Henri Barbusse Quotes

They won't give peace a chance, that's just a dream some of us had

Humanity should question itself, once more, about the absurd and always unfair phenomenon of war.

From time immemorial, people have talked about peace without achieving it. Do we simply lack enough experience? Though we talk peace, we wage war. Sometimes we even wage war in the name of peace. . . . War may be too much a part of history to be eliminated—ever.

At the beginning of this century, people never questioned the effectiveness of war, never thought there could be real peace. Now, people are tired of war and see it as ineffective in solving anything.

Unfortunately, we have warring in the world, so the youngest minds, the brilliant minds, are sent off to war. I think that, you know, you have brilliant people with great possibilities and that's why I really am not really for war. I really am not.

I am totally against the war but violence is part of mankind and it's going to happen, but as musicians I think we've got to step up and say 'come on'.

Peace need not be impracticable, and war need not be inevitable.

The best way to perpetuate poverty is spending on arms, and poverty itself is a form of violence. The wealthy industrialized countries have been too slow to recognize this. I hope that in this new century and new millennium, the world will learn that if you want peace, you must prepare for peace, plan for peace, work for it, and comply with its dictates. Lasting peace will never be achieved with the instruments of war.

Many powerful people don't want peace, because they live off war.

Try to reject war and give peace a chance. Question the powers that be and find out why they make the dubious decisions they do that send young people to war.

I think an appeal to arms and to brute force is unbecoming the age in which we live. Would to God that the time had come when there should be no war, and that religion and peace should reign throughout the world.

The measure of civilization in a people is to be found in its just appreciation of the wrongfulness of war.

I am sure that you will never end war with wars.

War cannot be humanized. It can only be abolished.

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

Why is war such an easy option? Why does peace remain such an elusive goal? We know statesmen skilled at waging war, but where are those dedicated enough to humanity to find a way to avoid war

I abhor unjust war. I abhor injustice and bullying by the strong at the expense of the weak, whether among nations or individuals. I abhor violence and bloodshed. I believe that war should never be resorted to when, or so long as, it is honorably possible to avoid it. I respect all men and women who from high motives and with sanity and self-respect do all they can to avert war. I advocate preparation for war in order to avert war; and I should never advocate war unless it were the only alternative to dishonor.

War is pillage versus resistance and if illusions of magnitude could be transmuted into ideals of magnanimity, peace might be realized.

World peace will never come until the passion of supremacy is combated.

The greatest threat to our world and its peace comes from those who want war, who prepare for it, and who, by holding out vague promises of future peace or by instilling fear of foreign aggression, try to make us accomplices to their plans.

Peace on earth would mean the end of civilization as we know it.

A world without war is not in the cards.

I know nobody believes in peace anymore, but what else is there to work toward? As the years have gone by, peace seems like more and more of an impossibility.

You can’t have peace without a war.

War is an absolute failure of imagination, scientific and political.