Common Quotes

Somehow this madness must cease. We must stop now. I speak as a child of God and brother to the suffering poor of Vietnam. I speak for those whose land is being laid waste, whose homes are being destroyed, whose culture is being subverted. I speak for the poor in America who are paying the double price of smashed hopes at home and death and corruption in Vietnam. I speak as a citizen of the world, for the world as it stands aghast at the path we have taken. I speak as an American to the leaders of my own nation. The great initiative in this war is ours. The initiative to stop it must be ours.

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

Those of us who are most genuinely repelled by war and violence are also those who are most likely to decide that some things, after all, are worth fighting for.

I hold that the world is sick of armed rebellions.

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

Now I see Peace to corrupt no less than war to waste.

War crushes with bloody heel all justice, all happiness, all that is Godlike in man. In our age there can be no peace that is not honorable; there can be no war that is not dishonorable.

There never was a good war or a bad revolution.

Anger is wonderful. It keeps you going. I'm angry about bankers. About the government.

My mind revolts and my soul cannot support the weight of so much evil: theft, rape, pillage, deaths, and murders, fires and devastation; the virgin violated, the cry of the widow and the orphan; the father armed against his son and each one looking for his brother to kill him; of those who have migrated; of the thousands who have fled; of the bodies stretched out in the public streets; of the bones which cover the fields and of so much blood shed on Venezuela’s soil.

What right have the rulers of nations to unsheath the sword of destruction, and to let loose the demons of desolation upon mankind, whenever caprice or pride, ambition or avarice, shall prescribe?

I've prepared 100 coffins. 99 for corrupt officials and one for myself.

[A] representative of... a government whose Three Graces are Tyranny, Rapacity, Blood.

If the fight comes unsolicited, I am not willing to die meekly, to surrender without an effort. And that being so, am I still a pacifist?

At the beginning of this century, people never questioned the effectiveness of war, never thought there could be real peace. Now, people are tired of war and see it as ineffective in solving anything.

It is claimed for satyagraha that it is a complete substitute for violence or war.

I just want people to see what I deem as a war for no reason, but only for greed.

We must conquer war or war will conquer us.

How many roads must a man walk down, Before you call him a man? How many seas must a white dove sail, Before she sleeps in the sand? Yes, and how many times must the cannon balls fly, Before they're forever banned?

That is a lie. I'm not for wanton violence, I'm for justice.

They won't give peace a chance, that's just a dream some of us had

What are they going to do, shoot me? It's not war you know.

The cause of liberty becomes a mockery if the price to be paid is the wholesale destruction of those who are to enjoy liberty. Ghandi, quoted in Merton, p. 68

Those who love peace must learn to organize as effectively as those who love war.

It is better to have a war for justice than peace in injustice.