ethics of war Quotes

I'm not a pacifist at all; I think there is a notion of "just war" that can be persuasively argued. I think in the face of Nazis, in the face of apartheid, that I would have joined those armies. But that's the last, last resort.

Science tells us how to heal and how to kill; it reduces our death rate in retail and then kills us wholesale in war; but only wisdom - desire coordinated in the light of all experience - can tell us when to heal and when to kill.

For a war to be just three conditions are necessary - public authority, just cause, right motive.

To defeat evil, we may have to traffic in evils: indefinite detention of suspects, coercive interrogations, targeted assassinations, even pre-emptive war.

War, except in self-defense, is a failure of moral imagination.

...war is just to those for whom it is necessary, and arms are clear of impiety for those who have no hope left but in arms.

Neither Jewish morality nor Jewish tradition can be used to disallow terror as a means of war.

I am one of the few people I know of who has argued in print that torture may be an ethical necessity in our war on terror.

Appraise war in terms of the fundamental factors. The first of these factors is moral influence.

[...] to introduce into the philosophy of war itself a principle of moderation would be an absurdity

In a war, you do whatever you have to do.

Every war which has not been announced and declared should be adjudged unjust and impious.

If war is ever lawful, then peace is sometimes sinful.

Even the best weapon is an unhappy tool, hateful to living things. So the follower of the Way stays away from it. Weapons are unhappy tools, not chosen by thoughtful people, to be used only when there is no choice, and with a calm, still mind, without enjoyment. To enjoy using weapons is to enjoy killing people, and to enjoy killing people is to lose your share in the common good. It is right that the murder of many people be mourned and lamented. It is right that a victor in war be received with funeral ceremonies.

So we're all right, an' I, for one, Don't think our cause'll lose in vally By rammin' Scriptur' in our gun, An' gittin' Natur' for an ally.

In order for a war to be just, three things are necessary. First, the authority of the sovereign. Secondly, a just cause. Thirdly, a rightful intention.

To my mind, to kill in war is not a whit better than to commit ordinary murder.

The argument that someone is a bad man is an inadequate argument for war and certainly an inadequate and unacceptable argument for regime change.

If civilians are killed in an attack on a military installation, it is certainly regrettable, but I will not morally blame the I.R.A. for it.

You can be killed just as dead in an unjustified war as you can in one protecting your own home.

A "just war" is hospitable to every self-deception on the part of those waging it, none more than the certainty of virtue, under whose shelter every abomination can be committed with a clear conscience.

The major wars that the U.S. became involved in are all ethically defensible.

You may be obliged to wage war, but not to use poisoned arrows.

It's troubling to see how often Winston Churchill is a proponent of massive programs that are really aimed at civilians - starvation blockades and chemical warfare stockpiles and so on.

Could anything justify the extermination of civilians on such a scale?