Ta-Nehisi Coates Quotes

We have learned that change cannot come through war. War is not a feasible tool to use in fighting against the oppression we face. War has caused more problems. We cannot embrace that path.

I don't think there's any way that war can have a place in peace. I think that peace is the active and difficult resistance to the temptation of war; it is the prerogative and the obligation of the injured. Peace is something that has to be vigilantly maintained; it is a vigilance, and it involves temptation, and it does not mean we as human beings are not aggressive. This is a mistaken way of understanding non-violence.

I have never advocated war except as a means of peace.

War can only be abolished through war, and in order to get rid of the gun it is necessary to take up the gun.

The peace of the man who has forsworn the use of the bullet seems to me not quite peace.

If it's to be a bloodbath, let it be now. Appeasement is not the answer.

Nonviolence is the answer to the crucial political and moral questions of our time: the need for man to overcome oppression and violence without resorting to oppression and violence. Man must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love.

With God as witness, I want to proclaim this truth, that the way of violence cannot bring Swaraj, it can only lead to disaster.

Wars aren't stopped by fighting wars, any more than you can fight fire with fire. You fight fire with water. You fight violence with nonviolence.

Pacifism in the face of war is not only irresponsible - it is immoral. Refusing to meet force with force in the name of peace will beget not peace, but further death and destruction, the very violence the pacifists seek to avoid.

We want to get rid of the militarist not simply because he hurts and kills, but because he is an intolerable thick-voiced blockhead who stands hectoring and blustering in our way of achievement.

It is no longer a choice between violence and nonviolence in this world; it's nonviolence or nonexistence. That is where we are today.

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 would be the greatest mistake, certainly, to think that concessions mean peace. Nothing of the kind. Concessions are nothing but a new form of war.

Fight the fighters, not their wars.

Though we talk peace, we wage war. Sometimes we even wage war in the name of peace. Does that seem paradoxical? Well, war is not afraid of paradoxes.

Unless a nation's life faces peril, war is murder.

We make war that we may live in peace.

War should never be entered upon until every agency of peace has failed.

Either war is obsolete, or men are.

War is only a cowardly escape from the problems of peace.

I am a peace man except when I wish to fight.

If mankind hated war, there would be millions of us and only two soldiers.

We are much in the position of those who love peace so much that they are ready to fight for it.

I am too realistic to believe in pacifism. But, nevertheless, the use of force should always be the last resort.