Antiwar Quotes

“I am sorry for those who have never had the experience of seeing the victory of a national liberation movement, and I feel cold contempt for those who jeer at it.”
― Christopher Hitchens, Hitch 22: A Memoir

“As he grew older, which was mostly in my absence, my firstborn son, Alexander, became ever more humorous and courageous. There came a time, as the confrontation with the enemies of our civilization became more acute, when he sent off various applications to enlist in the armed forces. I didn't want to be involved in this decision either way, especially since I was being regularly taunted for not having 'sent' any of my children to fight in the wars of resistance that I supported. (As if I could 'send' anybody, let alone a grown-up and tough and smart young man: what moral imbeciles the 'anti-war' people have become.)”
― Christopher Hitchens, Hitch 22: A Memoir

“If you like war, be a nationalist. If you like peace, be a citizen of the world.”
― Oliver Markus Malloy, How to Defeat the Trump Cult: Want to Save Democracy? Share This Book

“Tribalism is the root of all wars.”
― Oliver Markus Malloy, How to Defeat the Trump Cult: Want to Save Democracy? Share This Book

“So this general with the background in intelligence who is supposed to conquer Afghanistan can't even figure out what Rolling Stone is? We're not talking Guns & Ammo here; we're talking the antiwar hippie magazine.”
― Maureen Dowd

“When the war seems inevitable, work more to make it evitable! No man gain honour by making war!”
― Mehmet Murat ildan

“It was not unless one lifted one's gaze from all the allegedly normal events occurring before one's eyes and looked at the executioner's sword hanging over everyone's head that the normality was revealed as a sort of mass insanity. . . Passengers on a ship who are . . . engaging in all the usual shipboard activities appear perfectly normal as long as their ship is sailing safely in quiet seas, but . . . deranged if in full view of them all their ship is caught in a vortex that may shortly drag it and them to destruction.”
― Jonathan Schell, The Fate of the Earth

“War is like a vacuum cleaner that sucks tax dollars out of your pocket and funnels the money directly into the pockets of the robber barons who own the weapons factories.”
― Oliver Markus Malloy, How to Defeat the Trump Cult: Want to Save Democracy? Share This Book

“If you put people in a perfect paradise which is more than enough for the world population, they will still start making war with each other to catch the best corner there!”
― Mehmet Murat ildan

“To The Warmongers

I'm back again from hell
With loathsome thoughts to sell;
secrets of death to tell;
And horrors from the abyss.

Young faces bleared with blood
sucked down into the mud,
You shall hear things like this,
Till the tormented slain

Crawl round and once again,
With limbs that twist awry
Moan out their brutish pain,
As the fighters pass them by.

For you our battles shine
With triumph half-divine;
And the glory of the dead
Kindles in each proud eye.

But a curse is on my head,
That shall not be unsaid,
And the wounds in my heart are red,
For I have watched them die.”
― Siegfried Sassoon, The War Poems

“The luckiest generation in a country is always the one which has never went through any war in their lifetimes!”
― Mehmet Murat ildan

“Humanity will only get a chance to exist in this universe for a very long time, only when humanity becomes a single army fighting against the universe instead of fighting each other! A humanity fighting in itself wastes valuable energy in this chaotic universe where there is a race against time to survive!”
― Mehmet Murat ildan

“While your country is at war, if you are contemplating the secrets of the universe in a boat in the middle of a lake, people will never understand you, because dealing with universal great ideas rather than engaging in primitive and irrational local affairs like wars disturbs especially underdeveloped minds!”
― Mehmet Murat ildan

“There is nothing more tragicomic than when people fight and kill each other while the greatest enemy of mankind is death!”
― Mehmet Murat ildan

“No matter how many arms and legs the war cuts off, how many blind and deaf people it creates, no matter how many deaths it causes, there will always be morally rotten demons and mentally incompetent morons who want war!”
― Mehmet Murat ildan

“No matter how tightly the door of the path to peace is closed, do not leave that door and spend all your energy, use all your wit to open it!”
― Mehmet Murat ildan

“A defense of the homeland must only be done with civil disobedience, which does not require the death of anyone! If the attacked country uses the methods of the attacking country and responds to violence with violence, it will commit a moral mistake. The red line is simple: Don't kill anyone, even your enemy, and if you can defeat your enemy with non-violent methods, the real victory is there!”
― Mehmet Murat ildan

“Even when you are sitting in front of a beautiful view in the most beautiful and quiet place in the world, a thorn will prick you, it hurts a lot, what is that thorn? It is conscience! Because your conscience says that someone is dying somewhere while you are sitting in peace!”
― Mehmet Murat ildan

“Mankind is an idiot who managed to create chaos in the only peaceful world we know in this chaotic universe!”
― Mehmet Murat ildan

“Those who deserve war medals are only those who did not take up arms in war and never resorted to violence!”
― Mehmet Murat ildan

“When war begins somewhere, the attacking party is guilty; but if the war is going on, then both sides are guilty because when it comes to war the only thing that matters is that the killings stop immediately and if surrender is going to stop the killing then it has to be done! It is unacceptable for the present generations to die for the freedom of the next generations because to live is the right of every generation! Surrender is not defeat, you can surrender and continue the war with non-violent methods!”
― Mehmet Murat ildan

“The people we want to see devastated in a war are not ordinary people who are innocent victims of war, but despicable politicians who started this war!”
― Mehmet Murat ildan

“If you take shelter in a cabin in the woods while everyone else is fighting, everyone will call you a coward, not knowing that you are afraid not of dying but of killing, that you are fleeing from the war just to protect your humanity!”
― Mehmet Murat ildan

“Time makes me be a soldier; but I know
That had I lived six hundred years ago,
I might have tried to build within my heart
A church like this, where I could dwell apart”
― Siegfried Sassoon, The War Poems

“In your gaze / show me the vanquished vigil of my days”
― Siegfried Sassoon

“He pushed another bag along the top,
Craning his body outward; then a flare
Gave one white glimpse of No Man's Land and wire;
And as he dropped his head the instant split
His startled life with lead, and all went out.”
― Siegfried Sassoon, The War Poems

“War is a crime of mass murder; deciding on war is a crime; the war industry is a crime; participating in war is a crime; working in the war industry is a crime; warmongering is a crime; everything related to war is a great crime!”
― Mehmet Murat ildan

“You look at the wars in the world and are surprised, but the world has always been like this, always wild, always rude and cruel, never civilized! Why are you surprised when you look at the world that has always been like this? Are you stupid?”
― Mehmet Murat ildan

“You stupid, bestial mortals
Making war, burning cities,
Violating tombs and temples,
Torturing your enemies,
Bringing suffering on yourselves,
Can't you see
War
Will kill all of you?”
― Euripides The Trojan women

“The future possibilities of space-travel, which are now left mainly to unfounded fantasy, could be more soberly treated without ceasing to be interesting and could show to even the most adventurous of the young that a world without war need not be a world without adventurous and hazardous glory. To this kind of contest there is no limit. Each victory is only a prelude to another, and no boundaries can be set to rational hope.”
― Bertrand Russell