Voltaire Quotes

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.'

The sad fact is that horrendous human conflict is nothing new.

No spoon has yet destroyed a mouth, but the knife of war cuts portions that are hard to swallow. Perhaps the big mouths of the privileged are able to cope with them, but they dull the teeth of the little people and ruin their stomachs.

We all want a world without war, without conflict, without human suffering.

War is not the answer, because only love can conquer hate.

Fires of suffering and strife are raging around the world.

War... is harmful, not only to the conquered but to the conqueror.

War will exist until that distant day when the conscientious objector enjoys the same reputation and prestige that the warrior does today.

You either get tired fighting for peace, or you die.

We will not learn how to live together in peace by killing each other's children.

You don't have to have fought in a war to love peace.

War may sometimes be a necessary evil. But no matter how necessary, it is always an evil, never a good. We will not learn how to live together in peace by killing each other's children.

My first wish is to see this plague of mankind, war, banished from the earth.

I am a peace man except when I wish to fight.

Like individuals, some peoples are naturally pacific and some naturally aggressive.

Nothing is gained by military occupation. All occupations are failures.

… what a fearful waste it is that we have to go killing each other before even a difference of opinion can be settled amongst people of the same nation.

We know from our own history, and that of our neighbors, that where conflicts and disagreements are not resolved peacefully, the suffering and bloodshed that follows and the collapse of economic and social development leads to tragic consequences.

The spectacle of a field of battle after the combat, is sufficient to inspire Princes with the love of peace, and the horror of war.

War proves nothing. To kill a man does not prove that he was in the wrong. Bloodletting cannot change men's spirits, neither can the evil of men's thoughts be driven out by blows. If I go to my neighbor's house, and break her furniture, and smash her pictures, and bind her children captive, it does not prove that I am fitter to live than she - yet according to ethics of nations it does. I have conquered her and she must pay me for my trouble; and her house and all that is left in it belongs to my heirs and successors, forever. That is war!

War destroys, kills, impoverishes. Lord, give us your peace!

War and Authority are companions; Peace and Liberty are companions.

War, in its fairest form, implies a perpetual violation of humanity and justice.

This does not mean that you are warmongers. On the contrary, the soldier above all other people prays for peace, for he must suffer and bear the deepest wounds and scars of war. But always in our ears ring the ominous words of Plato, that wisest of all philosophers: "Only the dead have seen the end of war.

We want to get rid of the militarist not simply because he hurts and kills, but because he is an intolerable thick-voiced blockhead who stands hectoring and blustering in our way of achievement.