Carl Sagan Quotes

What a cruel thing war is... to fill our hearts with hatred instead of love for our neighbors.

The truth, of course, is that the only necessary and sufficient condition for human beings to murder one another is the simple fact of being human.

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.

From the earliest dawnings of policy to this day, the invention of men has been sharpening and improving the mystery of murder, from the first rude essays of clubs and stones, to the present perfection of gunnery, cannoneering, bombarding, mining, and all those species of artificial, learned, and refined cruelty, in which we are now so expert, and which make a principal part of what politicians have taught us to believe is our principal glory.

We must not be surprised when we hear of murders, killings, of wars, or of hatred...If a mother can kill her own child, what is left but for us to kill each other?

.. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that in glory and in triumph they could become the 'Momentary' masters of a 'Fraction' of a 'Dot'

What is our vision on this earth - war to the end of all generations and life by the sword?

Whether one believes in evolution, intelligent design, or Divine Creation, one thing is certain. Since the beginning of history, human beings have been at war with each other, under the pretext of religion, ideology, ethnicity and other reasons. And no civilization has ever willingly given up its most powerful weapons.

Five or six hundred heads cut off would have assured your repose, freedom and happiness.

If the people raise a great howl against my barbarity and cruelty, I will answer that war is war, and not popularity seeking.

I do not believe in terrorism, violence, destruction, murder, pre-emption, or War.

If we know anything about man, it's that he's not pacific. The temptation to butcher anyone considered undesirable seems to be a common temptation, not always resisted.

Blood alone moves the wheels of history.

You can't come away with this cosmic perspective thinking that you are better than others and want to fight. That's why you'll never have astrophysicists leading nations into war.

During the time men live without a common power to keep them all in awe, they are in that conditions called war; and such a war, as if of every man, against every man.

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

As a result of my philosophy, I wasn't even upset about Hitler. I was willing to go to war to knock him off, but I didn't hate him. I hated what he was doing.

In violence, we forget who we are.

You must show the world that you abhor fighting.

Anger is the enemy of non-violence and pride is a monster that swallows it up.

We are a Nation of peace and compassion, yet these people have and will devote every fiber of their beings to the destruction of Americans and our Country.

Instead of a few hundreds of thousands of men meeting each other in war, millions would now meet, and modern weapons would multiply manifold the power of destruction.

It does not, surely, require such torrents of blood to satisfy any reasonable man that nothing can be a more impious presumption than for either side to think themselves entitled to count the Almighty as an ally in such a pitiful display of human passion.

Politics is war without bloodshed while war is politics with bloodshed.

Atrocities are human nature - they don't have political beliefs, color, creed or anything like that. They just happen, it's human.