Lester B. Pearson Quotes

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

I don't like war. I particularly don't like the celebration of war, which I think the administration is a little bit guilty of.

What this country needs what every country needs occasionally is a good hard bloody war to revive the vice of patriotism on which its existence as a nation depends.

Let him who desires peace prepare for 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.

It is not uncommon in modern times to see governments straining every nerve to keep the peace, and the people whom they represent, with patriotic enthusiasm and resentment over real or fancied wrongs, urging them forward to war.

Under no stretch of imagination can war be regarded as an ethical process; yet war, force, terror, and propaganda were the evolutionary means employed to weld the German people into a tribal whole.

During times of war, hatred becomes quite respectable even though it has to masquerade often under the guise of patriotism.

The principal cause of war is war itself.

I can hardly repress our press and our people too. They are thirsting for war against England.

Perhaps when the next great war comes we may see that sight unprecedented in all history, a jingo with a bullet-hole in him.

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

War is a quarrel between two thieves too cowardly to fight their own battle; therefore they take boys from one village and another village, stick them into uniforms, equip them with guns, and let them loose like wild beasts against each other.

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

It is absurd to believe in the possibility of perpetual peace...Fascist education must be education for battle.

It is absurd to believe in the possibility of perpetual peace...Fascist education must be education for battle. Fascism believes in sanctity and heroism.

There is no passion to which the rulers of a people can address themselves with greater [political] effect [than war.]

Of course the people don't want war... It is the leaders...who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along...all you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.

There have been many examples in the world of people doing crazy things because they want to keep war going.

Preparation for war is a constant stimulus to suspicion and ill will.

It is idle to say that nations can struggle to outdo each other in building armaments and never use them. History demonstrates the contrary, and we have but to go back to the last war to see the appalling effect of nations competing in great armaments.

This is a war universe. War all the time. That is its nature. There may be other universes based on all sorts of other principles, but ours seems to be based on war and games.

It is in war that the State really comes into its own: swelling in power, in number, in pride, in absolute dominion over the economy and the society.

In times of peace, the war party insists on making preparation for war. As soon as prepared for, it insists on making war.

In the beginning of the Great War, the emotions of Europe ran riot in a most horrible manner, first among the so-called 'living,' and then among the killed when they awoke.