John Boyd Orr Quotes

There is no difference between acute schizophrenia and a world at war.

War is hell. You can't photograph a flying bullet, but you can capture genuine fear.

The United States is a madhouse.

For what can war, but endless war, still breed?

May the same Almighty Goodness banish the accursed monster, war, from all lands, with her hated associates, rapine and insatiable ambition!

On the bastion and entrenchments white flags have been placed, the lowering valley is full of dead bodies, and the beautiful sun descends from the transparent sky to the undulating blue sea, which sparkles under the golden rays of the sun. Thousands of people crowd together, look at, speak to, and smile at each other. And these people, who are Christians, confessing one great law of love and self-sacrifice, looking at what they have done, do not suddenly fall with repentance on their knees before Him who has given them life, who has placed in the soul of each, together with the fear of death, the love of the good and beautiful. They do not embrace like brothers with tears of joy and happiness. No! The white flags are lowered, and again whistle the instruments of death and suffering, again flows innocent blood, and groans and curses are heard

Jesus Christ opposed with earnest eloquence the panic fears and hateful superstitions which have enslaved mankind for ages. Nations had risen against nations, employing the subtlest devices of mechanism and mind to waste, and excruciate, and overthrow. The great community of mankind had been subdivided into ten thousand communities, each organized for the ruin of the other. Wheel within wheel, the vast machine was instinct with the restless spirit of desolation.

The masses are principally to be feared because they fly out ever and anon into violence; and from plundering they proceed to the flat levelling of estates.

Anyone contemplating world war is certifiably insane, no matter how calm they seem.

We have been travelling through a cloud. The sky has been dark ever since the war began.

All the gods are dead except the god of war.

Unless a nation's life faces peril, war is murder.

I hated the bangs in the war: I always felt a silent war would be more tolerable.

There was nothing there but black water and American fire power.

The first time I experienced war, I thought the world was ending.

Men are so necessarily mad, that not to be mad would amount to another form of madness.

There's something about being amid the chaos and the horror of a war that makes you appreciate all you don't have - and all you may lose forever.

What a cruel thing war is... to fill our hearts with hatred instead of love for our neighbors.

The world perishes not from bandits and fires, but from hatred, hostility, and all these petty squabbles.

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.

War is the easiest photography in the business. Just get close, be lucky, know how your camera works. There are subjects everywhere. Everyplace you go, there is something to photograph in a war, like being in the middle of a hurricane or a train crash or an earthquake. You can't miss it.

When I look back on my childhood, I think of that short time in Beirut. I know that seeing the city collapse around me forced me to grasp something many people miss: the fragility of peace.

War is a series of catastrophes that results in a victory.

I hate war for its consequences, for the lies it lives on and propagates, for the undying hatreds it arouses.

Why do people want to kill and maim and pillage? We're all in it together.