Anne Lamott Quotes

What’s so civil about war anyway?

For how many thousands of years now have we humans been what we insist on calling "civilized?" And yet, in total contradiction, we also persist in the savage belief that we must occasionally, at least, settle our arguments by killing one another.

It is fear which leads us to war, ... It is fear which leads us to believe that we must kill or be killed. Fear which leads us to attack those who have not attacked us. Fear which leads us to ring our nation in the very heavens with weapons of mass destruction.

War may sometimes be a necessary evil. But no matter how necessary, it is always an evil, never a good. We will not learn how to live together in peace by killing each other's children.

Man is the only animal that deals in that atorcity 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.

Men grow tired of sleep, love, singing and dancing sooner than of war.

People who talk about peace are very often the most quarrelsome.

War is not an accident. It is the logical outcome of a certain way of life.

War proves nothing. To kill a man does not prove that he was in the wrong. Bloodletting cannot change men's spirits, neither can the evil of men's thoughts be driven out by blows. If I go to my neighbor's house, and break her furniture, and smash her pictures, and bind her children captive, it does not prove that I am fitter to live than she - yet according to ethics of nations it does. I have conquered her and she must pay me for my trouble; and her house and all that is left in it belongs to my heirs and successors, forever. That is war!

Without love, violence will change the world; it will change it into a more violent one.

Maybe war is an inevitable product of human nature. Maybe to get rid of war, we have to become something other than human.

War is a foolish, childish, animalistic, unthinking, unintelligent way of trying to accomplish a purpose.

War is an act of force, and to the application of that force there is no limit. Each of the adversaries forces the hand of the other, and a reciprocal action results which in theory can have no limit.

Violence and war lead only to death.

Hobbes: How come we play war and not peace? Calvin: Too few role models.

I'm sure all of us agree that we need to overcome violence, but we first need to examine whether it has any value. From a strictly practical perspective, on certain occasions violence appears to be useful. We can solve a problem quickly by force. But this success is often at the expense of the rights and welfare of others. Although one problem has been solved, the seed of another has been planted.

I do not like violence, but ours is a violent time, and there are some men who understand nothing else.

War is not a polite recreation but the vilest thing in life, and we ought to understand that and not play at war.

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?

You've got to kill people, and when you've killed enough they stop fighting.

War with all its glorification of brute force is essentially a degrading thing.

Nonviolence is the only way. Even if you achieve your goal by violent means there are always side effects, and these can be worse than the problem. Violence is against human nature.

It actually dawned on me that I don’t fight. I just kill whatever annoys me, and it’s over. (Savitar)

War is mankind's most tragic and stupid folly; to seek or advise its deliberate provocation is a black crime against all men.

I warn you against shedding blood, indulging in it and making a habit of it, for blood never sleeps.