Ishmael Beah Quotes

All the aftermath that so frequently follows in the wake of war still confront the nation, and we now, as ever before, must hold fast to the ancient landmarks and see to it that all of these plagues that threaten so mightily shall be rendered harmless.

After every war someone has to tidy up.

Wars are poor chisels for carving out peaceful tomorrows.

We’re not going to need as many people to do peacekeeping as we needed to fight the war.

If one seeks to analyze experiences and reactions to the first postwar years, I hope one may say without being accused of bias that it is easier for the victor than for the vanquished to advocate peace.

Winning the peace is harder than winning the war.

I think the day you start building the war plan is the day you start beginning the postwar plan.

The concept of military readiness is well understood, but readiness for what happens after the fighting stops is just as important.

The possibility of the United States winning the war and losing the peace is real and serious

Thinking about the war now and the occupation later is not an acceptable solution.

I have done all I can to prevent wars. All my life I've been dedicated to preventing just what has happened today.

Americans have learned that it is harder to end wars than it is to begin them

I understand how every healthy child, every new road, puts a country on a better path, but instability and war will arise from time to time, and I'm not an expert on how you get out of those things.

I think every day we look at the mess of the chaos of the civil war in Iraq, I think every day people become more and more convinced that the war was a mistake. I think we have to learn from the mistakes of our past.

Whenever you have a possibility of going in two ways, either for peace or for war, for peaceful methods of for military methods, in the present age there is a strong prejudice for the peaceful ones. War seldom ever leads to good results.

Fortunately, the war has brought with it not alone a stark realization of what another war would mean to the world, but as well the creation of an international agency through which the nations of the world can, if they so desire, make peace a living reality.

The methods of peace propaganda which aim at establishing peace doctrine by argument and by creating a feeling favorable to peace in general seem to fall short of reaching the springs of human action and of dealing with the causes of the conduct which they seek to modify.

War is much too serious a thing to be left to military men.

I've traveled with Jack Murtha to Iraq three times to learn more about the region, talk with our diplomats and military leaders, and meet with our troops. Those visits are the main reason that I opposed the War in Iraq since its inception.

I wanted to continue doing my work, but I had to figure out how. And so what I have basically come up with is that I still go to Afghanistan and Iraq and South Sudan and many of these places that are rife with war, but I don't go directly to the front line.

We wanted this war and now we've got it, and I'm not sure that we know what to do with it.

Wars can be prevented just as surely as they can be provoked, and we who fail to prevent them, must share the guilt for the dead.

Preventing a war is tantamount to winning a war.

Establishing lasting peace is the work of education; all politics can do is keep us out of war.

There has never been a protracted war from which a country has benefited.