War Alternatives Quotes

The alternative is not war or doing nothing. Whoever rejects war is not doomed to appeasement.

Peace is not only better than war, but infinitely more arduous.

It's much cheaper to influence elections than it is to go to war.

I see this as the central issue of our time: how to find a substitute for war in human ingenuity, imagination, courage, sacrifice, patience... War is not inevitable, however persistent it is, however long a history it has in human affairs. It does not come out of some instinctive human need. It is manufactured by political leaders, who then must make a tremendous effort--by enticement, by propaganda, by coercion--to mobilize a normally reluctant population to go to war.

I think that nonviolence is one way of saying that there are other ways to solve problems, not only through weapons and war. Nonviolence also means the recognition that the person on one side of the trench and the person on the other side of the trench are both human beings, with the same faculties. At some point they have to begin to understand one another.

War is an invention of the human mind. The human mind can invent peace with justice.

It would be a fine thing if war could be conducted as a game where no lives were lost. At the end of a battle combatants could meet [...] and drink and talk.

One hears of the mechanical equivalent of heat. What we now need to discover in the social realm is the moral equivalent of war: something heroic that will speak to men as universally as war does, and yet will be as compatible with their spiritual selves as war has proved itself to be incompatible.

The only thing for a pacifist to do is to find a substitute for war.

If we can’t stop fighting with one another, maybe we can delegate the job to robot soldiers fighting robot enemies, thereby destroying hardware instead of killing people!

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

No military timetable should compel war when a successful outcome, namely a disarmed Iraq may be feasible without war, for example by allowing more time to the UN inspectors.