Edwin Starr Quotes

War is a thing of fearful and curious anomalies ... It has shown that government by men only is not an appeal to reason, but an appeal to arms; that on women, without a voice to protest, must fall the burden. It is easier to die than to send a son to death.

Every war, when viewed from the undistorted perspective of life’s sanctity, is a “civil war” waged by humanity against itself.

Wars are to the body politic, what drams are to the individual. There are times when they may prevent a sudden death, but if frequently resorted to, or long persisted in, they heighten the energies only to hasten the dissolution.

War has its necessities...and I have always understood that. Always known the cost. But, this day, by my own hand, I have realized something else. War is not a natural state. It is an imposition, and a damned unhealthy one. With its rules, we willingly yield our humanity. Speak not of just causes, worthy goals. We are takers of life.

It is not only the living who are killed in war.

At least eighty thousand of our sons are dead or mangled. A million more will die of poverty and disease. Every issue could have been settled and better settled without the loss of a drop of blood

War is not won by victory.

War...is as much a punishment to the punisher as to the sufferer.

War is not something that can be won. Everybody loses at war.

We are living in a time of many wars. The call for peace must be shouted. Peace sometimes gives the impression of being quiet, but it is never quiet. Peace if always proactive and dynamic.

To me war is something to be outgrown, recognized as immature, wasteful, and so destructive to life that human beings should shun it ... as they once shunned bubonic plague.

You can't beat your enemy anymore through wars; instead you create an entire generation of people revenge-seeking. [...] Our opponents are going to resort to car bombs and suicide attacks because they have no other way to win. I believe (Rumsfeld) thinks this is a war that can be won, but there is no such thing anymore. We can't beat anyone anymore.

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.

War stirs in men's hearts the mud of their worst instincts. It puts a premium on violence, nourishes hatred, and gives free rein to cupidity. It crushes the weak, exalts the unworthy, and bolsters tyranny .. .Time and time again it has destroyed all ordered living, devastated hope, and put the prophets to death.

The folly of war is that it can have no natural end except in the extinction an entire people.

Beyond the futility of armed force, and ultimately more important, is the fact that war in our time inevitably results in the indiscriminate killing of large numbers of people. To put it more bluntly, war is terrorism. That is why a 'war on terrorism' is a contradiction in terms.

A holy war is a contradiction in terms. War dehumanizes, war diminishes, war debases all those who wage it.

War is not its own end, except in some catastrophic slide into absolute damnation. It's peace that's wanted. Some better peace than the one you started with.

If in the modern world wars have unfortunately to be fought (and they do, it seems) then they must be stopped at the first possible moment, otherwise they corrupt us, they create new problems and make our future even more uncertain. That is more than morality; it's sense.

Who does not know the evils of war cannot appreciate its benefits.

It is not only war that can stop war but men of goodwill, conscious of their mission can deal with such deadly enemy.

You wait for the war to happen like vultures. If you want to help, prevent the war. Don't save the remnants. Save them all.

War is just what we do. Yet, of course, the effects of it are repeatedly deeper, then deeper, then deeper.

The only compensation which war offers for its manifold mischiefs, is in the great personal qualities to which it gives scope and occasion.

War is the greatest plague that can afflict mankind... Any scourge is preferable to it.