Joseph Heller Quotes

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.

There are no makers of peace because the making of peace is at least as costly as the making of war - at least as exigent.

One of the most persistent ambiguities that we face is that everybody talks about peace as a goal. However, it does not take sharpest-eyed sophistication to discern that while everbody talks about peace, peace has become practically nobody's business among the power-wielders. Many men cry Peace! Peace! but they refuse to do the things that make for peace.

The best missile defense system of all would be a just and lasting peace.

No triumph of peace is quite so great as the supreme triumphs of war.

Unlike the talent for war, the ability to make peace has always been rare.

Today the real test of America's power and wisdom is not our capacity to make war but our capacity to prevent it. Prevention must be our overriding objective. It can be done. Surrendering to the inevitability of combat only paves the way for its occurring.

The most expensive peace is far less costly than the cheapest war.

War has been more common than peace, and extended periods of peace have been rare in a world divided into multiple states

We seek peace, knowing that peace is the climate of freedom. And now, as in no other age, we seek it because we have been warned, by the power of modern weapons, that peace may be the only climate possible for human life itself.

the insight that peace is the end of war, and that therefore a war is the preparation for peace, is at least as old as Aristotle, and the pretense that the aim of an armament race is to guard the peace is even older, namely as old as the discovery of propaganda lies.

Peace is preferable to war. But it’s not an absolute value, and so we always ask, “What kind of peace?

We are living in a time of many wars. The call for peace must be shouted. Peace sometimes gives the impression of being quiet, but it is never quiet. Peace if always proactive and dynamic.

The great lesson to be learned in the battered towns of England and the ruined cities of Germany is that the best way to win a war is to prevent it from occurring.

Peace demands the most heroic labor and the most difficult sacrifice.

To discover a system for the avoidance of war is a vital need of our civilisation.

We know how to win wars. We must learn now to win peace.

The best defence of peace is not power, but the removal of the causes of war, and international agreements which will put peace on a stronger foundation, than the terror of destruction.

My fellow Americans, let us take that first step. Let us...step back from the shadow of war and seek out the way of peace. And if that journey is a thousand miles, or even more, let history record that we, in this land, at this time, took the first step.

It is not enough just to be for peace. The point is, what can we do about it?

Because we want the peace with half a heart and half a life and will, the war, of course, continues, because the waging of war, by its nature, is total - but the waging of peace, by our own cowardice, is partial.

We love peace, as we abhor pusillanimity; but not peace at any price.

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

All of us realize that war requires action. What is sometimes harder for us to realize is that peace and neutrality also require action.