Daisaku Ikeda Quotes

Let no man posture as an advocate of peace if he proposes or supports any social system that initiates the use of force against individual men, in any form.

We are advocates of the abolition of war, we do not want war; but war can only be abolished through war.

Civil wars are the greatest of evils. They are inevitable, if we wish to reward merit, for all will say that they are meritorious.

I want that there should be a belief, a faith in the possibility of removing mountains to the side of right. If we believe that war is wrong, as everyone must, then we ought to believe that by proper efforts on our part, it may be done away with.

Peace is not passive, it is active. Peace is not appeasement, it is strength. Peace does not 'happen,' it requires work.

You can't beat your enemy anymore through wars; instead you create an entire generation of people revenge-seeking. [...] Our opponents are going to resort to car bombs and suicide attacks because they have no other way to win. I believe (Rumsfeld) thinks this is a war that can be won, but there is no such thing anymore. We can't beat anyone anymore.

War is a ritual, a deadly ritual, not the result of aggressive self-assertion, but of self-transcending identification. Without loyalty to tribe, church, flag or ideal, there would be no wars.

I hate the way war is seen as something inherently brutal and ugly. Yes, much of war brings out the worst part of our [people's] nature. But in war, all kinds of noble human traits have been developed, such as discipline, cohesion, pride.

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

War is not its own end, except in some catastrophic slide into absolute damnation. It's peace that's wanted. Some better peace than the one you started with.

It is not only war that can stop war but men of goodwill, conscious of their mission can deal with such deadly enemy.

So long as antimilitarists propose no substitute for war's disciplinary function, no moral equivalent of war, analogous, as one might say, to the mechanical equivalent of heat, so long they fail to realize the full inwardness of the situation.

Humanity should question itself, once more, about the absurd and always unfair phenomenon of war.

We think-although of course, now, we very seldom Clearly think- That the other side of War is Peace.

Why is war such an easy option? Why does peace remain such an elusive goal? We know statesmen skilled at waging war, but where are those dedicated enough to humanity to find a way to avoid war

It is fear which leads us to war, ... It is fear which leads us to believe that we must kill or be killed. Fear which leads us to attack those who have not attacked us. Fear which leads us to ring our nation in the very heavens with weapons of mass destruction.

War can't give life, it can only take it away.

The present war is the saturation point in violence. It spells, to my mind, also its doom.

War is unnatural, it causes people to act unnaturally.

War is pillage versus resistance and if illusions of magnitude could be transmuted into ideals of magnanimity, peace might be realized.

Wars are poor chisels for carving out peaceful tomorrows.

War is not won by victory.

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.

You can’t have peace without a war.

War...is as much a punishment to the punisher as to the sufferer.