feet.
Lao-Tzu (604 BC - 531 BC)

The good man is the teacher of the bad,And the bad is the material from which the good may learn.He who does not value the teacher,Or greatly care for the material,Is greatly deluded although he may be learned.Such is the essential mystery.
Lao-Tzu (604 BC - 531 BC)

A good manager is best when people barely know that he exists. Not so good when people obey and acclaim him. Worse when they despise him.
Lao-Tzu (604 BC - 531 BC)

Arms are instruments of ill omen. . . . When one is compelled to use them, it is best to do so without relish. There is no glory in victory, and to glorify it despite this is to exult in the killing of men. . . . When great numbers of people are killed, one should weep over them with sorrow. When victorious in war, one should observe mourning rites.
Lao-Tzu (604 BC - 531 BC)

Kindness in words creates confidence. Kindness in thinking creates profoundness. Kindness in giving creates love.
Lao-Tzu (604 BC - 531 BC)

The softest things in the world to overcome the hardest things in the world.
Lao-Tzu (604 BC - 531 BC)

Learning builds daily accumulation, but the practice of Tao builds daily simplification. Simplify and simplify, until all contamination from relative, contridictory thinking is eliminated. Then one does nothing, yet nothing is left undone. One who wins the world does so by not meddling with it. One who meddles with the world loses it.
Tao te Ching, 48. Lao-Tzu

He who knows that enough is enough will always have enough.
Lao-Tzu (604 BC - 531 BC)

Kindness in words creates confidence. Kindness in thinking creates profoundness. Kindness in giving creates love.
Lao-Tzu (604 BC - 531 BC)

Conquering others takes force, conquering yourself is true strength.
Lao-Tzu (604 BC - 531 BC)

Water is fluid, soft and yielding. But water will wear away rock, which is rigid and cannot yield. As a rule, whatever is fluid, soft and yielding will overcome whatever is rigid and hard. This is another paradox: what is soft is strong.
Lao-Tzu (604 BC - 531 BC)

Osho Quotes

Life as such has to be taken as a cosmic joke - and then suddenly yourelax because there is nothing to be tense about.And in that very relaxation something starts changing in you- a radical change, a transformation - and the small things of lifestarts having new meaning, new significance.One learns only one thing, how to rejoice in life.
Osho

The whole existence is a temple…the trees are continously in worship, the clouds are in prayer and the mountains are in meditation.
Osho

The real seeker of truth never seeks truth. On the contrary, he tries to clean himself of all that is untrue, inauthentic, insincere - and when his heart is ready, purified, the guest comes. You cannot find the guest, you cannot go after him. He comes to you; you just have to be prepared. You have to be in a right attitude.
Osho

In the space of no-mind, truth descends like light
Osho

Only when there are many people who are pools of peace, silence, understanding, will war disappear.
Osho

To be creative means to be in love with life. You can be creative only if you love life enough that you want to enhance its beauty, you want to bring a little more music to it, a little more poetry to it, a little more dance to it.
Osho

Meditation means awareness. Whatsoever you do with awareness is meditation. Action is not the question, but the quality that you bring to your action. Walking can be a meditation if you walk alertly. Sitting can be a meditation if you sit alertly. Listening to the birds can be a meditation if you listen with awareness. Just listening to the inner noise of your mind can be a meditation if you remain alert and watchful. The whole point is: one should not move in sleep. Then whatsoever you do is meditation.
Osho

When you feel expansion of your consciousness, that is the most ecstatic experience possible, because suddenly you are the whole universe. Stars are within you. The sun rises within you and sets within you. The earth moves within you. The flowers blossom within you.
Osho

Existence has no personality.No question of personalities, it simply is whatsoever it is.To experience existence as it is, is to know the truth.
Osho

Suffering is not holding you. You are holding suffering. When you become good at the art of letting sufferings go, then you'll come to realize how unnecessary it was for you to drag those burdens around with you. You'll see that no one else other than you was responsible. The truth is that existence wants your life to become a festival.
Osho

All the Buddhas of all the ages have been telling you a very simple fact: Be -- don't try to become. Within these two words, be and becoming, your whole life is contained. Being is enlightenment, becoming is ignorance.
Osho

Life in itself is an empty canvas, it becomes whatsoever you paint on it. You can paint misery, you can paint bliss. The freedom is your glory.
Osho

There are a few things that can be done only by experiencing them. Love is one of them. There is no way to learn it; you have to do it. And by trial and error one learns.
Osho

Die – you will have to die. But die gracefully. I am not saying die like a stoic, I am not saying die like a very controlled man. No, I'm saying die gracefully, beautifully, as if a friend is coming, knocks at your door, and you are happy. And you embrace the friend and invite him in, and you have been waiting for him so long....
Osho

There is no need to postpone celebration. Immediately, right this moment you can celebrate. Nothing else is needed. To celebrate, life is needed and life you have. To celebrate, being is needed and being you have. To celebrate, trees and birds and stars are needed, and they are there. What else do you need?
Osho

It is very human because we have been made in such a way by the society that jealousy is the outcome of it. The whole life's conditioning is to be jealous. The school, the college, the university, the parents, the society – everybody wants you to be jealous, because only out of jealousy can ambition be created, only out of jealousy can possessiveness be created, and only out of jealousy can you be made to become powerful, rich. If jealousy disappears this whole edifice of the society will fall. It is founded on jealousy; jealousy is the cornerstone of this society. It pervades everything, permeates everything.
Osho

Enemies Quotes

The shaft of the arrow had been feathered with one of the eagle's own plumes. We often give our enemies the means of our own destruction.
Aesop (620 BC - 560 BC), The Eagle and the Arrow

He who has a thousand friends has not a friend to spare,And he who has one enemy will meet him everywhere.
Ali ibn-Abi-Talib (602 AD - 661 AD), A Hundred Sayings

Above all things, never be afraid. The enemy who forces you to retreat is himself afraid of you at that very moment.
Andre Maurois (1885 - 1967)

Observe your enemies, for they first find out your faults.
Antisthenes (445 BC - 365 BC)

A wise man gets more use from his enemies than a fool from his friends.
Baltasar Gracian

I do not regret one professional enemy I have made. Any actor who doesn't dare to make an enemy should get out of the business.
Bette Davis (1908 - 1989), The Lonely Life, 1962

The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances: if there is any reaction, both are transformed.
Carl Jung (1875 - 1961)

He hasn't an enemy in the world - but all his friends hate him.
Eddie Cantor (1892 - 1964)

Never explain--your friends do not need it and your enemies will not believe you anyway.
Elbert Hubbard (1856 - 1915)

You can discover what your enemy fears most by observing the means he uses to frighten you.
Eric Hoffer (1902 - 1983)

At times one remains faithful to a cause only because its opponents do not cease to be insipid.
Friedrich Nietzsche (1844 - 1900)

Rejoice not at thine enemy's fall - but don't rush to pick him up either.
Jewish Proverb

Forgive your enemies, but never forget their names.
John F. Kennedy (1917 - 1963)

The enemy is anybody who's going to get you killed, no matter which side he's on.
Joseph Heller (1923 - 1999), Catch 22

The rule is perfect: in all matters of opinion our adversaries are insane.
Mark Twain (1835 - 1910), in Christian Science

If you want to make peace, you don't talk to your friends. You talk to your enemies.
Moshe Dayan (1915 - 1981)

Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake.
Napoleon Bonaparte (1769 - 1821)

A man cannot be too careful in the choice of his enemies.
Oscar Wilde (1854 - 1900), The Picture of Dorian Gray, 1891

Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much.
Oscar Wilde (1854 - 1900)

We can learn even from our enemies.
Ovid (43 BC - 17 AD), Metamorphoses

Use your enemy's hand to catch a snake.
Persian Proverb

Treat your friend as if he might become an enemy.
Publilius Syrus (~100 BC), Maxims

Reveal not every secret you have to a friend, for how can you tell but that friend may hereafter become an enemy. And bring not all mischief you are able to upon an enemy, for he may one day become your friend.
Saadi (1184 - 1291)

It is hard to fight an enemy who has outposts in your head.
Sally Kempton

Money can't buy friends, but it can get you a better class of enemy.
Spike Milligan

Friends may come and go, but enemies accumulate.
Thomas Jones (1892 - 1969)

I have never made but one prayer to God, a very short one: 'O Lord, make my enemies ridiculous.' And God granted it.
Voltaire (1694 - 1778)

It is easier to forgive an enemy than to forgive a friend.
William Blake (1757 - 1827)

The man who is swimming against the stream knows the strength of it.
Woodrow Wilson (1856 - 1924)

Quotes

History teaches us that men and nations behave wisely once they have exhausted all other alternatives.

~Abba Eban

About the quote: Israeli diplomat (1915-2002)

Probably, no nation is rich enough to pay for both war and civilization. We must make our choice; we cannot have both.

~Abraham Flexner

I destroy my enemies when I make them my friends.

~Abraham Lincoln

Allow the president to invade a neighboring nation, whenever he shall deem it necessary to repel an invasion, and you allow him to do so whenever he may choose to say he deems it necessary for such a purpose—and you allow him to make war at pleasure.

~Abraham Lincoln

America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter, and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves.

~Abraham Lincoln

Force is all-conquering, but its victories are short-lived.

~Abraham Lincoln

Military glory--that attractive rainbow, that rises in showers of blood--that serpent's eye, that charms to destroy...

~Abraham Lincoln

We must recognize the chief characteristic of the modern era--a permanent state of what I call violent peace.

~Admiral James D. Watkins

Make the lie big, make it simple, keep saying it, and eventually they will believe it.

~Adolph Hitler

In war, truth is the first casualty.

~Aeschylus

Any excuse will serve a tyrant.

~Aesop

One is left with the horrible feeling now that war settles nothing; that to win a war is as disastrous as to lose one.

~Agatha Christie

No matter what political reasons are given for war, the underlying reason is always economic.

~A. J. P. Taylor

The great armies, accumulated to provide security and preserve the peace, carried the nations to war by their own weight.

~A. J. P. Taylor

No war is inevitable until it breaks out.

~A. J. P. Taylor

Wars based on principle are far more destructive...the attacker will not destroy that which he is after.

~Alan Watts

About the quote: from the book "The Way of Zen"

We used to wonder where war lived, what it was that made it so vile. And now we realize that we know where it lives...inside ourselves.

~Albert Camus

It is the job of thinking people not to be on the side of the executioners.

~Albert Camus

The welfare of the people in particular has always been the alibi of tyrants.

~Albert Camus

The evil that is in the world almost always comes of ignorance, and good intentions may do as much harm as malevolence if they lack understanding.

~Albert Camus

When a war breaks out, people say: "It's too stupid, it can't last long." But though a war may be "too stupid," that doesn't prevent its lasting.

~Albert Camus

Peace cannot be kept by force. It can only be achieved by understanding.

~Albert Einstein

Force always attracts men of low morality.

~Albert Einstein

It is my conviction that killing under the cloak of war is nothing but an act of murder.

~Albert Einstein

The world is a dangerous place, not because of those who do evil, but because of those who look on and do nothing.

~Albert Einstein

The release of atomic energy has not created a new problem. It has merely made more urgent the necessity of solving an existing one.

~Albert Einstein

Nothing will end war unless the people themselves refuse to go to war.

~Albert Einstein

How vile and despicable war seems to me! I would rather be hacked to pieces than take part in such an abominable business.

~Albert Einstein

Unthinking respect for authority is the greatest enemy of truth.

~Albert Einstein

It is unfortunately none too well understood that, just as the State has no money of its own, so it has no power of its own.

~Albert J. Nock

What is absurd and monstrous about war is that men who have no personal quarrel should be trained to murder one another in cold blood.

~Aldous Huxley

The next war ... may well bury Western civilization forever.

~Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Violence can only be concealed by a lie, and the lie can only be maintained by violence.

~Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

The demands of internal growth are incomparably more important to us...than the need for any external expansion of our power.

~Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Anyone who has proclaimed violence his method inexorably must choose lying as his principle.

~Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

About the quote: This quote is often mis-attributed to Mikhail Gorbachev, who merely quoted the remark from Solzhenitsyn's Nobel prize Harvard address.

Even if we are spared destruction by war, our lives will have to change if we want to save life from self-destruction.

~Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

A state of war only serves as an excuse for domestic tyranny.

~Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

War means blind obedience, unthinking stupidity, brutish callousness, wanton destruction, and irresponsible murder.

~Alexander Berkman

War paralyzes your courage and deadens the spirit of true manhood.

~Alexander Berkman

Those who stand for nothing fall for anything.

~Alexander Hamilton

O peace! how many wars were waged in thy name.

~Alexander Pope

All those who seek to destroy the liberties of a democratic nation ought to know that war is the surest and shortest means to accomplish it.

~Alexis de Tocqueville

No protracted war can fail to endanger the freedom of a democratic country.

~Alexis de Tocqueville

To all those who walk the path of human cooperation war must appear loathsome and inhuman.

~Alfred Adler

Distorted history boasts of bellicose glory . . . and seduces the souls of boys to seek mystical bliss in bloodshed and in battles.

~Alfred Adler

It is always easier to fight for one’s principles than to live up to them.

~Alfred Adler

Our modern states are preparing for war without even knowing the future enemy.

~Alfred Adler

War is not the continuation of politics with different means, it is the greatest mass-crime perpetrated on the community of man.

~Alfred Adler

War is organized murder and torture against our brothers.

~Alfred Adler

...Violence as a way of gaining power...is being camouflaged under the guise of tradition, national honor [and] national security...

~Alfred Adler

At least we're getting the kind of experience we need for the next war.

~Allen Dulles

The slightest acquaintance with history shows that powerful republics are the most warlike and unscrupulous of nations.

~Ambrose Bierce

Since the end of the World War II, the United States has fought three "small" wars...we lost all three of them and for the same reason--hubris.

~Andrew Greely

About the quote: Andrew Greely is a columnist at the Chicago Sun-Times. You can read his articles at http://www.suntimes.com/index/greeley.html

Search for the truth is the noblest occupation of man; its publication is a duty.

~Anne Louise Germaine de Stael

Today the real test of power is not capacity to make war but capacity to prevent it.

~Anne O'Hare McCormick

A great war leaves a country with three armies: an army of cripples, an army of mourners, and an army of thieves.

~Anonymous (German)

About the quote: (quote from 'The Anti-War Quote Book,' edited Eric Groves, Sr., pub. Quirk Books, 2008)

The real triumph of civilization is the extent to which coercion is banished from human relations.

~Anthony Gregory

About the quote: Anthony Gregory is a writer and musician from Berkeley, CA. You can read his articles at www.lewrockwell.com

Brute force is not our salvation, especially as directed by State central planning and done with little regard for the innocents...

~Anthony Gregory

About the quote: Anthony Gregory is a writer and musician from Berkeley, CA. You can read his articles at www.lewrockwell.com

War is not an adventure. It is a disease. It is like typhus.

~Antoine De Saint-Exupery

Make wars unprofitable and you make them impossible.

~A. Philip Randolph

About the quote: Randolph (1889-1979) was an African American civil rights leader. (quote from 'The Anti-War Quote Book,' edited Eric Groves, Sr., pub. Quirk Books, 2008)

Because I do it with one small ship, I am called a terrorist. You do it with a whole fleet and are called an emperor.

~A pirate, from St. Augustine's "City of God"

Old men declare war because they have failed to solve complex political and economic problems.

~Arthur Hoppe

About the quote: Hoppe (1925-2000) was an American writer. (quote from 'The Anti-War Quote Book,' edited Eric Groves, Sr., pub. Quirk Books, 2008)

All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.

~Arthur Schopenhauer

Do not ever say that the desire to "do good" by force is a good motive. Neither power-lust nor stupidity are good motives.

~Ayn Rand

Statism needs war; a free country does not. Statism survives by looting; a free country survives by producing.

~Ayn Rand

Why should we hear about body bags, and deaths...I mean, it's not relevant. So why should I waste my beautiful mind on something like that?

~Barbara Bush

About the quote: Mrs. Bush spoke these words on ABC's "Good Morning America," March 18, 2003.

No matter that patriotism is too often the refuge of scoundrels. Dissent, rebellion, and all-around hell-raising remain the true duty of patriots.

~Barbara Ehrenreich

What the people want is very simple - they want an America as good as its promise.

~Barbara Jordan

War is the unfolding of miscalculations.

~Barbara Tuchman

You've got to forget about this civilian. Whenever you drop bombs, you're going to hit civilians.

~Barry Goldwater

The world cannot continue to wage war like physical giants and to seek peace like intellectual pygmies.

~Basil O'Connor

War is never a solution; it is an aggravation.

~Benjamin Disraeli

A highwayman is as much a robber when he plunders in a gang as when single; and a nation that makes an unjust war is only a great gang.

~Benjamin Franklin

About the quote: Speaking to Benjamin Vaughan, 14 March 1785.

All wars are follies, very expensive and very mischievous ones.

~Benjamin Franklin

When will mankind be convinced and agree to settle their difficulties by arbitration?

~Benjamin Franklin

Those who give up essential liberties for temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.

~Benjamin Franklin

There never was a good war or a bad peace.

~Benjamin Franklin

Wars are not paid for in wartime, the bill comes later.

~Benjamin Franklin

I hope....that mankind will at length, as they call themselves responsible creatures, have the reason and sense enough to settle their differences without cutting throats...

~Benjamin Franklin

We Americans have no commission from God to police the world.

~Benjamin Harrison

About the quote: from an 1888 address to Congress

The Atomic Age is here to stay--but are we?

~Bennett Cerf

Let us not deceive ourselves; we must elect world peace or world destruction.

~Bernard M. Baruch

War does not determine who is right, only who is left.

~Bertrand Russell

Either man will abolish war, or war will abolish man.

~Bertrand Russell

Can anything be more ridiculous than that a man has a right to kill me because he lives on the other side of the water, and because his ruler has quarrel with mine, although I have none with him?

~Blaise Pascal

The terrorist is the one with the small bomb.

~Brendan Behan

Peace is constructed, not fought for.

~Brent Davis

After each war there is a little less democracy left to save.

~Brooks Atkinson

About the quote: Atkinson was an American journalist who lived from 1864-1984. (quote from 'The Anti-War Quote Book,' edited Eric Groves, Sr., pub. Quirk Books, 2008)

Blind faith in your leaders or in anything will get you killed.

~Bruce Springsteen

About the quote: This was part of Springsteen's introduction to his 1985 version of Edwin Starr's song 'War.'

Coercive practices that threaten our neighbor(s) also threaten us.

~Butler Shaffer

The state has, in order to control us, introduced division into our thinking, so that we come to distrust others and look to the state for protection.

~Butler Shaffer

In this war – as in others – I am less interested in honoring the dead than in preventing the dead.

~Butler Shaffer

No nation ever had an army large enough to guarantee it against attack in time of peace, or ensure it of victory in time of war.

~Calvin Coolidge

Politics is the womb in which war develops.

~Carl P. G. von Clausewitz

The political object is the goal, war is the means of reaching it, and the means can never be considered in isolation from their purposes.

~Carl P. G. von Clausewitz

War is not an independent phenomenon, but the continuation of politics by different means.

~Carl P. G. von Clausewitz

The tyranny of a prince in an oligarchy is not so dangerous to public welfare as the apathy of a citizen in a democracy.

~Charles de Secondat, baron de Montesquieu

About the quote: from "The Spirit of Laws" (1748)

A rational army would run away.

~Charles de Secondat, baron de Montesquieu

About the quote: Commonly known just as 'Montesquieu,' Charles (1869-1755) was a social commentator and thinker of the French Enlightenment.

The voice of protest...is never more needed than when the clamor of fife and drum...is bidding all men...obey in silence the tyrannous word of command.

~Charles Eliot Norton

If a war be undertaken...before the resources of peace have been tried and proved vain to secure it, that war has no defense, it is a national crime.

~Charles Eliot Norton

War should be made a crime, and those who instigate it should be punished as criminals.

~Charles Evans Hughes

The deterioration of every government begins with the decay of the principles on which it was founded.

~Charles-Louis De Secondat

About the quote: From "The Spirit of Laws," 1748

Almost all war making states borrow extensively, raise taxes, and seize the means of combat- including men--from reluctant citizens...

~Charles Tilly

Name me an emperor who was ever struck by a cannonball.

~Charles V of France

The politicians in this world... have at their command weapons of mass destruction far more complex than their own thinking processes.

~Charley Reese

We...are not really free if we can't control our own government and its policies. And we will never do that if we remain ignorant.

~Charley Reese

The truth is that neither British nor American imperialism was or is idealistic. It has always been driven by economic or strategic interests.

~Charley Reese

War, n: A time-tested political tactic guaranteed to raise a president’s popularity rating by at least 30 points. It is especially useful during election years and economic downturns.

~Chaz Bufe

War in the end is always about betrayal, betrayal of the young by the old, of soldiers by politicians, and of idealists by cynics.

~Chris Hedges

The failure to dissect the cause of war leaves us open for the next installment.

~Chris Hedges

In war, we always deform ourselves, our essence.

~Chris Hedges

After victory, you have more enemies.

~Cicero

True patriotism hates injustice in its own land more than anywhere else.

~Clarence Darrow

Hell hath no fury like a non-combatant.

~C.L. Montague

About the quote: Quote from "Among the Dead Cities," by A.C. Grayling (Walker & Co., 2006).

War should be the politics of last resort. And when we go to war, we should have a purpose that our people understand and support.

~Colin Powell

Chauvinism is a proud and bellicose form of patriotism...which equates the national honor with military victory.

~Colonel James A. Donovan, Marine Corps

The dangerous patriot...drifts into chauvinism and exhibits blind enthusiasm for military actions.

~Colonel James A. Donovan, Marine Corps

The dangerous patriot...is a defender of militarism and its ideals of war and glory.

~Colonel James A. Donovan, Marine Corps

You cannot be on one hand dedicated to peace and on the other dedicated to violence. Those two things are irreconcilable.

~Condoleeza Rice

About the quote: Comment trying to convince mideast policy makers Russia, the EU and the UN to stop aid to the new Hamas Palestinian government; 1/30/06.

Setting a good example is a far better way to spread ideals than through force of arms.

~Congressman Ron Paul

War is never economically beneficial except for those in position to profit from war expenditures.

~Congressman Ron Paul

As a rule of thumb, if the government wants you to know it, it probably isn't true.

~Craig Murray

Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised "for the good of its victims" may be the most oppressive.

~C. S. Lewis

Do not waste time bothering whether you "love" your neighbor; act as if you did.

~C.S. Lewis

About the quote: Lewis (1898-1963) was an Irish author and scholar, most famous for his 'Chronicles of Narnia' series. (From 'The Anti-War Quote Book,' Quirk Books, Ed. by Eric Groves Sr.)

Peace will be realized only by forging bonds of trust between people at the deepest level, in the depths of their very lives.

~Daisaku Ikeda

About the quote: From his proposals for peace. Ikeda is President of Soka Gakkai International

I am a steadfast follower of the doctrine of non-violence which was first preached by Lord Buddha, whose divine wisdom is absolute...

~Dalai Lama

All forms of violence, especially war, are totally unacceptable as means to settle disputes between and among nations, groups and persons.

~Dalai Lama

When the largest industry in the world is no longer War, I will accept Darwin's theory of Evolution.

~Dale S. Mugford

Today the real test of America's power and wisdom is not our capacity to make war but our capacity to prevent it.

~Dale Turner

About the quote: from an article in The Seattle Times, 1/11/03.

Societies can be sunk by the weight of buried ugliness.

~Daniel Goleman

There is nothing politically right that is morally wrong.

~Daniel O'Connell

Tis nobler to lose honor to save the lives of men than it is to gain honor by taking them.

~David Borenstein

You cannot win a War on Terrorism. It’s like having a war on jealousy.

~David Cross

About the quote: Cross is a comedian, most well known for his roles on the television series "Arrested Development" and "Mr. Show." This quote is from his 2002 comedy album.

The direct use of force is such a poor solution to any problem, it is generally employed only by small children and large nations.

~David Friedman

The heights of popularity and patriotism are still the beaten road to power and tyranny...

~David Hume

You are not going to get peace with millions of armed men. The chariot of peace cannot advance over a road littered with cannon.

~David Lloyd

War creates peace like hate creates love.

~David L. Wilson

Remember that a government big enough to give you everything you want is also big enough to take away everything you have.

~Davy Crockett

From fanaticism to barbarism is only one step.

~Denis Diderot

The question in my mind is how many additional American casualties is Saddam worth? And the answer is not very damned many.

~Dick Cheney

About the quote: Speaking to the Discovery Institute after the first Gulf War, on 8/14/1992, when he was Secretary of Defense.

Death has a tendency to encourage a depressing view of war.

~Donald Rumsfeld

There are a lot of people who lie and get away with it, and that's just a fact.

~Donald Rumsfeld

Peace has to be created, in order to be maintained. It will never be achieved by passivity and quietism.

~Dorothy Thompson

Peace...is the product of Faith, Strength, Energy, Will, Sympathy, Justice, Imagination, and the triumph of principle.

~Dorothy Thompson

It is not the fact of liberty but the way in which liberty is exercised that ultimately determines whether liberty itself survives.

~Dorothy Thompson

Dress it as we may...huzza it, and sing swaggering songs about it, what is war, nine times out of ten, but murder in uniform?

~Douglas Jerrold

The best defense is no offense.

~Dr. Ivan Eland

We must pursue peaceful end through peaceful means.

~Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

"Rules of engagement" are a set of guidelines for murder.

~Dr. Teresa Whitehurst

Conflict cannot survive without your participation.

~Dr. Wayne Dyer

Nothing except a battle lost can be half as melancholy as a battle won.

~Duke of Wellington

War settles nothing.

~Dwight D. Eisenhower

We must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex.

~Dwight D. Eisenhower

Disarmament, with mutual honor and confidence, is a continuing imperative.

~Dwight D. Eisenhower

May we never confuse honest dissent with disloyal subversion.

~Dwight D. Eisenhower

This world of ours...must avoid becoming a community of dreadful fear and hate, and be, instead, a proud confederation of mutual trust and respect.

~Dwight D. Eisenhower

There is no glory in battle worth the blood it costs.

~Dwight D. Eisenhower

Together we must learn how to compose difference, not with arms, but with intellect and decent purpose.

~Dwight D. Eisenhower

We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security.

~Dwight D. Eisenhower

We seek peace, knowing that peace is the climate of freedom.

~Dwight D. Eisenhower

You can't have this kind of war. There just aren't enough bulldozers to scrape the bodies off the streets.

~Dwight D. Eisenhower

When people speak to you about a preventive war, you tell them to go and fight it. After my experience, I have come to hate war.

~Dwight D. Eisenhower

I think that people want peace so much that one of these days government had better get out of their way and let them have it.

~Dwight D. Eisenhower

I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its futility, its stupidity.

~Dwight D. Eisenhower

How far can you go without destroying from within what you are trying to defend from without?

~Dwight D. Eisenhower

Preventive war was an invention of Hitler. Frankly, I would not even listen to anyone seriously that came and talked about such a thing.

~Dwight D. Eisenhower

About the quote: from 1953

The time not to become a father is eighteen years before a war.

~E. B. White

Wisdom is better than weapons of war.

~Ecclesiastes 9:18

I venture to say no war can be long carried on against the will of the people.

~Edmund Burke

Tyrants seldom want pretexts.

~Edmund Burke

A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government.

~Edward Abbey

The tragedy of modern war is that the young men die fighting each other--instead of their real enemies back home in the capitals.

~Edward Abbey

About the quote: A naturalist and author, Abbey lived from 1927-1989.

A Patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government.

~Edward Abbey

Our "neoconservatives" are neither new nor conservative, but old as Babylon and evil as Hell.

~Edward Abbey

About the quote: A naturalist and author, Abbey lived from 1927-1989.

Education is a better safeguard of liberty than a standing army.

~Edward Everett

As long as mankind shall bestow more liberal applause on their destroyers than on their benefactors, the thirst for military glory will remain the vice of the most exalted characters.

~Edward Gibbon

Violence is an admission that one's ideas and goals cannot prevail on their own merits.

~Edward M. Kennedy

About the quote: Kennedy (b. 1932) is a U.S. Senator (D, MA). (from 'The Anti-War Quote Book,' Quirk Books, Ed. by Eric Groves Sr.)

We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. When the loyal opposition dies, I think the soul of America dies with it.

~Edward R. Murrow

All the gods are dead except the god of war.

~Eldridge Cleaver

All wars eventually act as boomerangs and the victor suffers as much as the vanquished.

~Eleanor Roosevelt

About the quote: from "My Day," February 7, 1939

It isn't enough to talk about peace. One must believe it. And it isn't enough to believe in it. One must work at it.

~Eleanor Roosevelt

About the quote: Roosevelt (1884-1962) was the wife of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, and an outspoken political activist in her own right. (From 'The Anti-War Quote Book,' Quirk Books, Ed. by Eric Groves Sr.)

Rulers who want to unleash war know very well that they must procure or invent a first victim.

~Elias Canetti

My theory is, strong people don't need strong leaders.

~Ella Baker

About the quote: Baker (1903-1986) was an African American civil rights worker. (quote from 'The Anti-War Quote Book,' edited Eric Groves, Sr., pub. Quirk Books, 2008)

The worst barbarity of war is that it forces men collectively to commit acts against which individually they would revolt with their whole being.

~Ellen Key

Most quarrels are inevitable at the time; incredible afterwards.

~E. M. Forster

History is littered with wars which everybody knew would never happen.

~Enoch Powell

The first casualty of war is not truth, but perspective. Once that's gone, truth, like compassion, reason, and all the other virtues, wanders around like a wounded orphan.

~Ente Grillenhaft

About the quote: from "Treatise on Reason and Hysteria"

War is the blackest villainy of which human nature is capable.

~Erasmus

Dulce bellum inexpertis (War is delightful to the inexperienced).

~Erasmus, the 16th-century scholar

History is replete with examples of empires mounting impressive military campaigns on the cusp of their impending economic collapse.

~Eric Alterman

About the quote: Alterman is an American journalist, born in 1960. (quote from 'The Anti-War Quote Book,' edited Eric Groves, Sr., pub. Quirk Books, 2008)

A hospital alone shows what war is.

~Erich Maria Remarque

You can wipe out your opponents. But if you do it unjustly you become eligible for being wiped out yourself.

~Ernest Hemingway

They wrote in the old days that it is sweet and fitting to die for one’s country. But in modern war, there is nothing sweet nor fitting in your dying. You will die like a dog for no good reason.

~Ernest Hemingway

About the quote: from "Notes on the Next War," published in Esquire Magazine, 1935.

No weapon has ever settled a moral problem. It can impose a solution but it cannot guarantee it to be a just one.

~Ernest Hemingway

The 1st panacea of a mismanaged nation is inflation of the currency; the 2nd is war. Both bring a temporary prosperity; a permanent ruin.

~Ernest Hemingway

For me war has become a flat, black depression without highlights, a revulsion of the mind and an exhaustion of the spirit.

~Ernie Pyle

No war by any nation in any age has ever been declared by the people.

~Eugene Debs

About the quote: (1855-1926)

God hates violence. He has ordained that all men fairly possess their property, not seize it.

~Euripides

Wars should be over in three days or less...and the American people must be all for it from the outset.

~Evan Thomas

I dream of giving birth to a child who will ask, ‘Mother, what was war?'

~Eve Merriam

'Emergencies' have always been the pretext on which the safeguards of individual liberty have been eroded.

~FA Hayek

We need a type of patriotism that recognizes the virtues of those who are opposed to us.

~Francis John McConnell

We must get away from the idea that America is to be the leader of the world in everything.

~Francis John McConnell

The pertinent question: if Americans did not want these wars should they have been compelled to fight them?

~Frank Chodorov

The State acquires power... and because of its insatiable lust for power it is incapable of giving up any of it. The State never abdicates.

~Frank Chodorov

All wars come to an end, at least temporarily. But the authority acquired by the state hangs on; political power never abdicates.

~Frank Chodorov

All governments suffer a recurring problem: Power attracts pathological personalities.

~Frank Herbert

It is not that power corrupts but that power is a magnet to the corruptible.

~Frank Herbert

The evils of government are directly proportional to the tolerance of the people.

~Frank Kent

In politics, nothing happens by accident. If it happens, you can bet it was planned that way.

~Franklin Delano Roosevelt

Repetition does not transform a lie into a truth.

~Franklin D. Roosevelt

The life of the nation is secure only while the nation is honest, truthful, and virtuous.

~Frederick Douglass

If my soldiers were to begin to think, not one of them would remain in the army.

~Frederick the Great

Wars are the hobbies of half-informed children who have somehow come into possession of the levers of power.

~Fred Reed

About the quote: You can read Fred Reed's articles on LewRockwell.com: http://www.lewrockwell.com/reed/reed-arch.html

When goods don't cross borders, soldiers will.

~Fredric Bastiat

Governments have never learned anything from history, or acted on principles deducted from it.

~Friedrich Hebbel, German poet and dramatist

Under conditions of peace the warlike man attacks himself.

~Friedrich Nietzsche

The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently.

~Friedrich Nietzsche

If, finally, violence meets with violence, we have confirmation of the age old adage that war though it kills many men, makes many more men evil.

~Fritz Medicus

The winds that blow our billions away return burdened with themes of scorn and dispraise.

~Garet Garrett

With no notice to the American people...this country entered the war...Stranger than the fact was the passive acceptance of it.

~Garet Garrett

Is it security you want? There is no security at the top of the world.

~Garet Garrett

Only the winners decide what were war crimes.

~Gary Wills

I want to scare the hell out of the rest of the world.

~General Colin Powell

In war, as it is waged now, with the enormous losses on both sides, both sides will lose. It is a form of mutual suicide.

~General Douglas MacArthur

About the quote: MacArthur was an American army general who lived 1880-1964. (quote from 'The Anti-War Quote Book,' edited Eric Groves, Sr., pub. Quirk Books, 2008)

Our government has kept us in a perpetual state of fear - kept us in a continuous stampede of patriotic fervor - with the cry of grave national emergency.

~General Douglas MacArthur

I believe that the entire effort of modern society should be concentrated on the endeavor to outlaw war as a method of the solution of problems between nations.

~General Douglas MacArthur

About the quote: MacArthur was an American army general who lived 1880-1964. (quote from 'The Anti-War Quote Book,' edited Eric Groves, Sr., pub. Quirk Books, 2008)

It is part of the general pattern of misguided policy that our country is now geared to an arms economy which was bred in an artificially induced psychosis of war hysteria and nurtured upon an incessant propaganda of fear.

~General Douglas MacArthur

Our country is now geared to an arms economy bred in an artificually induced psychosis of war hysteria and an incessant propaganda of fear.

~General Douglas MacArthur

Always there has been some terrible evil at home or some monstrous foreign power that was going to gobble us up if we did not blindly rally behind it.

~General Douglas MacArthur

As far as I am concerned, war itself is immoral.

~General Omar Bradley

About the quote: U.S. Five Star General.

War: A wretched debasement of all the pretenses of civilization.

~General Omar N. Bradley

We know more about war than we know about peace, more about killing than we know about living.

~General Omar N. Bradley

Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants.

~General Omar N. Bradley

War is just a racket...I believe in adequate defense at the coastline and nothing else.

~General Smedley Butler

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

~General Smedley Butler

War is a racket. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives.

~General Smedley Butler

There are only two things we should fight for. One is the defense of our homes and the other is the Bill of Rights. War for any other reason is simply a racket.

~General Smedley Butler

My mental faculties remained in suspended animation while I obeyed the orders of the higher-ups. This is typical with everyone in the military.

~General Smedley Butler (USMC, Ret.)

It is painful enough to discover with what unconcern they speak of war and threaten it. I have seen enough of it to make me look upon it as the sum of all evils.

~General Stonewall Jackson

About the quote: 1824-1863. Confederate General of the US Civil War.

People who are anxious to bring on war don’t know what they are bargaining for; they don’t see all the horrors that must accompany such an event.

~General Stonewall Jackson

About the quote: 1824-1863. Confederate General of the US Civil War.

Putting aside all the fancy words and academic doubletalk, the basic reason for having a military is to do two jobs --to kill people and to destroy.

~General Thomas S. Power

Any forces that would impose their will on other nations will certainly face defeat.

~General Vo Nguyen Giap (Vietnam)

War is at best barbarism. Its glory is all moonshine...War is hell.

~General William Tecumseh Sherman

It is only those who have neither fired a shot nor heard the shrieks and groans of the wounded who cry aloud for blood, more vengeance, more desolation. War is hell.

~General William Tecumseh Sherman

Vietnam was the first war ever fought without censorship. Without censorship, things can get terribly confused in the public mind.

~General William Westmoreland

War is fear cloaked in courage.

~General William Westmoreland

The military doesn't start wars. The politicians start wars.

~General William Westmoreland

Cruelty must be whitewashed by a moral excuse, and pretense of reluctance.

~George Bernard Shaw

Man is the only animal of which I am thoroughly and cravenly afraid...There is no harm in a well-fed lion. It has no ideals, no sect, no party...

~George Bernard Shaw

I can tell you this: If I’m ever in a position to call the shots, I’m not going to rush to send somebody else’s kids into a war.

~George H. W. Bush

There can be no public or private virtue unless the foundation of action is the practice of truth.

~George Jacob Holyoake

About the quote: Holyoke (1817-1906) was an English secularist.

I'm fed up to the ears with old men dreaming up wars for young men to die in.

~George McGovern

During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act.

~George Orwell

War is a way of shattering to pieces...materials which might otherwise be used to make the masses too comfortable and...too intelligent.

~George Orwell

About the quote: This quote is spoken by the character of Emmanuel Goldstein in Orwell's novel, "1984."

The essential act of war is destruction, not necessarily of human lives, but of the products of human labor.

~George Orwell

About the quote: This quote is spoken by the character of Emmanuel Goldstein in Orwell's novel, "1984."

The essential act of war is destruction, not necessarily of human lives, but of the products of human labor.

~George Orwell

About the quote: This quote is spoken by the character of Emmanuel Goldstein in Orwell's novel, "1984."

All the war-propaganda, all the screaming and lies and hatred, comes invariably from people who are not fighting.

~George Orwell

About the quote: This quote comes from "Homage to Catalonia," Orwell's 1936 eyewitness account of the Spanish Civil War.

Every war when it comes, or before it comes, is represented not as a war but as an act of self-defense against a homicidal maniac.

~George Orwell

The nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, he has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them.

~George Orwell

War against a foreign country only happens when the moneyed classes think they are going to profit from it.

~George Orwell

Political language. . . is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable

~George Orwell

About the quote: from his 'Politics and the English Language.'

War is too serious a matter to entrust to military men.

~Georges Clemenceau

It is far easier to make war than peace.

~Georges Clemenceau

Hate is able to provoke disorders, to ruin a social organization, to cast a country into a period of bloody revolutions; but it produces nothing.

~Georges Sorel

Observe good faith and justice toward all nations. Cultivate peace and harmony with all.

~George Washington

About the quote: President Washington lived from 1732-1799. (From 'The Anti-War Quote Book,' Quirk Books, Ed. by Eric Groves Sr.)

The constitution vests the power of declaring war in Congress; therefore no offensive expedition of importance can be undertaken until after they shall have deliberated upon the subject and authorized such a measure.

~George Washington

My first wish is to see this plague of mankind, war, banished from the earth.

~George Washington

Government is not reason, it is not eloquence, it is force...Never for a moment should it be left to irresponsible action.

~George Washington

Guard against the impostures of pretended patriotism.

~George Washington

It is our true policy to steer clear of entangling alliances with any portion of the foreign world.

~George Washington

Arbitrary power is most easily established on the ruins of liberty abused to licentiousness.

~George Washington

Our nation is somewhat sad, but we’re angry. There’s a certain level of blood lust, but we won’t let it drive our reaction. We’re steady, clear-eyed and patient, but pretty soon we’ll have to start displaying scalps.

~George W. Bush

We know that dictators are quick to choose aggression, while free nations strive to resolve differences in peace.

~George W. Bush

About the quote: from a UN Speech in Sept 2004

...the role of the military is to fight and win war and, therefore, prevent war from happening in the first place.

~George W. Bush

If this were a dictatorship, it'd be a heck of a lot easier, just so long as I'm the dictator.

~George W. Bush

I think war is a dangerous place.

~George W. Bush

If we don’t stop extending our troops all around the world in nation-building missions, we’re going to have a serious problem coming down the road.

~George W. Bush

Victory means exit strategy, and it's important for the president to explain to us what the exit strategy is.

~George W. Bush

About the quote: The future president said this in regard to Kosovo in April 1999.

Our enemies are innovative and resourceful...They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we.

~George W. Bush

About the quote: From remarks by the president at the signing of The Defense Appropriations Act for 2005 (8/5/04)

Evil men, obsessed with ambition and unburdened by conscience, must be taken very seriously--and we must stop them before their crimes can multiply.

~George W. Bush

About the quote: from the President's Veteran's Day Speech (11/11/05).

Free nations are peaceful nations. Free nations don't attack each other. Free nations don't develop weapons of mass destruction.

~George W. Bush

About the quote: from a speech on 10/3/03

I just want you to know that, when we talk about war, we're really talking about peace.

~George W. Bush

About the quote: From a speech at the Dept. of Housing and Urban Development in Wash. DC, 6/18/02.

These people are trying to shake the will of the Iraqi citizens, and they want us to leave...I think the world would be better off if we did leave...

~George W. Bush (on Iraqi Insurgency)

What experience and history teach is this—that people and governments never have learned anything from history, or acted on principles deduced from it.

~Georg W. Hegel

Don't regard yourself as a guardian of freedom unless you respect and preserve the rights of people you disagree with...

~Gerard K. O'Neill

Dictators have always played on the natural human tendency to blame others and to oversimplify.

~Gerard K. O'Neill

A great war leaves the country with three armies - an army of cripples, an army of mourners, and an army of thieves.

~German proverb

The only defensible war is a war of defense.

~G. K. Chesterton

A man who says that no patriot should attack the war until it is over...is saying no good son should warn his mother of a cliff until she has fallen.

~G. K. Chesterton

"My country right or wrong" is like saying, "My mother drunk or sober."

~G. K. Chesterton

There is nothing more frightening than active ignorance.

~Goethe

There's no difference between one's killing and making decisions that will send others to kill. It's exactly the same thing, or even worse.

~Golda Meir

Every move we make in fear of the next war in fact hastens it.

~Gregory Bateson

Are bombs the only way of setting fire to the spirit of a people? Is the human will as inert as the past two world-wide wars would indicate?

~Gregory Clark

Military justice is to justice what military music is to music.

~Groucho Marx

Every government has as much of a duty to avoid war as a ship's captain has to avoid a shipwreck.

~Guy de Maupassant

Although tyranny...may successfully rule over foreign peoples, it can stay in power only if it destroys first of all the national institutions of its own people.

~Hannah Arendt

The practice of violence, like all action, changes the world, but the most probable change is a more violent world.

~Hannah Arendt

About the quote: Arendt (1906-1975) was a German-Jewish political theorist and philosopher. (From 'The Anti-War Quote Book,' Quirk Books, Ed. by Eric Groves Sr.)

The chief qualification of a mass leader has become unending infallibility; he can never admit an error.

~Hannah Arendt

War is a bankruptcy of policy

~Hans Van Seeckt

About the quote: Van Seeckt was German military officer who lived from 1866-1936. (quote from 'The Anti-War Quote Book,' edited Eric Groves, Sr., pub. Quirk Books, 2008)

War is the most striking instance of the failure of intelligence to master the problem of human relationships.

~Harry Elmer Barnes

I hate war for its consequences, for the lies it lives on and propagates, for the undying hatreds it arouses...

~Harry Emerson Fosdick

The tragedy of war is that it uses man’s best to do man’s worst.

~Harry Emerson Fosdick

I hate war...for the dictatorships it puts in the place of democracies, and for the starvation that stalks after it.

~Harry Emerson Fosdick

The responsibility of the great states is to serve, and not to dominate, the world.

~Harry S. Truman

About the quote: Truman (1884-1972) was president of the United States. (quote from 'The Anti-War Quote Book,' edited Eric Groves, Sr., pub. Quirk Books, 2008)

Mankind is becoming a single unit, and that for a unit to fight against itself is suicide.

~Havelock Ellis

Strike against war, for without you no battles can be fought!

~Helen Keller

Be not dumb, obedient slaves in an army of destruction! Be heroes in an army of construction!

~Helen Keller

War brings out the most negative emotional human responses on both sides.

~Henk Middelraad

Emphasis on military prowess is an indication of philosophical poverty.

~Henk Middelraad

Two armies that fight each other is like one large army that commits suicide.

~Henri Barbusse

About the quote: from his book "Under Fire: The Story of a Squad" (1916). Barbusse lived from 1873-1935.

There is nothing that war has ever achieved that we could not better achieve without it.

~Henry Havelock Ellis

It's not a matter of what is true that counts but a matter of what is perceived to be true.

~Henry Kissinger

What political leaders decide, intelligence services tend to seek to justify.

~Henry Kissinger

About the quote: from page 303 of his book, "Diplomacy"

It is for us to refuse loyalty when injustice holds sway.

~Henry T. Laurency

About the quote: from "The Philosopher's Stone"

It is the youth who must inherit the tribulation, the sorrow...that are the aftermath of war.

~Herbert C. Hoover

Old men declare war. But it is the youth that must fight and die.

~Herbert C. Hoover

A visitor from Mars could easily pick out the civilized nations. They have the best implements of war.

~Herbert V. Prochnow

The people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders...tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger.

~Herman Goering

Every politician in the world is all for revolution, reason, and disarmament--but only in enemy countries, not in his own.

~Hermann Hesse

About the quote: Hesse (1877-1962) was a philosophical writer, best known for his work "Siddartha."

In peace, sons bury their fathers; in war, fathers bury their sons.

~Herodotus

A time will come when a politician who has willfully made war and promoted international dissension will be...surer of the noose than a private homicide.

~H. G. Wells

It is not reasonable that those who gamble with men's lives should not pay with their own.

~H. G. Wells

I believe in only one thing: liberty; but I do not believe in liberty enough to want to force it upon anyone.

~H. L. Mencken

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.

~H. L. Mencken

The urge to save humanity is almost always only a false-face for the urge to rule it.

~H. L. Mencken

The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule.

~H.L. Mencken

Under democracy, one party always devotes its chief energies to trying to prove that the other party is unfit to rule – and both commonly succeed, and are right.

~H.L. Mencken

When fanatics are on top there is no limit to oppression.

~H.L. Menken

Force without judgement falls on its own weight.

~Horace

During times of war, hatred becomes quite respectable even though it has to masquerade often under the guise of patriotism.

~Howard Thurman

One certain effect of war is to diminish freedom of expression.

~Howard Zinn

How can you make a war on terror if war itself is terrorism?

~Howard Zinn

There is no flag large enough to cover the shame of killing innocent people.

~Howard Zinn

Historically, the most terrible things--war, genocide and slavery--have resulted from obedience, not disobedience.

~Howard Zinn

It's more humane to cure your enemies than to kill them.

~Hugh Mann

Paramount among the responsibilities of a free press is the duty to prevent any part of the government from deceiving the people...

~Hugo Black, Supreme Court Justice

Only a free and unrestrained press can effectively expose deception in government.

~Hugo Black, Supreme Court Justice

Suspicion must always fall on those who attempt to silence their opponents.

~Ian Buckley

Even philosophers will praise war as ennobling mankind, forgetting the Greek who said: ‘War is bad in that it begets more evil than it kills.'

~Immanuel Kant

It is not only the living who are killed in war.

~Isaac Asimov

Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.

~Issac Asimov

About the quote: The character Salvor Hardin speaks these words in Asimov's "Foundation."

We believed ourselves indestructable... watching only the madmen outside our frontiers, and we remained defenseless against our own madmen.

~Jacobo Timerman

I love America more than any other country in the world and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually.

~James Baldwin

Freedom is whatever the president says it is, pending revision.

~James Bovard

About the quote: http://jimbovard.com/blog/2006/01/17/credo-from-attention-deficit-democracy/

Patriotism consists not in waving the flag, but in striving that our country shall be righteous as well as strong.

~James Bryce

Our country is not the only thing to which we owe our allegiance. It is also owed to justice and to humanity.

~James Bryce

We cloak ourselves in cold indifference to the unnecessary suffering of others--even when we cause it.

~James Carroll

About the quote: The Boston Globe, 9/21/04

We carefully nurture a spirit of detachment toward the wars we pay for.

~James Carroll

About the quote: The Boston Globe, 9/21/04

The loss of liberty at home is to be charged to the provisions against danger, real or imagined, from abroad.

~James Madison

All men having power ought to be mistrusted.

~James Madison

If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy.

~James Madison

About the quote: This quote is from the period he served as a US Congressman (he represented Virginia from 1789-1797).

War...should only be declared by the authority of the people...instead of the government which is to reap its fruits.

~James Madison

The executive has no right, in any case, to decide the question, whether there is or is not cause for declaring war.

~James Madison

It is a universal truth that the loss of liberty at home is to be charged to the provisions against danger, real or pretended, from abroad.

~James Madison

The power to declare war, including the power of judging the causes of war, is fully and exclusively vested in the legislature.

~James Madison

War is in fact the true nurse of executive aggrandizement

~James Madison

About the quote: from "Political Observations," April 20, 1795.

The means of defense against foreign danger historically have become the instruments of tyranny at home.

~James Madison

Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps the most to be dreaded because it compromises and develops the germ of every other.

~James Madison

About the quote: from "Political Observations," 1795.

No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.

~James Madison

About the quote: from "Political Observations," 1795

The constitution supposes, what the History of all Governments demonstrates, that the Executive is the branch of power most interested in war, and most prone to it.

~James Madison

About the quote: as written in a letter to Thomas Jefferson. You can read more about this in Thomas E. Woods, Jr's article "Presidential War Powers" on www.LewRockwell.com.

A people who mean to be their own governors must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.

~James Madison

If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy.

~James Madison

About the quote: This quote is from the period he served as a US Congressman (he represented Virginia from 1789-1797).

The means of defense against foreign danger historically have become the instruments of tyranny at home.

~James Madison

In any war, the first casualty is common sense, and the second is free and open discussion.

~James Reston

About the quote: American Journalist (1909-1995), best known for his work with the NY Times.

Even the most piddling life is of momentous consequence to its owner.

~James Wolcott

About the quote: in his article “From Fear to Eternity” in Vanity Fair, March 2005

The lies the government and media tell are amplifications of the lies we tell ourselves. To stop being conned, stop conning yourself.

~James Wolcott

About the quote: in his article “From Fear to Eternity,” Vanity Fair, March 2005

It’s one thing to fight for what you believe in, another thing to fight for what others believe in.

~James Wolcott

About the quote: in his article “From Fear to Eternity” in Vanity Fair, March 2005

Every man thinks god is on his side.

~Jean Anouilh

We have war when at least one of the parties to a conflict wants something more than it wants peace.

~Jeane J. Kirkpatrick

You can no more win a war than you can win an earthquake.

~Jeanette Rankin

After every ''victory'' you have more enemies.

~Jeanette Winterson

Man was/is born free, and everywhere he is in chains. One who believes himself the master of others is nonetheless a greater slave than they.

~Jean Jaques Rousseau

Killing a man in defense of an idea is not defending an idea; it is killing a man.

~Jean -Luc Godard

Total war is no longer war waged by all members of one national community against all those of another. It is total...because it may well involve the whole world.

~Jean-Paul Sartre

...Uncalled-for aggression arouses the hatred of the civilian population...

~Jean-Paul Sartre

It is always more valuable to report the truth.

~Jean-Paul Sartre

Human failure of communication and failed diplomacy between Nations should not yield the ultimate sacrifice; a life.

~Jerome G. Fenster

I'm afraid, based on my own experience, that fascism will come to America in the name of national security.

~Jim Garrison

There should be an honest attempt at the reconciliation of differences before resorting to combat.

~Jimmy Carter

We will not learn how to live together in peace by killing each other's children.

~Jimmy Carter

A merely fallen enemy may rise again, but the reconciled one is truly vanquished.

~Johan Christoph Schiller

The coward threatens when he is safe.

~Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.

~Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free.

~John 8:32

Power always thinks it has a great soul and vast views beyond the comprehension of the weak...

~John Adams

There is danger from all men. The only maxim of a free government ought to be to trust no man living with power to endanger the public liberty.

~John Adams

Great is the guilt of an unnecessary war.

~John Adams

The real fabric of American society is not all those flags you see on people's cars...it's in the Bill of Rights and in our constitutional form of government.

~John Adams (composer)

About the quote: This quote is not from founding father John Adams, but from the Pulitzer Prize-winning modern composer and conductor of the same name (2001).

Yes, we love peace, but we are not willing to take wounds for it, as we are for war.

~John Andrew Holmes

If this phrase of the 'balance of power' is to be always an argument for war, the pretext for war will never be wanting, and peace can never be secure.

~John Bright

It is harder to preserve than to obtain liberty.

~John C. Calhoun

War is the cemetery of futures promised.

~John Cory

War is eternity jammed into frantic minutes that will fill a lifetime with dreams and nightmares.

~John Cory

War is the tool of small-minded scoundrels who worship the death of others on the altar of their greed.

~John Cory

There is no morality in war. Morality is the privilege of those judging from the distance. War is only death and destruction...

~John Cory

There are no politics in war. Politics is the luxury of the safe-at-home. War is a lottery of survival.

~John Cory

Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.

~John F. Kennedy

The basic problems facing the world today are not susceptible to a military solution.

~John F. Kennedy

War will exist until that distant day when the conscientious objector enjoys the same reputation and prestige that the warrior does today.

~John F. Kennedy

Unconditional war can no longer lead to unconditional victory. It can no longer serve to settle disputes...can no longer be of concern to great powers alone.

~John F. Kennedy

We are not afraid to entrust the American people with unpleasant facts, foreign ideas, alien philosophies, and competitive values.

~John F. Kennedy

A nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people.

~John F. Kennedy

Peace is a daily, a weekly, a monthly process, gradually changing opinions, slowly eroding old barriers, quietly building new structures.

~John F. Kennedy

About the quote: President Kennedy lived 1917-1963. (From 'The Anti-War Quote Book,' Quirk Books, Ed. by Eric Groves Sr.)

The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie: deliberate, continued, and dishonest; but the myth: persistent, persuasive, and unrealistic.

~John F. Kennedy

Mankind must put an end to war, or war will put an end to mankind.

~John F. Kennedy

We are all familiar with the argument: Make war dreadful enough, and there will be no war. And we none of us believe it.

~John Galsworthy

Peace hath higher tests of manhood than battle ever knew.

~John Greenleaf Whittier

There is neither rank nor station nor prerogative in the republic of the grave.

~John James Ingalls

War remains the decisive human failure.

~John Kenneth Galbraith

If everyone demanded peace instead of another television set, then there'd be peace.

~John Lennon

All mankind...being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty or possessions.

~John Locke

For what can war, but endless war, still breed?

~John Milton

The hardest thing for me in Vietnam wasn't seeing the wounded and dead. It was watching the big transport jets come in, bringing loads of fresh new boys for the war.

~Johnny Cash

About the quote: Speaking about his experience when he and June Carter went to Vietnam to entertain the troups in 1969. from 'Cash: The Autobiography,' Harper Collins, page 218

America does not go abroad in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all.

~John Quincy Adams

The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not sufficient warrant.

~John Stuart Mill

Imperialism is an institution under which one nation asserts the right to seize the land or at least to control the government or resources of another people.

~John T. Flynn

Those who suppress freedom always do so in the name of law and order.

~John V. Lindsay

The opposite of war is not peace, it's creation.

~Jonathan Larson

There is but one evil, war. All the other proclaimed evils such as hate, greed, descrimination, and jealousy are only sub-categories of it.

~Jose Barreiro

In war, there are no unwounded soldiers.

~Jose Narosky

About the quote: Narosky is an Argentinian writer and musician. (From 'The Anti-War Quote Book,' Quirk Books, Ed. by Eric Groves Sr.)

Our poverty will be brought home to us to its full extent only after the war.

~Joseph A. Schumpeter

Think of the press as a great keyboard on which the government can play.

~Joseph Goebbels

I'd like to see the government get out of war altogether and leave the whole field to private individuals.

~Joseph Heller

As scarce as truth is, the supply has always been in excess of the demand.

~Josh Billings

We have all taken risks in the making of war. Isn't it time that we should take risks to secure peace?

~J. Ramsay MacDonald

We shall never be able to effect physical disarmament until we have succeeded in effecting moral disarmament.

~J. Ramsay MacDonald

Governments use national animosities, foreign wars and the glamour of empire-making, in order to...divert rising sentiment against domestic abuses.

~J. R. Hobson

Freedom is to understand, and to be unbounded by that freedom.

~Juan C. Mustelier

The sword of murder is not the balance of justice.

~Julia Ward Howe

About the quote: Julia Howe was the "founder" of Mother's Day.

To declare that the end justifies the means, to declare that the government may commit crimes, would bring terrible retribution.

~Justice Louis D. Brandeis

The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in the insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well meaning but without understanding.

~Justice Louis D. Brandeis

It is not the function of government to keep the citizen from error, it is the function of the citizen to keep the government from falling into error.

~Justice Robert Jackson

About the quote: Jackson (1892-1954) was a US Supreme Court Justice 1941-1954.

We have to show the American People that war is not patriotic.

~Justin Raimondo

Where is the justice of political power if it...marches upon neighboring lands, killing thousands and pillaging the very hills?

~Kahlil Gibran

Where is the justice of political power if it executes the murderer and jails the plunderer?

~Kahlil Gibran

Vietnam should remind conservatives that whenever you put your faith in big government for any reason, sooner or later you wind up an apologist for mass murder.

~Karl Hess

War: first, one hopes to win...in the end, one is surprised that everyone has lost.

~Karl Kraus

About the quote: Satirical writer and journalist. (1874–1936)

War is the continuation of politics by other means.

~Karl Von Clausewitz

War doesn't make boys men, it makes men dead.

~Ken Gillespie

I am not against all wars--just whichever is current.

~Ken Gillespie

It takes twenty years or more of peace to make a man; it only takes twenty seconds of war to destroy him.

~King Baudouin I of Belgium

Peace has its victories no less than war, but it doesn't have as many monuments to unveil.

~Kin Hubbard

Wars frequently begin ten years before the first shot is fired.

~K. K. V. Casey

The war on terrorism is akin to the war on drugs…unwinable, unless you kill everyone…or address the root causes.

~K. W. Ibrahim

The reality right now is that the most dangerous opinion in the world is the opinion of a U.S. serviceman.

~Lance Cpl. Devin Kelly (USMC)

Only fools seek power, and the greatest fools seek it through force.

~Lao Tsu

Violence, even well intentioned, always rebounds upon oneself.

~Lao Tzu

How could man rejoice in victory and delight in the slaughter of men?

~Lao Tzu

Phony pretexts repeated often enough become real reasons. Things that...are not true become true in the public mind simply through endless repetition.

~Lenny Bloom

The greater the state, the more wrong and cruel its patriotism, and the greater is the sum of suffering upon which its power is founded.

~Leo Tolstoy

In all history there is no war which was not hatched by the governments, the governments alone, independent of the interests of the people, to whom war is always pernicious even when successful.

~Leo Tolstoy

What an immense mass of evil must result...from allowing men to assume the right of anticipating what may happen.

~Leo Tolstoy

We must not only cease our present desire for the growth of the state, but we must desire its decrease, its weakening...

~Leo Tolstoy

People who talk of outlawing the atomic bomb are mistaken — what needs to be outlawed is war.

~Leslie Richard Groves

War is both the product of an earlier corruption, and a producer of new corruptions.

~Lewis Mumford

About the quote: From "The Conduct of Life" (1951, republished 1970), page 13, Chapter 1, "The Challenge to Renewal," Section 3, "Diagnosis of Our Times."

In war, the army is not merely a pure consumer, but a negative producer...

~Lewis Mumford

About the quote: from "Technics and Civilization"

Misery, mutilation, destruction, terror, starvation and death characterize the process of war and form a principal part of the product.

~Lewis Mumford

About the quote: from "Technics and Civilization"

War vies with magic in its efforts to get something for nothing...

~Lewis Mumford

The greatest protection against war is a well educated populace.

~L.L. Castetter

About the quote: Castetter was a WWI veteran; this quote is from the 1930s (from p. 178 of the book "A Page A Day," ed. by Kenneth Adams, published by Authorhouse.com).

How does one prevail in war? Both sides have already lost.

~Logan Kodysz

War is not its own end, except in some catastrophic slide into absolute damnation.

~Lois McMaster Bujold

The one pervading evil of democracy is the tyranny of the party that succeeds, by force or fraud, in carrying elections.

~Lord Acton

Where you have a concentration of power in a few hands, all too frequently men with the mentality of gangsters get control.

~Lord Acton

Everything secret degenerates, even the administration of justice.

~Lord Acton

War’s a brain spattering windpipe splitting art.

~Lord Byron

Don't talk to me about atrocities; all war is an atrocity.

~Lord Kitchener (Horatio Herbert)

Whether or not patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel, national security can be the last refuge of the tyrant.

~Lord Walker of Gestingthorpe

About the quote: from 1/14/05

One does not create a human society on mounds of corpses.

~Louis Lecoin

Acts of terror have never brought down liberal democracies. Acts of parliament have closed a few.

~Lt. General William E. Odom, US Army (Ret.),

It's quite fun to fight 'em, you know. It's a hell of a hoot. It's fun to shoot some people. I'll be right up front with you, I like brawling.

~Lt. Gen. James Mattis, USMC

About the quote: Comments from 2/1/05 conference in San Diego, California. Lt. Mattis commanded troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Economically considered, war and revolution are always bad business.

~Ludwig von Mises

Society has arisen out of the works of peace; the essence of society is peacemaking.

~Ludwig von Mises

Only one thing can conquer war--that attitude of mind which can see nothing in war but destruction and annihilation...

~Ludwig von Mises

The attainment of the economic aims of man presupposes peace.

~Ludwig von Mises

The essence of so-called war prosperity; it enriches some by what it takes from others. It is not rising wealth but a shifting of wealth and income.

~Ludwig von Mises

History has witnessed the failure of many endeavors to impose peace by war, cooperation by coercion, unanimity by slaughtering dissidents…. A lasting order cannot be established by bayonets.

~Ludwig von Mises

The worst evils which mankind has ever had to endure were inflicted by bad governments.

~Ludwig von Mises

A lasting order cannot be established by bayonets.

~Ludwig von Mises

To defeat the aggressors is not enough to make peace durable. The main thing is to discard the ideology that generates war.

~Ludwig von Mises

Whoever wishes peace among peoples must fight statism.

~Ludwig von Mises

War prosperity is like the prosperity that an earthquake or a plague brings.

~Ludwig von Mises

Those who are asking for more government interference are asking ultimately for more compulsion and less freedom.

~Ludwig von Mises

Whoever wants peace among nations must seek to limit the state and its influence most strictly.

~Ludwig von Mises

The state can be and has often been in the course of history the main source of mischief and disaster.

~Ludwig von Mises

War...is harmful, not only to the conquered but to the conqueror.

~Ludwig von Mises

Society has arisen out of the works of peace; the essence of society is peacemaking. Peace and not war is the father of all things.

~Ludwig von Mises

To defeat the aggressors is not enough to make peace durable. The main thing is to discard the ideology that generates war.

~Ludwig von Mises

War can really cause no economic boom, at least not directly, since an increase in wealth never does result from destruction of goods.

~Ludwig von Mises

The philosophy of protectionism is a philosophy of war.

~Ludwig von Mises

Sovereignty must not be used for inflicting harm on anyone, whether citizen or foreigner.

~Ludwig von Mises

Modern society, based as it is on the division of labor, can be preserved only under conditions of lasting peace.

~Ludwig von Mises

Men are fighting...because they are convinced that the extermination of adversaries is the only means of promoting their own well-being.

~Ludwig von Mises

If men do not now succeed in abolishing war, civilization and mankind are doomed.

~Ludwig von Mises

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

~Ludwig von Mises

If some peoples pretend that history or geography gives them the right to subjugate other races, nations, or peoples, there can be no peace.

~Ludwig von Mises

Wars of aggression are popular nowadays with those nations convinced that only victory and conquest could improve their material well-being.

~Ludwig von Mises

[War] might be avoidable were more emphasis placed on the training to social interest, less on the attainment of egotistical grandeur.

~Lydia Sicher

As long as we can talk with people, as long as one can keep the guns quiet, one has a chance.

~Lydia Sicher

Wars are inevitable... as long as we believe that wars are inevitable. The moment we don't believe it anymore it is not inevitable.

~Lydia Sicher

The guns and the bombs, the rockets and the warships, are all symbols of human failure.

~Lyndon B. Johnson

Truth stands, even if there be no public support. It is self-sustained.

~Mahatma Gandhi

Victory attained by violence is tantamount to a defeat, for it is momentary.

~Mahatma Gandhi

Liberty and democracy become unholy when their hands are dyed red with innocent blood.

~Mahatma Gandhi

An eye for an eye makes us all blind.

~Mahatma Gandhi

I object to violence because when it appears to do good, the good is only temporary; the evil it does is permanent.

~Mahatma Gandhi

There is no way to peace. Peace is the way.

~Mahatma Gandhi

About the quote: This quote is also often credited to a peace activist A.J. Muste.

What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans, and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty and democracy?

~Mahatma Gandhi

Was not war itself a crime against God and humanity, and therefore, were not all those who sanctioned, engineered and conducted wars, war criminals?

~Mahatma Gandhi

The de facto role of the US armed forces will be to keep the world safe for our economy and open to our cultural assault.

~Major Ralph Peters, US Military

You're not supposed to be so blind with patriotism that you can't face reality. Wrong is wrong no matter who does it or who says it.

~Malcolm X

Look back over the past, with its changing empires that rose and fell, and you can foresee the future, too.

~Marcus Aurelius

The opinion of 10,000 men is of no value if none of them know anything about the subject.

~Marcus Aurelius

The more laws, the less justice.

~Marcus Tullius Cicero

The mere act of believing that some wrongful course of action constitutes an advantage is pernicious.

~Marcus Tullius Cicero

The arrogance of officialdom should be tempered and controlled, and assistance to foreign hands should be curtailed, lest Rome fall.

~Marcus Tullius Cicero

The sinews of war are infinite money.

~Marcus Tullius Cicero

What is morally wrong can never be advantageous, even when it enables you to make some gain that you believe to be to your advantage.

~Marcus Tullius Cicero

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed people can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.

~Margaret Mead

The shepherd always tries to persuade the sheep that their interests and his own are the same.

~Marie Beyle

It takes more courage to get out of a war than it does to get into one.

~Mark Couturier

Each man must for himself alone decide what is right and what is wrong, which course is patriotic and which isn't.

~Mark Twain

Man is the only animal that is cruel. It kills just for the sake of it.

~Mark Twain

I am an anti-imperialist. I am opposed to having the eagle put its talons on any other land.

~Mark Twain

About the quote: From an interview, 9/15/1900

Patriotism is supporting your country all the time, and your governmant when it deserves it.

~Mark Twain

Look at you in war...There has never been a just one, never an honorable one, on the part of the instigator of the war.

~Mark Twain

About the quote: from "The Mysterious Stranger," published 1910.

Why, the Government is merely...a temporary servant...Its function is to obey orders, not originate them.

~Mark Twain

The statesmen will invent cheap lies, putting the blame upon the nation that is being attacked, and every man will be glad of these conscience-soothing falsities

~Mark Twain

Be loyal to your country always, and to the government only when it deserves it.

~Mark Twain

Social order at the expense of liberty is hardly a bargain.

~Marquis de Sade

Is it not a strange blindness on our part to teach publicly the techniques of warfare and to reward with medals those who prove to be the most adroit killers?

~Marquis de Sade

Let not your zeal to share your principles entice you beyond your borders.

~Marquis de Sade

What is more immoral than war?

~Marquis de Sade

War is the greatest plague that can affect humanity; it destroys religion, it destroys states, it destroys families. Any scourge is preferable to it.

~Martin Luther

We all have to be concerned about terrorism, but you will never end terrorism by terrorizing others.

~Martin Luther King III

The greatest purveyor of violence in the world today is my own government.

~Martin Luther King, Jr.

The chain reaction of evil--wars producing more wars -- must be broken, or we shall be plunged into the dark abyss of annihilation.

~Martin Luther King, Jr.

I have condemned any organizer of war, regardless of his rank or nationality.

~Martin Luther King, Jr.

Nothing good ever comes of violence.

~Martin Luther King, Jr.

Wars are poor chisels for carving out peaceful tomorrows.

~Martin Luther King, Jr.

The bombs in Vietnam explode at home; they destroy the hopes and possibilities for a decent America.

~Martin Luther King, Jr.

The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.

~Martin Luther King, Jr.

We must concentrate not merely on the negative expulsion of war but the postive affirmation of peace.

~Martin Luther King, Jr.

It is not enough to say we must not wage war. It is necessary to love peace and sacrifice for it.

~Martin Luther King, Jr.

If you succumb to the temptation of using violence in the struggle...your chief legacy to the future will be an endless reign of meaningless chaos.

~Martin Luther King, Jr.

Peace is not merely a distant goal that we seek, but a means by which we arrive at that goal.

~Martin Luther King, Jr.

We have guided missiles and misguided men.

~Martin Luther King, Jr.

Man must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression, and retaliation.

~Martin Luther King, Jr.

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.

~Mary Roberts Rinehart

One can...never create [freedom] by an invading force.

~Maximilien Robespierre

Conflict is inevitable, but combat is optional.

~Max Lucade

Politics and crime are the same thing.

~Michael Corleone (from "The Godfather: Part III")

About the quote: This line is spoken by Al Pacino's character in the Francis Ford Coppola film "The Godfather: Part III," script by Coppola and Mario Puzo.

Good intentions will always be pleaded for any assumption of power.

~Michael Gillespie

Follow not the person carrying flag nor sword, for they will invariably lead you to a cliff and a mighty fall.

~Michael Hall

The enormous gap between what US leaders do in the world and what Americans think their leaders are doing is one of the great propaganda accomplishments.

~Michael Parenti

To kill a man is not to defend a doctrine, but to kill a man.

~Michael Servetus

One day the end of the world will come as a result of a 'justified' war.

~Mikhail Gofman, Antiwar.com reader

An empire founded by war has to maintain itself by war.

~Montesquieu

If you want to make peace, you don't talk to your friends. You talk to your enemies.

~Moshe Dayan

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

~Murray Rothbard

All government wars are unjust.

~Murray Rothbard

It is in war that the State really comes into its own: swelling in power, in number, in pride, in absolute dominion over the economy and the society.

~Murray Rothbard

...The very nature of interstate war puts innocent civilians into great jeopardy, especially with modern technology.

~Murray Rothbard

War is the business of barbarians.

~Napoleon Bonaparte

In the eyes of empire builders men are not men but instruments.

~Napoleon Bonaparte

There are only two powers in the world: the sword and the mind. In the long run, the sword is always defeated by the mind.

~Napoleon Bonaparte

About the quote: Bonaparte (1769-1821) was a French Emperor. (quote from 'The Anti-War Quote Book,' edited Eric Groves, Sr., pub. Quirk Books, 2008)

War grows out of the desire of the individual to gain advantage at the expense of his fellow man.

~Napoleon Hill

If you want to make peace with your enemy, you have to work with your enemy. Then he becomes your partner.

~Nelson Mandela

Let us become inspired by inherent beauty, and not impassioned by manufactured hate.

~Nima Shirali, Middle Eastern Reconciliation Forum

Let us form a new religion, that which would be called 'humanity', with 'peace' as its prophet.

~Nima Shirali, Middle Eastern Reconciliation Forum

It's very common for the victims to understand a system better than the people who are holding the stick.

~Noam Chomsky

There are many terrorist states in the world, but the United States is unusual in that it is officially committed to international terrorism.

~Noam Chomsky

About the quote: from his book "Necessary Illusions" (p. 270)

To some degree it matters who's in office, but it matters more how much pressure they're under from the public.

~Noam Chomsky

Everybody's worried about stopping terrorism. Well, there's a really easy way: stop participating in it.

~Noam Chomsky

You never need an argument against the use of violence, you need an argument for it.

~Noam Chomsky

The only security for the American people today, or for any people, is to be found through the control of force rather than the use of force.

~Norman Cousins

Where is the indignation about the fact that the US and USSR have thirty thousand pounds of destructive force for every human being in the world?

~Norman Cousins

To initiate a war of aggression...is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.

~Nuremburg War Tribunal

Some explanations of a crime are not explanations: they're part of the crime.

~Olavo de Cavarlho

It is finer to bring one noble human being into the world and rear it well...than to kill ten thousand.

~Olive Schreiner

Have you ever thought that war is a madhouse and that everyone in the war is a patient?

~Oriana Fallaci

A thing is not necessarily true because a man dies for it.

~Oscar Wilde

Preventive war is like committing suicide out of fear of death.

~Otto von Bismarck

About the quote: Bismarck (1815-1898) was the first Chancellor of the Germany Empire from 1871-1890.

If we don't stop behaving like the British Empire, we will end up like the British Empire.

~Pat Buchanan

About the quote: From Buchanan's 5/9/06 article "Why Are We Baiting Putin?"

War is a failure of human intelligence.

~Patricia Sun

About the quote: Patricia Sun is an internationally renowned philosophical psychologist.

[War] comes from an immature style of thinking where creativity and overview is scarce.

~Patricia Sun

About the quote: Patricia Sun is an internationally renowned philosphical psychologist.

War comes from our being immature, fearful, and injured, and not being able to concieve of other ways of solving problems.

~Patricia Sun

About the quote: Patricia Sun is an internationally renowned philosophical psychologist.

No one has deputized America to play Wyatt Earp to the world.

~Patrick J. Buchanan

If we let people see that kind of thing, there would never again be any war.

~Pentagon Official (unnamed )

About the quote: This quote was from a Pentagon Official explaining why the U.S. military censored graphic footage from the Gulf War.

War is the statesman's game, the priest's delight, the lawyer's jest, the hired assassin's trade.

~Percy Bysshe Shelley

Man has no right to kill his brother. It is no excuse that he does so in uniform: he only adds the infamy of servitude to the crime of murder.

~Percy Bysshe Shelley

If you love this land of the free, bring 'em home, bring 'em home, Bring 'em back from overseas.

~Pete Seeger

About the quote: Lyrics from Seeger's song 'Bring Em Home.'

I guess every generation is doomed to fight its war...suffer the loss of the same old illusions, and learn the same old lessons on its own.

~Phillip Caputo

When the tyrant has disposed of foreign enemies by conquest or treaty, and there is nothing to fear from them, then he is always stirring up some war or other, in order that the people may require a leader.

~Plato

This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when he first appears he is a protector.

~Plato

One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors.

~Plato

Violence and arms can never resolve the problems of men.

~Pope John Paul II

War is a defeat for humanity.

~Pope John Paul II

About the quote: from 1/1/2000

Humanity should question itself, once more, about the absurd and always unfair phenomenon of war...

~Pope John Paul II

Will . . . the threat of common extermination continue?. . . Must children receive the arms race from us as a necessary inheritance?

~Pope John Paul II

Wars generally do not resolve the problems for which they are fought and therefore...prove ultimately futile.

~Pope John Paul II

About the quote: from 1/1/2000

You lose nothing through peace. You can lose everything through war.

~Pope Pius XII

To wage war, you need first of all money; second, you need money, and third, you also need money.

~Prince Montecuccoli

One more such victory and we are undone.

~Pyrrhus of Epirus

During war, the laws are silent.

~Quintus Tullius Cicero

There are no warlike people--just warlike leaders.

~Ralph Bunche

Violence is not power, but the absence of power.

~Ralph Waldo Emerson

Peace cannot be achieved through violence, it can only be attained through understanding.

~Ralph Waldo Emerson

The real and lasting victories are those of peace and not of war.

~Ralph Waldo Emerson

About the quote: Emerson (1803-1882) was an American transcendentalist essayist and poet. (From 'The Anti-War Quote Book,' Quirk Books, Ed. by Eric Groves Sr.)

War is not a word, it's an acronym for "Wasting Another's Resources."

~Ramman Kenoun

Killing someone is the ultimate crime, while on the other hand, killing someone in uniform is fulfillment of duty.

~Ramman Kenoun

Humanity is quite a unique species, since it is the only one with the means to wipe itself out.

~Ramman Kenoun

All it takes is a single act of aggression to permanently wound a nation's reputation.

~Ramman Kenoun

The tyrant always talks as if he's preserving the best interests of his people when he actually acts to undermine them.

~Ramman Kenoun

Conflict is the criminals' paradise; it is the only time when killing is allowed, theft is tolerated, and rape is forgiven.

~Ramman Kenoun

Patriotism lies not in blind obedience to authority, but in the desire to search for the truth.

~Ramman Kenoun

The only antidote to the poison of war is the public's courage to disagree with their leader.

~Ramman Kenoun

The occupation and robbery of a nation occurs under the illusion of freeing its citizens from brutal oppression.

~Ramman Kenoun

The soldier's main enemy is not the opposing soldier, but his own commander.

~Ramman Kenoun

A tyrant has succeeded in his search for absolute power when his own people fear to question his actions.

~Ramman Kenoun

Good leaders serve the interests of their people, while unfit leaders exploit their citizens to serve their own.

~Ramman Kenoun

How is it possible for people to consider themselves supporters of the troops when they approve of an event that throws those troops into...peril?

~Ramman Kenoun

War may be only temporary, but its toll remains permanently.

~Ramman Kenoun

Power is usurped from the people, first by implementing fear, then it is maintained by slandering as 'unpatriotic' those who refuse submission.

~Ramman Kenoun

It is frightening how the actions of a single leader can have such drastic effects on the prestige of an entire nation.

~Ramman Kenoun

It's truly ironic how self-proclaimed 'patriots' have a tendency to support those who seek to undermine their country.

~Ramman Kenoun

A man who kills on his own is a murderer. A man who kills at his government's request is a national hero.

~Ramman Kenoun

In war, there are no winners.

~Ramman Kenoun

Think of war as a game of Russian roulette. It is a game of chance with your life as the grand prize.

~Ramman Kenoun

War is the Health of the State.

~Randolph Bourne

One keeps healthy in wartime...by a vigorous assertion of values in which war has no part.

~Randolph Bourne

Either war is obsolete, or men are.

~R. Buckminster Fuller

War is the ultimate tool of politics.

~R. Buckminster Fuller

I hate it when they say, ‘He gave his life for his country.’ They don’t die for the honor and glory of their country. We kill them.

~Rear Admiral Gene R. LaRocque

War has become a spectator sport for Americans.

~Rear Admiral Gene R. LaRocque

They talk about conscription as a democratic institution. Yes; so is a cemetery.

~Rep. Meyer London

Why should you ask blood be spilled for a cause that is not in the interest of the American people?

~Rep. Wally Herger

We may extend our dominion over the whole continent...but be assured it will be at the price of our free institutions.

~Rep. William Waters Boyce

Patriotism at the expense of another nation is as wicked as racism at the expense of another race...Let us resolve to be patriots always, nationalists never.

~Rev. William Sloane Coffin

Wars have ever been but another aristocratic mode of plundering and oppressing commerce.

~Richard Cobden

Washington...has become an alien city-state that rules America, and much of the rest of the world, in the way that Rome ruled the Roman Empire.

~Richard Maybury

When we fill our souls up with creativity, artistry and intelligence ...we have a better chance at avoiding the behavior that leads to destruction.

~Rick DellaRatta

About the quote: Rick DellaRatta is founder of the group Jazz for Peace.

It is a truism that almost any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so...

~Robert A. Heinlein

I do not believe any policy which has behind it the threat of military force is justified as part of the basic foreign policy of the United States except to defend the liberty of our own people.

~Robert A. Taft

What a cruel thing is war...to fill our hearts with hatred instead of love for our neighbors, and to devastate the fair face of this beautiful world.

~Robert E. Lee

The war...was an unnecessary condition of affairs, and might have been avoided if forebearance and wisdom had been practiced on both sides.

~Robert E. Lee

What a cruel thing is war: to separate and destroy families and friends, and mar the purest joys and happiness god has given us in this world...

~Robert E. Lee

This much is clear: violence breeds violence, repression brings retaliation, and only a cleansing of our whole society can remove this sickness from our soul.

~Robert F. Kennedy

Since the end of the nineteenth century, if not earlier, presidents have misled the public about their motives and their intentions in going to war.

~Robert Higgs

When American presidents prepare for foreign wars, they lie.

~Robert Higgs

...History shows that ... (people) can be deflected from their natural tendencies by artful propaganda, bogus crises, or other political trickery.

~Robert Higgs

About the quote: Robert Higgs is a Senior Fellow in Political Economy for The Independent Institute.

It is the function of the citizen to keep the government from falling into error.

~Robert H. Jackson

The belief in the possibility of a short decisive war appears to be one of the most ancient and dangerous of human illusions.

~Robert Lynd

Never is the power of the state greater, and never are the forces of political parties of opposition less effective, than at the outbreak of war.

~Robert Michels

About the quote: From "Political Parties: A Sociological Study of the Oligarchical Tendencies of Modern Democracy", Collier Books, 1962, p. 357. Michels wrote this for the 1915 edition after the outbreak of WW I. The book propounds the "iron law of oligarchy" showing why even the German Social Democratic Party tended to betray its socialist and democratic principles.

If there is no sufficient reason for war, the war party will make war on one pretext, then invent another.

~Robert M. LaFollette

The maintenance of the right of criticism in the long run will do the country...more good than it will do the enemy.

~Robert Taft

There were no international terrorists in Iraq until we went in. It was we who gave the perfect conditions in which Al Qaeda could thrive.

~Robin Cook

About the quote: Cook is Britain's former foreign secretary. He resigned from the British Cabinet over the Iraq War.

The world should be worried about those who go around the planet with a can of gasoline in one hand and a box of matches in the other, pretending to sell fire insurance.

~Rodrigue Tremblay

About the quote: from the online article posted at http://www.thenewamericanempire.com/tremblay=1093

The world should take notice when someone...with a fanatic mind and with powerful means, receives his marching orders from Heaven.

~Rodrigue Tremblay

About the quote: From Trembaly's "The New American Empire." Tremblay is a Professor of Economic Science at the University of Montreal.

Wars of aggression are the most barbarous of all human endeavors and are, more often than not, the instruments of insane tyrants who hear voices.

~Rodrigue Tremblay

About the quote: Tremblay is a Canadian-born economist.

I learned nothing from war. War is not an activity for human beings; war is for criminals—rape, robbery and murder.

~Roman Podabedov (Russian anti-tank gunner)

Protecting the rights of even the least individual among us is basically the only excuse the government has for even existing.

~Ronald Reagan

People do not make wars; governments do.

~Ronald Reagan

...no mother would ever willingly sacrifice her sons for territorial gain, for economic advantage, for ideology.

~Ronald Reagan

The defense policy of the United States is based on a simple premise: The United States does not start fights. We will never be an aggressor.

~Ronald Reagan

About the quote: From a speech on nuclear weapons, March 23, 1983.

History teaches that war begins when governments believe the price of aggression is cheap.

~Ronald Reagan

We must realize that no arsenal, or no weapon in the arsenals of the world, is so formidable as the will and moral courage of free men and women.

~Ronald Reagan

Peace is not absence of conflict, it is the ability to handle conflict by peaceful means.

~Ronald Reagan

Our reluctance for conflict should not be misjudged as a failure of will.

~Ronald Reagan

Government's first duty is to protect the people, not run their lives.

~Ronald Reagan

A people free to choose will always choose peace.

~Ronald Reagan

The moral and constitutional obligations of our representatives in Washington are to protect our liberty, not coddle the world, precipitating no-win wars, while bringing bankruptcy and economic turmoil to our people.

~Ron Paul

If you sacrifice liberty for security, you will lose both.

~Ron Paul

Do they think if we destroy our freedoms for the terrorists they will no longer have a reason to attack us?

~Ron Paul

Terror is a tactic. We can not wage "war" against a tactic.

~Ron Paul

Those who do not move, do not notice their chains.

~Rosa Luxemburg

Usually, terrible things that are done with the excuse that progress requires them are not really progress at all, but just terrible things.

~Russell Baker

The fact that certain planets are uninhabited may very well derive from the fact that their nuclear scientist are more advanced than ours.

~Salon Gahlin, Swedish author

No one has ever succeeded in keeping nations at war except by lies.

~Salvador de Madariaga

How strangely will the Tools of a Tyrant pervert the plain Meaning of Words!

~Samuel Adams

War--after all, what is it that the people get? Why--widows, taxes, wooden legs and debt.

~Samuel B. Pettengill

If you support any offensive war, consider yourself just as culpable of murder as the most insane serial killer.

~Sarah Bellum

Not only is war a form of legalized murder, but it is mass serial killing.

~Sarah Bellum

I'd like to think the best bunker buster is a diplomat.

~Scott Ritter

We are the ones responsible to determine whether the war that our marines, soldiers and airmen are fighting in is worth the cause...

~Scott Ritter

We say that we care about the war, but we don’t even really know what we’re fighting for.

~Scott Ritter

Iraq was a war of choice, not necessity.

~Senator Barbara Boxer

About the quote: From a speech delivered Wed. July 6, 2005.

Tis not, 'my country right or wrong'; tis, 'my country, that which is right to be kept right, that which is wrong to be set right'

~Senator Carl Schurz (MO)

About the quote: from his senate remarks 2/29/72. published in 'The Policy of Imperialism, Speeches, Correspondence and Political Papers of Carl Schurz, vol. 6, pp. 119–20 (1913).

The biggest lesson I learned from Vietnam is not to trust [our own] government statements.

~Senator James W. Fulbright

War is wretched beyond description, and only a fool or a fraud could sentimentalize its cruel reality.

~Senator John McCain

National defense is the usual pretext for the policy of fleecing the people.

~Senator John Taylor

About the quote: US Senator(SC), lived from 1753-1824

Before the war is ended, the war party assumes the divine right to denounce and silence all opposition to war as unpatriotic and cowardly.

~Senator Robert M. La Follette

Every nation has its war party. It is not the party of democracy. It is the party of autocracy. It seeks to dominate absolutely.

~Senator Robert M. La Follette

If there is no sufficient reason for war, the war party will make war on one pretext, then invent another...after the war is on.

~Senator Robert M. La Follette

In times of peace, the war party insists on making preparation for war. As soon as prepared for, it insists on making war.

~Senator Robert M. La Follette

The first casualty when war comes is the truth.

~Sen. Hiram Johnson

The price of empire is America’s soul, and that price is too high.

~Sen. J. William Fulbright (Ark.)

This war is not necessary. We are truly sleepwalking through history.

~Sen. Robert Byrd

Criticism in a time of war is essential to the maintenance of any kind of democratic government.

~Sen. Robert Taft, (R) Ohio

We first fought...in the name of religion, then Communism, and now in the name of drugs and terrorism. Our excuses for global domination always change.

~Serj Tankian

Democracy is not an incident that happens overnight, nor a gift that America can give to the world. It is a culture which needs peace to evolve.

~Shirin Ebadi

About the quote: Ebadi is Nobel Peace Laureate of Iran. This quote is excerpted from the 5/5/06 Washington Post's "Diplomatic Dispatches," by Nora Boustany.

Civilization began the first time an angry person cast a word instead of a rock.

~Sigmund Freud

Civilized society is perpetually menaced with disintegration through this primary hostility of men towards one another...

~Sigmund Freud

A belligerent state permits itself every such misdeed, every such act of violence, as would disgrace the individual.

~Sigmund Freud

If you live long enough, you'll see that every victory turns into a defeat.

~Simone de Beauvoir

What a country calls its vital... interests are not things that help its people live, but things that help it make war.

~Simone Weil

The great error of nearly all studies of war... has been to consider war as an episode in foreign policies, when it is an act of interior politics...

~Simone Weil

Modern war appears as a struggle led by all the State apparatuses and their general staffs against all men old enough to bear arms...

~Simone Weil

Nothing doth more hurt in a state than that cunning men pass for wise.

~Sir Francis Bacon

I went into the Army believing that if you want peace you must prepare for war. I now believe that if you prepare thoroughly for war you will get it.

~Sir John Frederick Maurice

As for being a General, well, at the age of four with paper hats and wooden swords, we're all Generals. Only some of us never grow out of it.

~Sir Peter Ustinov

Terrorism is the war of the poor, and war is the terrorism of the rich.

~Sir Peter Ustinov

War is a racket.

~Smedley Butler

All wars are fought for money.

~Socrates

If peace...only had the music and pagaentry of war, there'd be no wars.

~Sophie Kerr

It is the merit of a general to impart good news, and to conceal the truth.

~Sophocles

Peace is not the absence of war; it is a virtue; a state of mind; a disposition for benevolence; confidence; and justice.

~Spinoza

War technology is science in the service of obscene anatomical vandalism.

~Stan Goff

Mankind deserves sacrifice - but not of mankind.

~Stanislaw Jerzy Lec

War would end if the dead could return.

~Stanley Baldwin

When [men] go to war, what they want is to impose on their enemies the victor's will and call it peace.

~St. Augustine

About the quote: From "The City of God"

One reason the United States finds itself at the edge of a foreign policy disaster is its underinformed citizenry, a key weakness in democracy.

~Stefan Halper and Jonathan Clarke

About the quote: from "America Alone"

We thought, because we had power, we had wisdom.

~Stephen Vincent Benét

The supreme excellence is to subde the armies of your enemies without even having to fight them.

~Sun Tzu

There is no instance of a country having benefited from prolonged warfare.

~Sun Tzu

All warfare is based on deception.

~Sun Tzu

The greatest menace to freedom is an inert people.

~Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis

The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws.

~Tacitus

To plunder, to slaughter, to steal, these things they misname empire; and where they make a desert, they call it peace.

~Tacitus

About the quote: This quote is attributed to Calgacus in the Roman historian Tacitus' "Agricola."

The worst crimes were dared by a few, willed by more and tolerated by all.

~Tacitus

When people have friends and customers in other lands, they tend to take a dim view of their government dropping bombs on them.

~Terry Liberty Parker

The Department of Defense is the behemoth...With an annual budget larger than the gross domestic product of Russia, it is an empire.

~The 9/11 Commission Report

About the quote: Norton First Edition

Patriotism means to stand by the country. It does not mean to stand by the president or any other public official...

~Theodore Roosevelt

It is unpatriotic not to tell the truth, whether about the president or anyone else.

~Theodore Roosevelt

...to befoul the unholy alliance between corrupt business and corrupt politics is the first task of the statesmanship of the day.

~Theodore Roosevelt

To announce that there must be no criticism of the president...is morally treasonable to the American public.

~Theodore Roosevelt

Behind the ostensible government sits enthroned an invisible government owing no allegiance and acknowledging no responsibility to the people.

~Theodore Roosevelt

That we are to stand by the president, right or wrong is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public.

~Theodore Roosevelt

Working for peace in the future is to work for peace in the present moment.

~Thich Nhat Hahn

In order to rally people, governments need enemies. They want us to be afraid, to hate, so we will rally behind them.

~Thich Nhat Hanh

About the quote: Hanh is a Vietnamese Buddhist monk

War is a quarrel between two thieves too cowardly to fight their own battle.

~Thomas Carlyle

Our children are not born to hate, they are raised to hate.

~Thomas della Peruta

Force and fraud are in war the two cardinal virtues.

~Thomas Hobbes

Governments constantly choose between telling lies and fighting wars, with the end result always being the same. One will always lead to the other.

~Thomas Jefferson

War...is as much a punishment to the punisher as to the sufferer.

~Thomas Jefferson

If there is one principle more deeply rooted in the mind of every American, it is that we should have nothing to do with conquest.

~Thomas Jefferson

About the quote: in a letter to William Short, 28 July 1791.

The most successful war seldom pays for its losses.

~Thomas Jefferson

I abhor war and view it as the greatest scourge of mankind.

~Thomas Jefferson

We did not raise armies for glory or for conquest.

~Thomas Jefferson

The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions that I wish it to be always kept alive.

~Thomas Jefferson

War is an instrument entirely inefficient toward redressing wrong; and multiplies, instead of indemnifying losses.

~Thomas Jefferson

Conquest is not in our principles. It is inconsistent with our government.

~Thomas Jefferson

The force of public opinion cannot be resisted when permitted freely to be expressed. The agitation it produces must be submitted to.

~Thomas Jefferson

The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions, that I wish it to be always kept alive.

~Thomas Jefferson

They are nations of eternal war. All their energies are expended in the destruction of the labor, property, and lives of their people.

~Thomas Jefferson

About the quote: From a letter to president Monroe, 1823.

Commerce with all nations, alliance with none, should be our motto.

~Thomas Jefferson

Peace and abstinence from European interferences are our objects, and so will continue while the present order of things in America remain uninterrupted.

~Thomas Jefferson

I know of no safe depository of the ultimate power of the society but the people themselves.

~Thomas Jefferson

About the quote: Originally in a letter to William C. Jarvis, 1820. Can be found in volume of "Writings" (New York, NY: Library of America) p.493

This I hope will be the age of experiments in government, and that their basis will be founded in principles of honesty, not of mere force.

~Thomas Jefferson

About the quote: in a letter to John Adams, 1796.

A coward is much more exposed to quarrels than a man of spirit.

~Thomas Jefferson

Peace, commerce and honest friendship with all nations; entangling alliances with none.

~Thomas Jefferson

I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that his justice cannot sleep forever.

~Thomas Jefferson

To preserve our independence...We must make our election between economy and liberty, or profusion and servitude.

~Thomas Jefferson

If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.

~Thomas Jefferson

The spirit of this country is totally adverse to a large military force.

~Thomas Jefferson

Peace and friendship with all mankind is our wisest policy, and I wish we may be permitted to pursue it.

~Thomas Jefferson

When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty.

~Thomas Jefferson

I hope our wisdom will grow with our power, and teach us, that the less we use our power the greater it will be.

~Thomas Jefferson

War is only a cowardly escape from the problems of peace.

~Thomas Mann

Peace demands the most heroic labor and the most difficult sacrifice. It demands greater heroism than war.

~Thomas Merton

About the quote: (1915-1968)

Peace, which costs nothing, is attended with with infinitely more advantage than any victory with all its expence.

~Thomas Paine

About the quote: (From his 'The Rights of Man')

War is the gambling table of governments, and citizens the dupes of the game.

~Thomas Paine

An army of principles can penetrate where an army of soldiers cannot.

~Thomas Paine

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...

~Thomas Paine

It is error only, and not truth, that shrinks from inquiry.

~Thomas Paine

He that is the author of a war lets loose the whole contagion of hell and opens a vein that bleeds a nation to death.

~Thomas Paine

If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about answers.

~Thomas Pynchon

Most wars are started by well-fed people with time on their hands to dream up half-baked ideologies or grandiose ambitions, and to nurse real or imagined grievances.

~Thomas Sowell

I am not blaming those who are resolved to rule, only those who show an even greater readiness to submit.

~Thucydides

It is useless to attack men who could not be controlled even if conquered, while failure would leave us in an even worse position...

~Thucydides

About the quote: Thucydides was a Athenian historian, born in the 5th century, BC. Here, he is quoting the Athenian general Nikias on the proposed invasion of Sicily during the Peloponnesian War.

Love of power, operating through greed and through personal ambition, was the cause of all these evils.

~Thucydides

This president failed so miserably in diplomacy that we are now forced to war.

~Tom Daschle

Democracies become dictatorships if governments do not listen to the voice of the people.

~Tom Van Meurs

All war represents a failure of diplomacy.

~Tony Benn

Justice itself tends to be corrupted by political passion.

~T.S. Eliot

That meddling in other people's affairs...formerly conducted by the most discreet intrigue is now openly advocated under the name of intervention.

~T.S. Eliot

Nations, like individuals, are punished for their transgressions.

~Ulysses S. Grant

In modern war there is no such thing as victor and vanquished...There is only a loser, and the loser is mankind.

~U Thant , Burmese UN Secretary General

If you kill one person you are a murderer. If you kill ten people you are a monster. If you kill ten thousand you are a national hero.

~Vassilis Epaminondou

No great dependence is to be placed on the eagerness of young soldiers for action...fighting is agreeable to those who are strangers to it.

~Vegetius

Modern war and modern civilisation are utterly incompatible...one or the other must go.

~Vera Brittain

About the quote: Brittain was a British WWII-era anti-area-bombing activist. Quote from "Among the Dead Cities," by A.C. Grayling (Walker & Co., 2006).

Peace is the virtue of civilization. War is its crime.

~Victor Hugo

It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.

~Voltaire

It would be easier to subjugate the entire universe through force than the minds of a single village.

~Voltaire

Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.

~Voltaire

To the wicked, everything serves as pretext.

~Voltaire

All murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets.

~Voltaire

A standing army is a standing menace to liberty.

~Voltairine de Clayre

The time has come to stop beating our heads against stone walls under the illusion that we have been appointed policeman to the human race.

~Walter Lippmann

War is the only game in which both sides lose.

~Walter Scott

We have met the enemy and he is us.

~Walt Kelly

About the quote: Cartoonist, notably of "Pogo." lived 1913-1973.

Freedom is not nurtured by nations preparing for war.

~William Appleman Williams

The Central Intelligence Agency owns everyone of any significance in the major media.

~William Colby, former CIA director

About the quote: as quoted by Dave McGowan in his book "Derailing Democracy"

War's a game, which, were their subjects wise, Kings would not play at.

~William Cowper

The cry has been that when war is declared, all opposition should be hushed. A sentiment more unworthy of a free country could hardly be propagated.

~William Ellery Channing

So long as the deceit ran along quiet and monotonous, all of us let ourselves be deceived, abetting it unawares or maybe through cowardice...

~William Faulkner

About the quote: from his book "As I Lay Dying"

If [America] becomes militant, it will be because its people choose to become such; it will be because they think that war and warlikeness are desirable.

~William Graham Sumner

About the quote: from 1903

If you want war, nourish a doctrine. Doctrines are the most frightful tyrants to which men ever are subject...

~William Graham Sumner

The right to revolt has sources deep in our history.

~William O. Douglas

About the quote: Supreme Court Justice Douglas lived 1898-1980.

Right is right, even if everyone is against it, and wrong is wrong, even if everyone is for it.

~William Penn

Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.

~William Pitt

A man may build himself a throne of bayonets, but he cannot sit on it.

~William Ralph Inge

The greatest crime since World War II has been US foreign policy.

~William Ramsey Clark

About the quote: William Ramsey Clark was US Attorney General under Lyndon B. Johnson

O, it is excellent To have a giant’s strength! But it is tyrannous To use it like a giant.

~William Shakespeare

About the quote: from "Measure for Measure," Act II, Scn. ii

The statesman who yields to war fever...is no longer the master of policy but the slave of unforeseeable and uncontrollable events.

~Winston Churchill

When you are winning a war almost everything that happens can be claimed to be right and wise.

~Winston Churchill

Never believe any war will be smooth and easy, or that anyone who embarks on the strange voyage can measure the tides and hurricanes he will encounter.

~Winston Churchill

War is mainly a catalogue of blunders.

~Winston Churchill

Wars teach us not to love our enemies, but to hate our allies.

~W. L. George

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

~Woodrow Wilson

Politicians' Logic: Something must be done, this is something, therefore we must do it.

~Yes, Prime Minister (UK TV Show)