Antiwar Movement, Anti-War Movement Quotes

Resistance to conscription [in WWI] was quite strong. By the end of the war, the ranks of noncooperators were stunningly large. Roughly 3 million eligible men never registered, in violation of the law — compared with the 24 million who did. And some 338,000 who did register either failed to obey an induction notice or deserted after they joined the ranks .... Altogether, a higher percentage of American men successfully resisted conscription during World War I than during the Vietnam War half a century later.

I am totally against the war but violence is part of mankind and it's going to happen, but as musicians I think we've got to step up and say 'come on'.

During the Vietnam War, which lasted longer than any war we've ever been in - and which we lost - every respectable artist in this country was against the war. It was like a laser beam. We were all aimed in the same direction. The power of this weapon turns out to be that of a custard pie dropped from a stepladder six feet high.

The U.S. never lost a battle against North Vietnam, but it lost the war.

The majority of pacifists either belong to obscure religious sects or are simply humanitarians who object to the taking of life and prefer not to follow their thoughts beyond that point. But there is a minority of intellectual pacifists whose real though unadmitted motive appears to be hatred of western democracy and admiration of totalitarianism. Pacifist propaganda usually boils down to saying that one side is as bad as the other, but if one looks closely at the writings of younger intellectual pacifists, one finds that they do not by any means express impartial disapproval but are directed almost entirely against Britain and the United States. Moreover they do not as a rule condemn violence as such, but only violence used in defence of western countries. The Russians, unlike the British, are not blamed for defending themselves by warlike means, and indeed all pacifist propaganda of this type avoids mention of Russia or China.

I took every chance I could to meet with U.S. soldiers. I talked with them and read the books they gave me about the war. I decided I needed to return to my country and join with them - active duty soldiers and Vietnam Veterans in particular - to try and end the war.

I mean it's easier to be in a demonstration if it's a trip that's one of the reasons why the whole thing fell apart in 1971, because it wasn't a trip any longer.

I am Catalan. Catalonia had the first democratic Parliament much before England. And it was in my country where there was a beginning of united nations. At that time—the eleventh Century—they met in Toulouse—today in France—to speak about peace, because the Catalonian people of that time were already against war. That is why, the United Nations, which work only for the ideal of peace, are in my heart, because everything relating to peace goes directly there.

Take the Iraq War,it's the second worst crime after the Second World War. It's the first time in history, in the history of imperialism, there were huge demonstrations, before the war was officially launched.

The 'peace movement' exists only in the fantasies of the paranoid.

I'm an old guy, and I was protesting during the Vietnam War. We killed fifty Asians for every loyal American. Every artist worth a damn in this country was terribly opposed to that war, finally, when it became evident what a fiasco and meaningless butchery it was. We formed sort of a laser beam of protest. Every painter, every writer, every stand-up comedian, every composer, every novelist, every poet aimed in the same direction. Afterwards, the power of this incredible new weapon dissipated.

The hippy movement was a failure. All hippies around now just represent complete apathy. There's a million good reasons why the thing failed, OK. But the only thing we've got to live with is that it failed.

We're here to let the Democrats know that the grass roots and the anti-war movement elected them to create change.

The war had been unnecessarily and unconstitutionally initiated by the president.

Man has no right to kill his brother. It is no excuse that he does so in uniform: he only adds the infamy of servitude to the crime of murder.

Once conscription was introduced during the First World War, and once Britain's wars ceased being confined to the empire or to continental Europe and began seriously threatening our own shores and safety, it became much easier to denounce any anti-war agitation and argument as inherently irresponsible and unpatriotic.

I am not only a pacifist but a militant pacifist. I am willing to fight for peace. Nothing will end war unless the people themselves refuse to go to war.

The Vietnam War was happening, but Lubbock was... They put a pinch on it.

I have dealt with a pretty interesting mix of young people, many of whom have never been involved in any form of politics at any level who are interested in alternatives to austerity and debt, and older people who left the Labour party, mainly over Iraq, who are coming back in.

The protest songs of the 1960s and 70s managed to blend political and societal views with music from the heart.

We ain't goin' study war no more.

The responsibility for the risks we posed to others in some of our most extreme actions in those underground years never leaves my thoughts for long. The antiwar movement in all its commitment, all its sacrifice and determination, could not stop the violence unleashed against Vietnam. And therein lies cause for real regret.

Abraham Lincoln spoke out against the Mexican War. But once Americans were under fire, people who were on the fence felt obliged to support it.

We talk about the '68 Democratic Convention. I was too young to really know a lot about it, but - and didn't even watch it, but I have read about it, and I know enough about it to know that it damaged the Democratic candidates.

All American and Israeli goods and products should be boycotted in a way that undermines American and Israeli interests so as to act as deterrence to their war against Muslims and Islam that is being waged under the pretense of fighting terrorism. This boycott should become an overwhelming trend that makes these two states feel that their economies are in a real and actual danger.