Mark Twain Quotes

You consider war to be inevitable? Very good. Let everyone who advocates war be enrolled in a special regiment of advance-guards, for the front of every storm, of every attack, to lead them all!

I regard almost all quarrels of princes on the same footing, and I see nothing that marks man's unreason so positively as war. Indeed, what folly to kill one another for interests often imaginary, and always for the pleasure of persons who do not think themselves even obliged to those who sacrifice themselves for them!

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."

Nobody welcomes a war - not if they're smart. But war finds everyone sooner or later. It's inevitable.

I think all of us are agreed that war is probably man's greatest stupidity and I think peace is the dream that lives in the heart of everyone wherever he may be in the world, but unfortunately, unlike a family quarrel, it doesn't take two to make a war. It only takes one, unless the other one is prepared to surrender at the first hint of force.

I think anything is better than war. The extent to which one can negotiate with fanatics, I have no idea. I don't know.

For all the flailing and huffing and puffing, there is a kind of fatality about the process of war-making and the excuses we find for it, the consolation of belligerence in politics.

All war is a symptom of man's failure as a thinking animal.

War is no more inevitable than the plague is inevitable. War is no more a part of human nature than the burning of witches is a human act.

Any idea that you can have a league for security is nuts, and all people who favor it are potential murderers… as long as man is man, there will be war and the only way to avoid trouble is to have the best army and navy, which we now have.

Without armaments peace cannot be kept; wars are waged not only to repel injustice but also to establish a firm peace.

Wars happen because the ones who start them think they can win.

War is not an accident. It is the logical outcome of a certain way of life.

The root of war is fear.

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

War is elective. It is not an inevitable state of affairs. War is not the weather.

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.

You've lived through a lot of wars, I said. "Yes." Do they ever make more sense? "No.

The thing constantly overlooked by those hopefuls who talk about abolishing war is that it is by no means an evidence of decay but rather a proof of health and vigor.

Compared to war, all other forms of human endeavor shrink to insignificance. God help me, I do love it so.

We can achieve much more in peace than we can ever achieve in these needless, unconstitutional, undeclared wars.

War will exist as long as there's a food chain.

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

War is mankind's most tragic and stupid folly; to seek or advise its deliberate provocation is a black crime against all men.

War is never lenient but where it is wanton; where men are compelled to fight in self-defence, they must hate and avenge. This may be bad, but it is human nature; it is the clay as it came from the hands of the Potter.