Elizabeth Smart Quotes

Your enemy is never a villain in his own eyes. Keep this in mind; it may offer a way to make him your friend. If not, you can kill him without hate — and quickly.

To get home you had to end the war. To end the war was the reason you fought it. The only reason.

The foreign policy, you have to know how to pick and choose. There's no way, if Saddam [Hussein] had not had weapons of mass destruction, I would have gone, because I don't believe that the U.S. should be involved directly in civil wars.

We have a choice. We have two options as human beings. We have a choice between conversation and war. That's it. Conversation and violence. And faith is a conversation stopper.

Sympathy for the favorite nation, facilitating the illusion of an imaginary common interest in cases where no real common interest exists, and infusing into one the enmities of the other, betrays the former into a participation in the quarrels and wars of the latter without adequate inducement or justification.

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.

Men make war to get attention. All killing is an expression of self-hate.

Every war, when viewed from the undistorted perspective of life’s sanctity, is a “civil war” waged by humanity against itself.

There has always been excuses for wars, but NONE of them have been good or valid.

One makes war to win, not because it's just.

The will of God prevails. In great contests each party claims to act in accordance with the will of God. Both may be, and one must be, wrong. God cannot be for and against the same thing at the same time. In the present civil war it is quite possible that God's purpose is something different from the purpose of either party - and yet the human instrumentalities, working just as they do, are of the best adaptation to effect His purpose.

Yes, yes: Taking out Saddam Hussein means war, and war is bad for children and other living things. I went to grade school in the 1970s, and I recall the poster. But there are times when war is not only a tragic and unavoidable necessity, but also good for children and other living things.

With empathy you know in your heart that it's not a sign of weakness to attempt to understand that the people we call terrorists have placed the same label on us, and that the use of force will create a counter force, a never-ending saga of killing and hate. Ending war involves cultivating empathy in our policies and the love of God in our hearts. As the Native Americans reminded us: No tree has branches so foolish as to fight among themselves.

Anyone can battle for pride, power, vanity, greed, or hate, but war should always be approached with an equal measure of wisdom and strength. It's not just enough to know when to fight, but to know when to lay down the sword and negotiate. Not everything in the world is worth fighting for.

Frank Capra made a series of films during World War II called 'Why We Fight' that explored America's reasons for entering the war. Today, with our troops engaged in Iraq and elsewhere for reasons far less clear, I think it's crucial to ask the questions: 'Why are we doing what we are doing? What is it doing to others? And what is it doing to us?'

A generation that hates war will not bring peace. A generation that loves peace will bring peace.

War isn’t declared in the name of God; it is a human affair entirely.

I'm perfectly willing to say no more Iraqs, which means no more unilateral starting of the war on false claims, false information, and a complete misunderstanding of the nature of the situation in the region.

War is unnatural, it causes people to act unnaturally.

I have never believed that war settled anything satisfactorily, but I am not entirely sure that some times there are certain situations in the world such as we have in actuality when a country is worse off when it does not go to war for its principles than if it went to war.

The God of peace is never glorified by human violence.

It wasn't aliens that first made us gear up for war; it was our fellow humans.

Peace ... is a morbid condition, due to a surplus of civilians, which war seeks to remedy.

If a war be undertaken...before the resources of peace have been tried and proved vain to secure it, that war has no defense, it is a national crime.

I have seen war ... I hate war.