Harry S. Truman Quotes

The principal cause of war is war itself.

It is from the pride and ambition of rulers and the ignorance of the people that wars arise.

Today continuing poverty and distress are a deeper and more important cause of international tensions, of the conditions that can produce war, than previously.

Each generation seems to invent its own reasons for war.

Nations make wars; states make wars; and cultures make wars. We tend to conflate the three, but they are very different wars.

War is capitalism with the gloves off …

War, we are told, shapes character; it resolves the major questions of international politics, consolidates nations, and indeed, constitutes the principal factor in the progress of civilization through its successive stages.

A war between Europeans is a civil war.

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.

Whether one believes in evolution, intelligent design, or Divine Creation, one thing is certain. Since the beginning of history, human beings have been at war with each other, under the pretext of religion, ideology, ethnicity and other reasons. And no civilization has ever willingly given up its most powerful weapons.

It has too often been too easy for rulers and governments to incite man to war.

Politics are very much like war. We may even have to use poison gas at times.

We cannot have peace if we are only concerned with peace. War is not an accident. It is the logical outcome of a certain way of life. If we want to attack war, we have to attack that way of life.

War and preparations for war have acquired a kind of legitimacy.

The State thrives on war - unless, of course, it is defeated and crushed - expands on it, glories in it.

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.

Remember that politics, colonialism, imperialism and war also originate in the human brain.

Wars are caused by undefended wealth.

It is conflict overall that mires people in poverty. That is the first law of development.

He would see civilization in danger of perishing under the oppression of a gigantic paradox: he would see multitudes of people starving in the midst of plenty, and nations preparing for war although pledged to peace.

I have never understood this liking for war. It panders to instincts already catered for within the scope of any domestic establishment.

That's what wars are: Poor people killing other poor people.

A European war is bound to come sooner or later in which the issue will be one of a struggle between Germandom and Slavdom.

Gentlemen! You can't fight in here, this is the War Room!

The same contending powers behind the First and Second World Wars are now preparing the Third World War. This we should know, and we as the sons and daughters of an oppressed country are part of the loot.