Cat Stevens Quotes

The massive anti-war movement, which I was a part of and which was a major part of my life, never stopped the war in Vietnam.

Well, we think the broadcasts did have some effect, because we see the antiwar movement in the U.S. building up, growing and so we think that our broadcast is a support to this antiwar movement.

Before the war there were many who were more or less ignorant of the international labor movement but who nevertheless turned to it for salvation when the threat of war arose. They hoped that the workers would never permit a war.

I saw the first of the 7-mile-long column appear - red and orange and green banners, 'Ban the Bomb!' etc., shining and swaying slowly. Absolute silence. I found myself weeping to see the tan, dusty marchers, knapsacks on their backs - Quakers and Catholics, Africans and whites, Algerians and French - 40 percent were London housewives.

My parents were activists and my mother was hugely involved with the anti-Vietnam War protests.

When I went to college, I majored in anti-war demonstrations, you know? I mean, really!

I marched and I protested against the war in Vietnam, along with many, many thousands of others. But I never quite understood the bombs that were placed in science labs or office buildings.

We need a people's movement to end this war, ... We're going to ask them How many more of other people's children are you willing to sacrifice for the lies

I found draft resistors very conscientious, reasonable, and not fanatics.

When you have a peace movement that has an actual war, it's different from one that has wars that our country is not totally involved in. During the war in Vietnam, and to a lesser degree the wars in Central America where our country was directly involved, it was easier to organize.

The anti-war movement should turn itself into a pro-democracy movement

No music is going to stop the war. What's going to stop the war is a large amount of body bags, or a large amount of people in the streets, protesting it before it starts.

To stand up for peace and against war and for disarmament is very courageous here in America.

I have a great admiration for pacifism, but I'm not a pacifist, mainly because I would defend myself if I were attacked.

Whatever strength the masses have is due entirely to ahimsa, however imperfect or defective its practice might have been.

Even if only 2 percent of those assigned to perform military service should announce their refusal to fight, governments would be powerless, they would not dare send such a large number of people to jail.

When every young man refuses to go to war, you will have peace. You do not defend any idea with violence.

Those of us who love peace must organize as effectively as the war hawks. As they spread the propaganda of war, we must spread the propaganda of peace.

The most important thing today is to stop US wars.

Within the United States especially, the often violent response to nonviolent forms of youth protests must be analyzed within the framework of a mammoth military-industrial state and its commitment to war and the militarization of the entire society.

For mass struggles, nonviolence is essential.

Whether or not the working class came to Chicago in 1969 in the Days of Rage is not a measure of their commitment to stopping the war or to seeing life in certain way. There were very few of us who were there, and those of us that were had an illusion about ourselves.

There is more value in placing a flower in a rifle barrel than making war. As Jimi Hendrix used to say, musical notes have more importance than bullets.

I tried to imagine a church that did not support its country's wars as a matter of patriotic course and instead stood against the devastation and suffering they caused in people's lives." (from 'The Dance of the Dissident Daughter'.)

I said to the president's wife, Vietnam is the main reason we are having trouble with the youth of America. It is a war without explanation or reason.