Ruth Benedict Quotes

War is the normal state of the people.

Peace for any prolonged period of time is impossible. Humans have a natural thirst for chaos and war is the most readily available form of chaos.

You can’t have peace without a war.

If civilization has an opposite, it is war.

The root of war is fear.

Violence and war lead only to death.

It is nothing but fanaticism and beautiful soulism to expect very much (or even, much only) from humanity when it has forgotten how to wage war.

The story of the human race is war. Except for brief and precarious interludes there has never been peace in the world; and long before history began murderous strife was universal and unending.

War grows out of ordinary human nature.

After a lifetime of war-watching, I see war as an endemic human disease, and governments are the carriers.

War is never lenient but where it is wanton; where men are compelled to fight in self-defence, they must hate and avenge. This may be bad, but it is human nature; it is the clay as it came from the hands of the Potter.

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.

If war was hell and only hell and there were no other colors in the palate I don't think people would continue to make war.

War: A by-product of the arts of peace.

From time immemorial, people have talked about peace without achieving it. Do we simply lack enough experience? Though we talk peace, we wage war. Sometimes we even wage war in the name of peace. . . . War may be too much a part of history to be eliminated—ever.

All war is a symptom of man's failure as a thinking animal.

It's very unfortunate that war has always been and probably always will be a part of human beings on this planet. It's a terrible thing.

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

Against war it may be said that it makes the victor stupid and the vanquished revengeful.

You consider war to be inevitable? Very good. Let everyone who advocates war be enrolled in a special regiment of advance-guards, for the front of every storm, of every attack, to lead them all!

You cannot organize civilization around the core of militarism and at the same time expect reason to control human destinies.

If peace is equated simply with the absence of war, it can become abject pacifism that turns the world over to the most ruthless.

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

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.

I hate the way war is seen as something inherently brutal and ugly. Yes, much of war brings out the worst part of our [people's] nature. But in war, all kinds of noble human traits have been developed, such as discipline, cohesion, pride.