Edward Said Quotes

Today we are in a war against war - music is our power.

All the vested interests and people who profit by war will - with the journals they control - resolutely oppose any reduction of armaments.

In all history there is no war which was not hatched by the governments, the governments alone, independent of the interests of the people, to whom war is always pernicious even when successful.

You are dealing with people who have taken the responsibility of killing their own because they think that they are right, they think that they are serving the interests of their people. They not going to give that up easily, just because you've shown up.

There is no greater responsibility resting upon peoples and governments everywhere than to make sure that enduring peace will this time - at long last - be established and maintained.

We have the responsibility to protect our people and that's why we're building this fence. We've suffered from 19,000 terrorist attacks during the last three years.

You know what we did at Jerusalem. Do exactly the same. Send for the Turkish Wali [Civil Governor] and tell him to carry on, giving him the extra police he requires.

Like individuals, some peoples are naturally pacific and some naturally aggressive.

Children aren't responsible for wars.

Under international law, the responsibility for protecting civilians in conflict falls on the belligerents. Under military occupation, responsibility for the welfare of the population falls on the occupiers.

We love action and adventure, but we use it to go out and start wars and kill people.

War is a crime committed by men and, therefore, when enough people say it shall not be, it cannot be.

So?" Bob said. "Hat up, go kill her. Problem solved." "Bob," I said. "You can't just go around killing people." "I know. That's why you should do it." "No, no. I can't go around killing people, either.

Why it's been left to me to smooth things over, I don't know. Dennis Rodman, of all people. Keeping us safe is really not my job; it's the black guy's [Obama's] job. But I'll tell you this: If I don't finish in the top three for the next Nobel Peace Prize, something's seriously wrong.

It is a tough choice. In war, people die. But when we refuse to confront the enemy, we will face the enemy in New York and Washington, as we did on 9-11. As for responsiblity, of course we stand by our decision to go to war on Iraq. President Kennedy said that friend and foe alike should know where America stands.

If you want peace, you've got to deal with people; you don't just deal with objects. And whether they take it as a responsibility or not, the success or failure in Kosovo is going to be the success or failure of building, first, economic hope, and then trying to heal the damage that's been done.

Being in charge sometimes means making people mad. Some days you have to overrule even the best advice, because you think it is not right.

In the Sixties, the hippies said "Make love, not war," and that was naive. But it might be less naive to say "Make music, not war," in the sense that the people who create musical instruments are the same people who make up new weapons.

When a nation becomes obsessed with the guns of war, it loses its social perspective.... There is something about a war like this that makes people insensitive. It dulls the conscience. It strengthens the forces of reaction, and it brings into being bitterness and hatred and violence.

I think we're coming to a place where we're saying all war is wrong. We might even learn something about the sensationalism we get caught up in with people like Donald Trump.

Those of us who finally saw through the Vietnam war saw through this war, and all the actions that were necessary to end the Vietnam war will be necessary here. I think the American people will get us out of this war.

I'm going to spend a lot of time trying to explain as best I can why it's important for us to succeed in Iraq. I'm going to do what I think is right, and if, you know, if people don't like me for it, that's just the way it is.

War happens to people, one by one. That is really all I have to say and it seems to me I have been saying it forever. Unless they are immediate victims, the majority of mankind behaves as if war was an act of God which could not be prevented; or they behave as if war elsewhere was none of their business. It would be a bitter cosmic joke if we destroy ourselves due to atrophy of the imagination.

Mother’s Day really was in its origin an antiwar day, an antiwar statement. Julia Ward Howe was sickened by what had happened during the Civil War, the loss of life, the carnage, and she created Mother’s Day as a call for women all over the world to come together and create ways of protesting war, of making a kind of alternate government that could finally do away with war as an acceptable way of solving conflict.

No music is going to stop the war. What's going to stop the war is a large amount of body bags, or a large amount of people in the streets, protesting it before it starts.