Elie Wiesel 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.

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

The story of the human race is war. Except for brief and precarious interludes there has never been peace in the world; and long before history began murderous strife was universal and unending.

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

When people go at war they cheapen things.

Peace is a desire, war is a fact; and history has never paid heed to human desires and ideals.

A smart soldier wants to know the causes of wars. Also how to end them. After all, war is the normal state of affairs, isn't it? Peace is the name of the ideal we deduce from the fact that there have been interludes between wars.

Though we talk peace, we wage war. Sometimes we even wage war in the name of peace. Does that seem paradoxical? Well, war is not afraid of paradoxes.

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

You can’t have peace without a war.

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

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'.

Peace need not be impracticable, and war need not be inevitable.

If peace is equated simply with the absence of war, it can become abject pacifism that turns the world over to the most ruthless.

It has been claimed that the aim of the present war is to end war. But war cannot end war, neither can militarism destroy militarism.

The root of war is fear.

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

Many powerful people don't want peace, because they live off war.

Listen up—there’s no war that will end all wars,’ Crow tells me. ‘War breeds war. Lapping up the blood shed by violence, feeding on wounded flesh. War is a perfect, self-contained being. You need to know that.

Try to reject war and give peace a chance. Question the powers that be and find out why they make the dubious decisions they do that send young people to war.

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.

It is nothing but fanaticism and beautiful soulism to expect very much (or even, much only) from humanity when it has forgotten how to wage war.

And always we had wars, and more wars, and still other wars - all over Europe, all over the world. "Sometimes in the private interest of royal families," Satan said, "sometimes to crush a weak nation; but never a war started by the aggressor for any clean purpose - there is no such war in the history of the race."

As far as I am concerned, war itself is immoral.

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