John le Carre Quotes

After a lifetime of war-watching, I see war as an endemic human disease, and governments are the carriers.

You consider war to be inevitable? Very good. Let everyone who advocates war be enrolled in a special regiment of advance-guards, for the front of every storm, of every attack, to lead them all!

War is elective. It is not an inevitable state of affairs. War is not the weather.

War is an act of force, and to the application of that force there is no limit. Each of the adversaries forces the hand of the other, and a reciprocal action results which in theory can have no limit.

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.

What’s so civil about war anyway?

War is not an accident. It is the logical outcome of a certain way of life.

I have been apt to think that there has never been, nor ever will be, any such thing as a good war, or a bad peace.

The root of war is fear.

I regard almost all quarrels of princes on the same footing, and I see nothing that marks man's unreason so positively as war. Indeed, what folly to kill one another for interests often imaginary, and always for the pleasure of persons who do not think themselves even obliged to those who sacrifice themselves for them!

Compared to war, all other forms of human endeavor shrink to insignificance. God help me, I do love it so.

War will exist as long as there's a food chain.

War is mankind's most tragic and stupid folly; to seek or advise its deliberate provocation is a black crime against all men.

I want war. To me all means will be right. My motto is not "Don't, whatever you do, annoy the enemy." My motto is "Destroy him by all and any means." I am the one who will wage the war!

I think all of us are agreed that war is probably man's greatest stupidity and I think peace is the dream that lives in the heart of everyone wherever he may be in the world, but unfortunately, unlike a family quarrel, it doesn't take two to make a war. It only takes one, unless the other one is prepared to surrender at the first hint of force.

All war is a symptom of man's failure as a thinking animal.

There have been only 268 of the past 3,421 years free of war.

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.

All war represents a failure of diplomacy.

Any idea that you can have a league for security is nuts, and all people who favor it are potential murderers… as long as man is man, there will be war and the only way to avoid trouble is to have the best army and navy, which we now have.

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.

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

Without armaments peace cannot be kept; wars are waged not only to repel injustice but also to establish a firm peace.

War's a game, which, were their subjects wise, Kings would not play at.