Quotes about Avoiding War

Rose Macaulay

If war is so easily averted as all this it does seem a pity no P[rime] M[inister] except Neville Chamberlain] has thought of it before. Peace without Honour seems to be what we have got. I'm glad. One can't expect both.

After the signing of the Munich Pact:

Tony Blair

Mine is the first generation able to contemplate the possibility that we may live our entire lives without going to war or sending our children to war.

Lao Tzu

Weapons are not proper instruments for gentle people; they use them only when they have no other choice. Peace and quiet are what they value. They do not glory in victory.

Abba Eban

Since negotiation would have to take place after the war, why not have negotiations before and instead of the war.

John Quincy Adams

If we should come to an issue with the world, let us keep it off as long as possible.

John Foster Dulles

The ability to get to the verge without getting into the war is a necessary art …. If you are scared to go to the brink, you are lost.

Havelock Ellis

There is nothing that war has ever achieved that we could not better achieve without it.

George W. Bush

Who wants to be a war President? I don’t. But this is what came our way.

J. O. P. Bland

Everything possible should be done to bring about more cordial relations between the United States and Japan. Goodwill is not likely to come into play so long as a powerful section of the Press in both countries panders to the Jingo element by fomenting jealous suspicions and exciting popular passion. Neither America nor Japan wants war, … but in both countries there are elements at work whose active propaganda tends to produce increasing irritation, and to create in the public mind a belief that sooner or later war is inevitable.

Bland was an expert in Asia and spent most of his time writing about Asian Politics. This quote shows that there was hostility and bad feeling between American and Japan long before WWII. This statement was written in 1921. The reality was that Japan was getting stronger as a militaristic expansionist nation which wanted to subjugate most of Asia. Ironically, they were using England and the European powers as models and sought to take Korea, Manchuria and much of Asia as Colonies, but this clashed with American values and even then there was animosity of the two systems.

George C. Marshall

There has been considerable comment over the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to a soldier. I am afraid this does not seem as remarkable to me as it quite evidently appears to others. I know a great deal of the horrors and tragedies of war. ... The cost of war in human lives is constantly spread before me, written neatly in many ledgers whose columns are gravestones. I am deeply moved to find some means or method of avoiding another calamity of war.

Thomas Jefferson

Establish the eternal truth that acquiescence under insult is not the way to escape war.

Avoiding War Quotes