Despotic governments can stand ‘moral force’ till the cows come home; what they fear is physical force.

I will never buy a fish tank, because I don’t believe in supporting the funding of aquatic war machines.

Fighting for peace, is like f***ing for chastity

Sometimes you have to pick the gun up to put the Gun down.

That war [Bosnian war] in the early 1990s changed a lot for me. I never thought I would see, in Europe, a full-dress reprise of internment camps, the mass murder of civilians, the reinstiutution of...

It’s despair at the lack of (I’m cheating, I didn’t say all these things – but I’m going to write what I want to say as well as what I did) feeling, of love, of...

No one won the last war, and no one will win the next war.

As long as the peace-makers are armed with assault rifles, it’s highly unlikely we’ll ever have peace.

There are perhaps many causes worth dying for, but to me, certainly, there are none worth killing for.

We have to accept that any action we take might promote an equal and opposite reaction that we do not want. We have to realize that even the most noble actions or most obviously correct...

There was a time in my life when I did a fair bit of work for the tempestuous Lucretia Stewart, then editor of the American Express travel magazine, Departures. Together, we evolved a harmless satire...

In answer to ‘But violence hasn’t solved anything!’The hell it hasn’t. The application of violence – of killing and a willingness to be killed – on a massive scale is responsible for a lot of...

Pacifism is objectively pro-fascist. This is elementary common sense. If you hamper the war effort of one side, you automatically help out that of the other. Nor is there any real way of remaining outside...

A pacifist between wars is like a vegetarian between meals.

We’d be the safest country in the world if the world knew we didn’t have a gun. Men are not killed because they get mad at each other. They’re killed because one has a gun.

People will love him (Theodore Roosevelt) for the enemies he has made.

The artificial primacy of defense among our national priorities is a constant unearned windfall for some, but it’s privation for the rest of America; it steals from what we could be and can do. In...

The majority of pacifists either belong to obscure religious sects or are simply humanitarians who object to taking life and prefer not to follow their thoughts beyond that point. But there is a minority of...

Writers haven’t got any rockets to blast off. We don’t even trundle the most insignificant auxiliary vehicle. We haven’t got any military might. So what can literature do in the face of the merciless onslaught...

Generally speaking, by the way, that is the moral of the opponents of violence in politics: they renounce violence when it comes to introducing changes in what already exists, but in defense of the existing...

Jesus was a pacifist.

I am not a committed pacifist. I would not hold that it is under all imaginable circumstances wrong to use violence, even though use of violence is in some sense unjust. I believe that one...

The essential act of war is destruction, not necessarily of human lives, but of the products of human labour. War is a way of shattering to pieces, or pouring into the stratosphere, or sinking in...

I think about something I once heard on the radio. About Abraham and Isaac.””I was afraid you’d say something like that.” “You asked.””So what about them? I don’t really know much about that kind of...

It was strange to us that none of these three victims made any attempt to resist the attack. Indeed, not one inhabitant in any of these worlds considered for a moment the possibility of resistance....

Say what you want but you NEVER say it with violence!

If I went on a killing spree that left thousands of people dead, I’d be branded as the worst kind of criminal. So why it is okay for the government to do exactly that?

All beings tremble before danger, all fear death. When a man considers this, he does not kill or cause to kill.

The speaker calls for a careful examination of Christ’s principle of turning the other cheek before we use it as a demand or excuse for total personal pacifism. After all, when literally struck on the...

… it would be better for our country and the world in general, if at least the few people who were capable of thought stood for reason and the love of peace instead of heading...

war hero”, because there is nothing about war that is heroic.

…nobody can live longer in peace than his neighbor chooses.

Magistrate: What do you propose to do then, pray?Lysistrata: You ask me that! Why, we propose to administer the treasury ourselvesMagistrate: You do?Lysistrata: What is there in that a surprise to you? Do we not...

Absolute hospitality would in no way amount to the absence of violence. To the contrary, it would enthrone violence precisely under the guise of nonviolence because it would leave the violators unchanged and the consequences...

There is no such thing as a “just” war. It’s just war. And it’s antithetical to the Gospel.

When you get right down to it, militaries are essentially legalized mafias.

Saddam’s politics was the politics of the thug, of violence from the outset of his reign. Realism suggests that some people are not going to be tractable in response to purely peaceable overtures. Indeed, it...

Magistrate: May I die a thousand deaths ere I obey one who wears a veil!Lysistrata: If that’s all that troubles you, here take my veil, wrap it round your head, and hold your tounge. Then...

Unfortunately, that still leaves plenty of Americans who don’t read much or think much — who will still be extremely useful in unjust wars. We are sick about that. We did the best we could.

Wise men are not pacifists; they are merely less likely to jump up and retaliate against their antagonizers. They know that needless antagonizers are virtually already insecure enough.

I absolutely hate the way the United States glorifies its military and its wars. Real heroes fight for peace.

The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult; and left untried.

The conqueror is always a lover of peace; he would prefer to take over our country unopposed.

As a Nobel Peace laureate, I, like most people, agonize over the use of force. But when it comes to rescuing an innocent people from tyranny or genocide, I’ve never questioned the justification for resorting...

She wanted to tell him so much, on the tarmac, the day he left. The world is run by brutal men and the surest proof is their armies. If they ask you to stand still,...

Men have been pacifists for every reason under the sun except to avoid danger and fighting.

Those who attempt to conquer hatred by hatred are like warriors who take weapons to overcome others who bear arms. This does not end hatred, but gives it room to grow. But, ancient wisdom has...

Pacifism is a virtue indistinguishable from cowardice.

Sometimes, a war saves people.

Nonviolence is the very essence of the gospels.