Edward Bond Quotes

What’s so civil about war anyway?

Through violence, you may 'solve' one problem, but you sow the seeds for another.

Hobbes: How come we play war and not peace? Calvin: Too few role models.

I'm sure all of us agree that we need to overcome violence, but we first need to examine whether it has any value. From a strictly practical perspective, on certain occasions violence appears to be useful. We can solve a problem quickly by force. But this success is often at the expense of the rights and welfare of others. Although one problem has been solved, the seed of another has been planted.

This is a very violent place to live, the Earth, and we're a very violent species. Cain is still killing Abel. We see that every day.

The level of violence on the planet today is no longer sustainable.

The main goal of the future is to stop violence. The world is addicted to it.

War makes thieves and peace hangs them.

There are no warlike people - just warlike leaders.

Those who make war unjustly shall perish

War may well be the worst way imaginable to create larger, more peaceful societies, but the depressing fact is that it is pretty much the only way.

If civilization has an opposite, it is war.

People who talk about peace are very often the most quarrelsome.

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.

War proves nothing. To kill a man does not prove that he was in the wrong. Bloodletting cannot change men's spirits, neither can the evil of men's thoughts be driven out by blows. If I go to my neighbor's house, and break her furniture, and smash her pictures, and bind her children captive, it does not prove that I am fitter to live than she - yet according to ethics of nations it does. I have conquered her and she must pay me for my trouble; and her house and all that is left in it belongs to my heirs and successors, forever. That is war!

War is the antithesis of all our teaching. It breaks all the commandments; it makes rich men poor, and strong men weak. It makes well men sick, and by it living men are changed to dead men.

Without love, violence will change the world; it will change it into a more violent one.

Sometimes peace looks like war, you cannot tell them apart.

War is a foolish, childish, animalistic, unthinking, unintelligent way of trying to accomplish a purpose.

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.

I don't mind violence, but it's quite an interesting thing for people to deal with. I don't know many people that like fighting. I certainly don't, myself. But it's always interesting to work on a shows where there's so much violence, as a part of the world.

Violence is not inevitable. I mean, the only inevitable form of violence is the kind that we understand, the only legitimate (if there can ever be legitimate violence) and that's self-defense.

Let us ask Mary to help us respond to violence, to conflict and to war, with the power of dialogue, reconciliation and love. She is our mother: may she help us to find peace; all of us are her children!

I do not like violence, but ours is a violent time, and there are some men who understand nothing else.