Voltaire Quotes

War is horrible, but slavery is worse.

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

It's a major part of world history that men are trying to kill each other. It's just one slaughter after the other. We talk about it, but no one's really listening.

The first accounts we have of mankind are but so many accounts of their butcheries. All empires have been cemented in blood; and, in those early periods, when the race of mankind began first to form themselves into parties and combinations, the first effect of the combination, and indeed the end for which it seems purposely formed, and best calculated, was their mutual destruction.

Mankind has conceived history as a series of battles; hitherto it has considered fighting as the main thing in life.

Poor human nature, what horrible crimes have been committed in thy name! All wars are wars among thieves who are too cowardly to fight and who therefore induce the young manhood of the whole world to do the fighting for them.

One would think that man would run out of wars.

Modern slavery - be it bonded labor, involuntary servitude, or sexual slavery - is a crime and cannot be tolerated in any culture, community, or country ... [It] is an affront to our values and our commitment to human rights.

The world is not violent. But there is a lot of violence in it.

History laughs at both the victim and the aggressor.

I couldn't stand the idea of bloodshed, casualties.

The history of our civilization has been one of intermittent war.

We decry violence all the time in this country, but look at our history. We were born in a violent revolution, and we've been in wars ever since. We're not a pacific people.

I think the brutality is important to convey as part of the story, to see how brutal it is to have these kids in battle with one another.

The guns and the bombs, the rockets and the warships, are all symbols of human failure.

World history is tragic.

War is the second worst activity of mankind, the worst being acquiescence in slavery.

War is one of the constants of history, and it has not diminished with civilization or democracy. In the last 3,421 years of recorded history only 268 have seen no war.

The march of history is accompanied by a steady flow of bodies into the abattoir of hate.

I am ready to fight. My people are killed, my horses stolen; I am satisfied to fight.

History is nothing more than a tableau of crimes and misfortunes

They [slaves] constitute a military resource, and being such, that they should not be turned over to the enemy is too plain to discuss.

Man is the only animal that deals in that atrocity of atrocities, War. He is the only one that gathers his brethren about him and goes forth in cold blood and calm pulse to exterminate his kind. He is the only animal that for sordid wages will march out...and help to slaughter strangers of his own species who have done him no harm and with whom he has no quarrel. ..And in the intervals between campaigns he washes the blood off his hands and works for "the universal brotherhood of man"--with his mouth.

Anyone who clings to the historically untrue and thoroughly immoral doctrine that violence never solves anything, I would advise to conjure up the ghosts of Napoleon Bonaparte and the Duke of Wellington and let them debate it. The Ghost of Hitler could referee, and the jury might well be the Dodo, the Great Auk, and the Passenger Pigeon. Violence, naked force, has settled more disputes in history than has any other factor, and the contrary opinion is wishful thinking at its worst. Breeds that forget this basic truth have always paid for it with their lives and freedoms.

Look at history. It's not the account of a species at peace.