War Ethics Quotes

The Indians are known to conduct their wars so entirely without faith and humanity that it would bring eternal infamy on the Ministry … if they should excite these savages to war …

Even in war moral power is to physical as three parts out of four.

Though fraud in all other actions be odious, yet in matters of war it is laudable and glorious, and he who overcomes his enemies by stratagem is as much to be praised as he who overcomes them by force.

We go to war only to make peace. We never went to war with any other design. We carry the national conscience wherever we go.

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

The question of whether we should drop this new bomb on Japan involves such imponderable considerations as to remove it from the field of a military decision.

What I've learned, and will try to remember from now on, is that defending your country's credibility is never sufficient reason to fight a war.

I don't apologize for my behavior anymore. Whatever I do or don't do shouldn't matter. Moral certainty is dangerous. Moral certainty is what makes people go to war unnecessarily and illegally. Morality, as any halfway intelligent human being would tell you, is a very subjective thing.

The laws of war, that restrain the exercise of national rapine and murder, are founded on two principles of substantial interest: the knowledge of the permanent benefits which may be obtained by a moderate use of conquest, and a just apprehension lest the desolation which we inflict on the enemy's country may be retaliated on our own. But these considerations of hope and fear are almost unknown in the pastoral state of nations.

Whether a war is “just” or “unjust”, whether it is a war of aggression or of defense, the protection and care due to the wounded and sick are in no way affected.

To delight in war is a merit in the soldier, a dangerous quality in the captain, and a positive crime in the statesman.

I would never take my children and place them next to missile launchers.

War, in some instances, especially defensive, has been authorized by Heaven.

Great is the guilt of an unnecessary war.

A true warrior does not fight because he wishes to but because he has to. A man who yearns for war, a man who enjoys his killing, he is a brute and a monster. No matter how much glory he wins on the battlefield, that cannot erase the fact that he is no better than a rabid wolf who will turn on his friends and family as soon as his foes.

War knows no law except that of might.

In war, moral factors acount for three quarters of the whole; relative material strength accounts for only one quarter.

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

All government wars are unjust.

Human rights are being exalted over victory.

Does the commandment 'Thou Shalt Not Kill' mean nothing to us? Are we to interpret it as meaning 'Thou shalt not kill except on the grand scale,' or 'Thou shalt not kill except when the national leaders say to do so'?

The American system of civilian control of the military recognizes that soldiers' attention must be fixed on winning battles and staying alive, and that the fog of war can sometimes obscure the rule of law.

I was against it on two counts. First, the Japanese were ready to surrender, and it wasn't necessary to hit them with that awful thing. Second, I hated to see our country be the first to use such a weapon.

After the conflict had once begun, the vast majority of people involved, high and low, were convinced, as most of them still are, of the essential righteousness of their cause. This was not altered by the fact that four of the states bargained hard and long with both parties before casting in their lot with either. When they did act, they were as sure as anyone else that they were animated by the highest principles.

I was ordered to go in there and destroy the enemy. That was my job that day. That was the mission I was given. I did not sit down and think in terms of men, women and children. They were all classified as the same, and that's the classification that we dealt with over there, just as the enemy. I felt then and I still do that I acted as I was directed, and I carried out the order that I was given and I do not feel wrong in doing so.