Jon Lee Anderson Quotes

Now, a river of blood will divide France from its enemies.

There is another temptation which we must especially guard against: the simplistic reductionism which sees only good or evil; or, if you will, the righteous and sinners. The contemporary world, with its open wounds which affect so many of our brothers and sisters, demands that we confront every form of polarization which would divide it into these two camps.

In a world of increasing grey areas, we are becoming more and more entrenched in black and white positions.

A war between Europeans is a civil war.

War makes thieves and peace hangs them.

We cannot have peace if we are only concerned with peace. War is not an accident. It is the logical outcome of a certain way of life. If we want to attack war, we have to attack that way of life.

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

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

Nothing will ensure war more certainly or entrench rivalries more seriously than for or against thinking!

All the religious wars that have caused blood to be shed for centuries arise from passionate feelings and facile counter-positions, such as Us and Them, good and bad, white and black.

People like to talk about war.

War, I have always said, forces men to change their standards, regardless of whether their country has won or lost.

Before the human race today there are only two roads: War or brotherhood.

Daily Herald this morning described burning Berlin on Saturday night as having looked “like an oven”. I wonder who really gets the satisfaction out of this terrible deterioration in human values.

Turn on your television and see what happens when nations settle their internal differences with guns.

Jesus Christ opposed with earnest eloquence the panic fears and hateful superstitions which have enslaved mankind for ages. Nations had risen against nations, employing the subtlest devices of mechanism and mind to waste, and excruciate, and overthrow. The great community of mankind had been subdivided into ten thousand communities, each organized for the ruin of the other. Wheel within wheel, the vast machine was instinct with the restless spirit of desolation.

The combat man isn't the same clean-cut lad because you don't fight a kraut by Marquis of Queensberry rules. You shoot him in the back, you blow him apart with mines, you kill or maim him the quickest and most effective way you can with the least danger to yourself. He does the same to you.

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

I was born in 1962, and it seems that throughout my entire life the world has demanded peace but maintained conflict.

What is human warfare but just this; an effort to make the laws of God and nature take sides with one party.

The Cold War, Bosnia and Ukraine remind us that peace is fragile. Iraq and Syria remind us that no society or culture is immune from conflict.

Everything in our world tends to be built on either/ors, and either/ors inevitably make enemies.

If there is one path above all others to war, it is the path of weakness and disunity.

A wall is a hell of a lot better than a war.

War justifies everything.