We humans have so much in common. much more in common than what separates us. Its just that we focus so much on our differences.

I think thats why music and love is so important, it unites.

There are so many types of love. some are confined to certain length of time, others to physical, others to mind and spirit.

I haven't posted in this in so long.
I kinda hate posting here. I find its akin to a combination of me talking to myself or being naked in front of strangers. selfish.

anyways, todays topic: my life
my life is great. i've been working in an orphanage in mexico. i havent seen these kids in 5 years. its an incredibly great feeling. I kinda want to be home now though. I want to start something exciting.



Laughter is the tonic, the relief, the surcease for pain.
- Charlie Chaplin



who reads this?

i love you

"I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their money, first by inflation and then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them, will deprive the people of their property until their children will wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered. The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs."

Thomas Jefferson - letter to the Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin (1802).

i want to run away with you.

i think its great that she is still a virgin.

God, I can't wait to leave here

fascism:
a political group, an organization, a club . . .;
a system of government characterized by rigid one-party dictatorship,
forcible suppression of the opposition,
the retention of private ownership of the means of production
under centralized governmental control,
belligerent nationalism and racism,
glorification of war, etc.

so its 5am and i cant go to sleep. i keep reminding myself that i must, the weekend is the only time i'll have to catch up with my sleep. but i cant.

i keep catching myself going back to pacing back and forth across my room. you know those rare moments where you want to go to sleep, but your mind is on other things. its one of those times where you hit the crossroads, and something has to change. something must be produced out of this moment. some major decision but be decided upon and executed accordingly.

the dilemma is obvious. i need something. i need a change. i need something strong. something revolutionary. something where i can funnel my energy into.

it cant possibly be that while the whole world is dying of famine and war, i'm sitting here doing nothing.

its gotten to the point where i regard this feeling (which i know deep inside is under the wants category) as a need. i need to do something. i need a cause. something where i can devote my passion to.

i must say, its frustrating.

i came to this country because i regard it with a sense of high esteem. its a model. its been one of my dreams to experience what these fortunate people have created. but something is missing. you see, everything is so perfect here. there are no riots, (unless of course, you live in Geneva) there is no hunger, no homeless, no unemployed, no political corruption. all problems are taken care of. needs are met. in some ways, i feel some sort of guilt. its like i'm in a perfect pleasant bubble while the world outside encounters devastation. Switzerland is like an island. outside its doors one finds mere shit.

sometimes i wish canada would take over.

i think it would be in our right mind to attest to the fact that the corruption and assured downfall of the Catholic Church is upon us. judge your own cause. remember your reproaches to those who are filled with foolishness all through the day.
i beseech you also, to arise. lying teachers are rising, introducing ruinous sects, and drawing upon themselves speedy doom. their tongues are fire, a restless evil, full of deadly poison. they have bitter zeal, contention in their hearts, and boast and lie against the truth.

recognize that recognition is a virtue

as most of you know, i am done with finals.

this whole week, i have had an elevated flow of adrenaline to the extent that today, at our last final, i wrote the most inexplicable, most elaborate, lucid, beautiful, work.

Had Plato lived in our age, he would have considered it one of The Forms.

Had i been having sex, it would have the equivalence of multiple orgasms; the climax.

No, i am not bragging when i say this, but i have truly written the most wonderful work. So wonderful, that even the adjective 'wonderful' seems too dull.

For indeed my fellow friends, i am inspired. So much so, that i have decided to write a book properly titled, Xilence, Pictures of to be completed in late july 2009. This book will speak on and shine a renewed light into the illusion and far reaches, the short comings, the downfalls, and eventually how to overcome these to produce the elements reminiscent of a utopian society.

oouff!

i really dislike finals; but i really like you.

on topics across the board, we are told what to do by others;

the only time we are free is when we listen to our hearts.

self-righteousness is sometimes the personal obstacle to progress

its a good thing that there hasnt been a monopoly on common sense yet.

soo.. today:

Some girls: so where's the party tonite?

Me: (without thinking) ...in my pants.


*Morale: Some people take things a bit too seriously.

If this were a dictatorship, it'd be a heck of a lot easier, just so long as I'm the dictator.

~George W. Bush

This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when he first appears he is a protector.

~Plato

The chain reaction of evil--wars producing more wars -- must be broken, or we shall be plunged into the dark abyss of annihilation.

~Martin Luther King, Jr.

War is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious.

~General Smedley Butler

Imperialism is an institution under which one nation asserts the right to seize the land or at least to control the government or resources of another people.

~John T. Flynn

The great error of nearly all studies of war... has been to consider war as an episode in foreign policies, when it is an act of interior politics...

~Simone Weil

We may extend our dominion over the whole continent...but be assured it will be at the price of our free institutions.

~Rep. William Waters Boyce

I hate war for its consequences, for the lies it lives on and propagates, for the undying hatreds it arouses...

~Harry Emerson Fosdick

Before the war is ended, the war party assumes the divine right to denounce and silence all opposition to war as unpatriotic and cowardly.

~Senator Robert M. La Follette

After every ''victory'' you have more enemies.

~Jeanette Winterson

The winds that blow our billions away return burdened with themes of scorn and dispraise.

~Garet Garrett

I hope....that mankind will at length, as they call themselves responsible creatures, have the reason and sense enough to settle their differences without cutting throats...

~Benjamin Franklin

[T]he essence of so-called war prosperity; it enriches some by what it takes from others. It is not rising wealth but a shifting of wealth and income.

~Ludwig von Mises

Our children are not born to hate, they are raised to hate.

~Thomas della Peruta

Violence can only be concealed by a lie, and the lie can only be maintained by violence.

~Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

The shepherd always tries to persuade the sheep that their interests and his own are the same.

~Marie Beyle

I guess every generation is doomed to fight its war...suffer the loss of the same old illusions, and learn the same old lessons on its own.

~Phillip Caputo

I hate those men who would send into war youth to fight and die for them; the pride and cowardice of those old men, making their wars that boys must die.

~Mary Roberts Rinehart

Guard against the impostures of pretended patriotism.

~George Washington

The de facto role of the US armed forces will be to keep the world safe for our economy and open to our cultural assault.

~Major Ralph Peters, US Military

For me war has become a flat, black depression without highlights, a revulsion of the mind and an exhaustion of the spirit.

~Ernie Pyle

Patriotism means to stand by the country. It does not mean to stand by the president or any other public official...

~Theodore Roosevelt

The worst crimes were dared by a few, willed by more and tolerated by all.

~Tacitus

War's a game, which, were their subjects wise, Kings would not play at.

~William Cowper

Military glory--that attractive rainbow, that rises in showers of blood--that serpent's eye, that charms to destroy...

~Abraham Lincoln

Only a free and unrestrained press can effectively expose deception in government.

~Hugo Black, Supreme Court Justice

War is fear cloaked in courage.

~General William Westmoreland

Because I do it with one small ship, I am called a terrorist. You do it with a whole fleet and are called an emperor.

~A pirate, from St. Augustine's "City of God"

What is morally wrong can never be advantageous, even when it enables you to make some gain that you believe to be to your advantage.

~Marcus Tullius Cicero

We are the ones responsible to determine whether the war that our marines, soldiers and airmen are fighting in is worth the cause...

~Scott Ritter

I am not blaming those who are resolved to rule, only those who show an even greater readiness to submit.

~Thucydides

The life of the nation is secure only while the nation is honest, truthful, and virtuous.

~Frederick Douglass

Everybody's worried about stopping terrorism. Well, there's a really easy way: stop participating in it.

~Noam Chomsky

It is far easier to make war than peace.

~Georges Clemenceau

The belief in the possibility of a short decisive war appears to be one of the most ancient and dangerous of human illusions.

~Robert Lynd

Nations, like individuals, are punished for their transgressions.

~Ulysses S. Grant

It would be easier to subjugate the entire universe through force than the minds of a single village.

~Voltaire

Those who give up essential liberties for temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.

~Benjamin Franklin

Of all the enemies to public liberty, war is perhaps the most to be dreaded because it comprises and develops the germ of every other.

~James Madison

War doesn't make boys men, it makes men dead.

~Ken Gillespie

An army of principles can penetrate where an army of soldiers cannot.

~Thomas Paine

Modern war appears as a struggle led by all the State apparatuses and their general staffs against all men old enough to bear arms...

~Simone Weil

Every nation has its war party. It is not the party of democracy. It is the party of autocracy. It seeks to dominate absolutely.

~Senator Robert M. La Follette

It is the job of thinking people not to be on the side of the executioners.

~Albert Camus

We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. When the loyal opposition dies, I think the soul of America dies with it.

~Edward R. Murrow

Wars teach us not to love our enemies, but to hate our allies.

~W. L. George

The opinion of 10,000 men is of no value if none of them know anything about the subject.

~Marcus Aurelius

The mere act of believing that some wrongful course of action constitutes an advantage is pernicious.

~Marcus Tullius Cicero

Man was/is born free, and everywhere he is in chains. One who believes himself the master of others is nonetheless a greater slave than they.

~Jean Jaques Rousseau

The dangerous patriot...drifts into chauvinism and exhibits blind enthusiasm for military actions.

~Colonel James A. Donovan, Marine Corps

I've been immersed in it too long. My spirit is wobbly and my mind is confused. The hurt has become too great.

~Ernie Pyle

It is unpatriotic not to tell the truth, whether about the president or anyone else.

~Theodore Roosevelt

Our country is now geared to an arms economy bred in an artificually induced psychosis of war hysteria and an incessant propaganda of fear.

~General Douglas MacArthur

For what can war, but endless war, still breed?

~John Milton

Paramount among the responsibilities of a free press is the duty to prevent any part of the government from deceiving the people...

~Hugo Black, Supreme Court Justice

Even if we are spared destruction by war, our lives will have to change if we want to save life from self-destruction.

~Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Liberty and democracy become unholy when their hands are dyed red with innocent blood.

~Mahatma Gandhi

Let not your zeal to share your principles entice you beyond your borders.

~Marquis de Sade

The statesman who yields to war fever...is no longer the master of policy but the slave of unforeseeable and uncontrollable events.

~Winston Churchill

It is always more valuable to report the truth.

~Jean-Paul Sartre

In times of universal deceit, telling the truth will be a revolutionary act.

~George Orwell

What an immense mass of evil must result...from allowing men to assume the right of anticipating what may happen.

~Leo Tolstoy

Peace is constructed, not fought for.

~Brent Davis

Love of power, operating through greed and through personal ambition, was the cause of all these evils.

~Thucydides

We say that we care about the war, but we don’t even really know what we’re fighting for.

~Scott Ritter

In this war – as in others – I am less interested in honoring the dead than in preventing the dead.

~Butler Shaffer

It is only those who have neither fired a shot nor heard the shrieks and groans of the wounded who cry aloud for blood...War is hell.

~General William Tecumseh Sherman

It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.

~Voltaire

The worst barbarity of war is that it forces men collectively to commit acts against which individually they would revolt with their whole being.

~Ellen Key

some men...in order to prevent the supposed intentions of their adversaries, have committed the most enormous cruelties...

~Clearchus, in Xenophon

[War] might be avoidable were more emphasis placed on the training to social interest, less on the attainment of egotistical grandeur.

~Lydia Sicher

Look at you in war...There has never been a just one, never an honorable one, on the part of the instigator of the war.

~Mark Twain

About the quote: from "The Mysterious Stranger," published 1910.
If, finally, violence meets with violence, we have confirmation of the age old adage that war though it kills many men, makes many more men evil.

~Fritz Medicus

It is a truism that almost any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so...

~Robert A. Heinlein

Everything secret degenerates, even the administration of justice.

~Lord Acton

Military justice is to justice what military music is to music.

~Groucho Marx

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed people can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.

~Margaret Mead

No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.

~James Madison

Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.

~Issac Asimov

About the quote: The character Salvor Hardin speaks these words in Asimov's "Foundation."
The power to declare war, including the power of judging the causes of war, is fully and exclusively vested in the legislature.

~James Madison

...Violence as a way of gaining power...is being camouflaged under the guise of tradition, national honor [and] national security...

~Alfred Adler

A state of war only serves as an excuse for domestic tyranny.

~Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

War is not the continuation of politics with different means, it is the greatest mass-crime perpetrated on the community of man.

~Alfred Adler

As long as we can talk with people, as long as one can keep the guns quiet, one has a chance.

~Lydia Sicher

It is always easier to fight for one’s principles than to live up to them.

~Alfred Adler

We will not learn how to live together in peace by killing each other's children.

~Jimmy Carter

The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.

~Martin Luther King, Jr.

I hope our wisdom will grow with our power, and teach us, that the less we use our power the greater it will be.

~Thomas Jefferson

The dangerous patriot...is a defender of militarism and its ideals of war and glory.

~Colonel James A. Donovan, Marine Corps

The next war ... may well bury Western civilization forever.

~Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

War is the continuation of politics by other means.

~Karl Von Clausewitz

Man has no right to kill his brother. It is no excuse that he does so in uniform: he only adds the infamy of servitude to the crime of murder.

~Percy Bysshe Shelley

Is it not a strange blindness on our part to teach publicly the techniques of warfare and to reward with medals those who prove to be the most adroit killers?

~Marquis de Sade

To jaw-jaw is always better than to war-war.

~Otto von Bismarck

About the quote: Bismarck (1815-1898) was the first Chancellor of the Germany Empire from 1871-1890. This quote is often mistakenly attributed to Winston Churchill.
The cry has been that when war is declared, all opposition should be hushed. A sentiment more unworthy of a free country could hardly be propagated.

~William Ellery Channing

...Uncalled-for aggression arouses the hatred of the civilian population...

~Jean-Paul Sartre

War is at best barbarism. Its glory is all moonshine...War is hell.

~General William Tecumseh Sherman

The voice of protest...is never more needed than when the clamor of fife and drum...is bidding all men...obey in silence the tyrannous word of command.

~Charles Eliot Norton

The essential act of war is destruction, not necessarily of human lives, but of the products of human labor.

~George Orwell

About the quote: This quote is spoken by the character of Emmanuel Goldstein in Orwell's novel, "1984."
The war...was an unnecessary condition of affairs, and might have been avoided if forebearance and wisdom had been practiced on both sides.

~Robert E. Lee

Where is the justice of political power if it...marches upon neighboring lands, killing thousands and pillaging the very hills?

~Kahlil Gibran

We must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex.

~Dwight D. Eisenhower

Respect for the rights of others means peace.

~Benito Juárez

War is not a word, it's an acronym for "Wasting Another's Resources."

~Ramman Kenoun

Let us become inspired by inherent beauty, and not impassioned by manufactured hate.

~Nima Shirali, Middle Eastern Reconciliation Forum

War remains the decisive human failure.

~John Kenneth Galbraith

That we are to stand by the president, right or wrong is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public.

~Theodore Roosevelt

All nations want peace, but they want a peace that suits them.

~Admiral Sir John Fisher

The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions, that I wish it to be always kept alive.

~Thomas Jefferson

The evil that is in the world almost always comes of ignorance, and good intentions may do as much harm as malevolence if they lack understanding.

~Albert Camus

Unthinking respect for authority is the greatest enemy of truth.

~Albert Einstein

All mankind...being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty or possessions.

~John Locke

Today the real test of power is not capacity to make war but capacity to prevent it.

~Anne O'Hare McCormick

Under democracy, one party always devotes its chief energies to trying to prove that the other party is unfit to rule – and both commonly succeed, and are right.

~H.L. Mencken

One is left with the horrible feeling now that war settles nothing; that to win a war is as disastrous as to lose one.

~Agatha Christie

I hate war...for the dictatorships it puts in the place of democracies, and for the starvation that stalks after it.

~Harry Emerson Fosdick

Peace, commerce and honest friendship with all nations; entangling alliances with none.

~Thomas Jefferson

To all those who walk the path of human cooperation war must appear loathsome and inhuman.

~Alfred Adler

War is a racket. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives.

~General Smedley Butler

War is not its own end, except in some catastrophic slide into absolute damnation.

~Lois McMaster Bujold

We thought, because we had power, we had wisdom.

~Stephen Vincent Benét

The guns and the bombs, the rockets and the warships, are all symbols of human failure.

~Lyndon B. Johnson

History teaches that war begins when governments believe the price of aggression is cheap.

~Ronald Reagan

What is more immoral than war?

~Marquis de Sade

There are only two things we should fight for. One is the defense of our homes and the other is the Bill of Rights.

~General Smedley Butler

War is wretched beyond description, and only a fool or a fraud could sentimentalize its cruel reality.

~Senator John McCain

Total war is no longer war waged by all members of one national community against all those of another. It is total...because it may well involve the whole world.

~Jean-Paul Sartre

Dulce bellum inexpertis (War is delightful to the inexperienced).

~Erasmus, the 16th-century scholar

Right is right, even if everyone is against it, and wrong is wrong, even if everyone is for it.

~William Penn

Where is the justice of political power if it executes the murderer and jails the plunderer?

~Kahlil Gibran

Disarmament, with mutual honor and confidence, is a continuing imperative.

~Dwight D. Eisenhower

May we never confuse honest dissent with disloyal subversion.

~Dwight D. Eisenhower

We first fought...in the name of religion, then Communism, and now in the name of drugs and terrorism. Our excuses for global domination always change.

~Serj Tankian

People do not make wars; governments do.

~Ronald Reagan

Any forces that would impose their will on other nations will certainly face defeat.

~General Vo Nguyen Giap (Vietnam)

Protecting the rights of even the least individual among us is basically the only excuse the government has for even existing.

~Ronald Reagan

To announce that there must be no criticism of the president...is morally treasonable to the American public.

~Theodore Roosevelt

To declare that the end justifies the means, to declare that the government may commit crimes, would bring terrible retribution.

~Justice Louis D. Brandeis

Political language ... is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.

~George Orwell

Justice in the life and conduct of the State is possible only as first it resides in the hearts and souls of the citizens.

~Plato

The Department of Defense is the behemoth...With an annual budget larger than the gross domestic product of Russia, it is an empire.

~The 9/11 Commission Report

About the quote: Norton First Edition
Behind the ostensible government sits enthroned an invisible government owing no allegiance and acknowledging no responsibility to the people.

~Theodore Roosevelt

This world of ours...must avoid becoming a community of dreadful fear and hate, and be, instead, a proud confederation of mutual trust and respect.

~Dwight D. Eisenhower

War is the business of barbarians.

~Napoleon Bonaparte

The essential act of war is destruction, not necessarily of human lives, but of the products of human labor.

~George Orwell

About the quote: This quote is spoken by the character of Emmanuel Goldstein in Orwell's novel, "1984."
War means blind obedience, unthinking stupidity, brutish callousness, wanton destruction, and irresponsible murder.

~Alexander Berkman

One day the end of the world will come as a result of a 'justified' war.

~Mikhail Gofman, Antiwar.com reader

Our enemies...never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we.

~George W. Bush

There should be an honest attempt at the reconciliation of differences before resorting to combat.

~Jimmy Carter

Our modern states are preparing for war without even knowing the future enemy.

~Alfred Adler

War is the statesman's game, the priest's delight, the lawyer's jest, the hired assassin's trade.

~Percy Bysshe Shelley

A man who says that no patriot should attack the war until it is over...is saying no good son should warn his mother of a cliff until she has fallen.

~G. K. Chesterton

War is organized murder and torture against our brothers.

~Alfred Adler

Never, never, never believe any war will be smooth and easy, or that anyone who embarks on the strange voyage can measure the tides and hurricanes he will encounter...

~Winston Churchill

Chauvinism is a proud and bellicose form of patriotism...which equates the national honor with military victory.

~Colonel James A. Donovan, Marine Corps

Social order at the expense of liberty is hardly a bargain.

~Marquis de Sade

War prosperity is like the prosperity that an earthquake or a plague brings.

~Ludwig von Mises

Every war when it comes, or before it comes, is represented not as a war but as an act of self-defense against a homicidal maniac.

~George Orwell

Criticism in a time of war is essential to the maintenance of any kind of democratic government.

~Sen. Robert Taft, (R) Ohio

In times of peace, the war party insists on making preparation for war. As soon as prepared for, it insists on making war.

~Senator Robert M. La Follette

In the eyes of empire builders men are not men but instruments.

~Napoleon Bonaparte

There is neither rank nor station nor prerogative in the republic of the grave.

~John James Ingalls

There is no way to peace. Peace is the way.

~Mahatma Gandhi

About the quote: This quote is also often credited to a peace activist A.J. Muste.
There is no glory in battle worth the blood it costs.

~Dwight D. Eisenhower

Cruelty must be whitewashed by a moral excuse, and pretense of reluctance.

~George Bernard Shaw

...no mother would ever willingly sacrifice her sons for territorial gain, for economic advantage, for ideology.

~Ronald Reagan

Together we must learn how to compose difference, not with arms, but with intellect and decent purpose.

~Dwight D. Eisenhower

Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.

~Voltaire

It is finer to bring one noble human being into the world and rear it well...than to kill ten thousand.

~Olive Schreiner

The nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, he has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them.

~George Orwell

The evils of government are directly proportional to the tolerance of the people.

~Frank Kent

The welfare of the people in particular has always been the alibi of tyrants.

~Albert Camus

In war, there are no unwounded soldiers.

~Jose Narosky

What a cruel thing is war...to fill our hearts with hatred instead of love for our neighbors, and to devastate the fair face of this beautiful world.

~Robert E. Lee

...to befoul the unholy alliance between corrupt business and corrupt politics is the first task of the statesmanship of the day.

~Theodore Roosevelt

If there is one principle more deeply rooted in the mind of every American, it is that we should have nothing to do with conquest.

~Thomas Jefferson

War paralyzes your courage and deadens the spirit of true manhood.

~Alexander Berkman

There is but one evil, war. All the other proclaimed evils such as hate, greed, descrimination, and jealousy are only sub-categories of it.

~Jose Barreiro

Emphasis on military prowess is an indication of philosophical poverty.

~Henk Middelraad

War brings out the most negative emotional human responses on both sides.

~Henk Middelraad

I love America more than any other country in the world and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually.

~James Baldwin

Don't regard yourself as a guardian of freedom unless you respect and preserve the rights of people you disagree with...

~Gerard K. O'Neill

Our country is not the only thing to which we owe our allegiance. It is also owed to justice and to humanity.

~James Bryce

Don't talk to me about atrocities; all war is an atrocity.

~Lord Kitchener (Horatio Herbert)

War is a way of shattering to pieces...materials which might otherwise be used to make the masses too comfortable and...too intelligent.

~George Orwell

About the quote: This quote is spoken by the character of Emmanuel Goldstein in Orwell's novel, "1984."
Those who are asking for more government interference are asking ultimately for more compulsion and less freedom.

~Ludwig von Mises

The State thrives on war – unless, of course, it is defeated and crushed – expands on it, glories in it.

~Murray Rothbard

Old men declare war. But it is the youth that must fight and die.

~Herbert C. Hoover

The greater the state, the more wrong and cruel its patriotism, and the greater is the sum of suffering upon which its power is founded.

~Leo Tolstoy

How could man rejoice in victory and delight in the slaughter of men?

~Lao Tzu

Society has arisen out of the works of peace; the essence of society is peacemaking.

~Ludwig von Mises

There were no international terrorists in Iraq until we went in. It was we who gave the perfect conditions in which Al Qaeda could thrive.

~Robin Cook

About the quote: Cook is Britain's former foreign secretary. He resigned from the British Cabinet over the Iraq War.
Usually, terrible things that are done with the excuse that progress requires them are not really progress at all, but just terrible things.

~Russell Baker

A people free to choose will always choose peace.

~Ronald Reagan

Any excuse will serve a tyrant.

~Aesop

War vies with magic in its efforts to get something for nothing...

~Lewis Mumford

Each man must for himself alone decide what is right and what is wrong, which course is patriotic and which isn't.

~Mark Twain

Nothing doth more hurt in a state than that cunning men pass for wise.

~Sir Francis Bacon

The means of defense against foreign danger historically have become the instruments of tyranny at home.

~James Madison

Let us form a new religion, that which would be called 'humanity', with 'peace' as its prophet.

~Nima Shirali, Middle Eastern Reconciliation Forum

All men having power ought to be mistrusted.

~James Madison

Think of war as a game of Russian roulette. It is a game of chance with your life as the grand prize.

~Ramman Kenoun

What the people want is very simple - they want an America as good as its promise.

~Barbara Jordan

Dictators have always played on the natural human tendency to blame others and to oversimplify.

~Gerard K. O'Neill

Patriotism consists not in waving the flag, but in striving that our country shall be righteous as well as strong.

~James Bryce

Peace has to be created, in order to be maintained. It will never be achieved by passivity and quietism.

~Dorothy Thompson

Even the most piddling life is of momentous consequence to its owner.

~James Wolcott

About the quote: in his article “From Fear to Eternity” in Vanity Fair, March 2005
National defense is the usual pretext for the policy of fleecing the people.

~Senator John Taylor

About the quote: US Senator(SC), lived from 1753-1824
There are no politics in war. Politics is the luxury of the safe-at-home. War is a lottery of survival.

~John Cory

War is never economically beneficial except for those in position to profit from war expenditures.

~Congressman Ron Paul

In war, the army is not merely a pure consumer, but a negative producer...

~Lewis Mumford

About the quote: from "Technics and Civilization"
The reality right now is that the most dangerous opinion in the world is the opinion of a U.S. serviceman.

~Lance Cpl. Devin Kelly (USMC)

We carefully nurture a spirit of detachment toward the wars we pay for.

~James Carroll

About the quote: The Boston Globe, 9/21/04
The world cannot continue to wage war like physical giants and to seek peace like intellectual pygmies.

~Basil O'Connor

All government wars are unjust.

~Murray Rothbard

The people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders...tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger.

~Herman Goering

We must not only cease our present desire for the growth of the state, but we must desire its decrease, its weakening...

~Leo Tolstoy

Violence, even well intentioned, always rebounds upon oneself.

~Lao Tzu

Wars have ever been but another aristocratic mode of plundering and oppressing commerce.

~Richard Cobden

Peace and friendship with all mankind is our wisest policy, and I wish we may be permitted to pursue it.

~Thomas Jefferson

As scarce as truth is, the supply has always been in excess of the demand.

~Josh Billings

Tyrants seldom want pretexts.

~Edmund Burke

The release of atomic energy has not created a new problem. It has merely made more urgent the necessity of solving an existing one.

~Albert Einstein

To some degree it matters who's in office, but it matters more how much pressure they're under from the public.

~Noam Chomsky

Governments have never learned anything from history, or acted on principles deducted from it.

~Friedrich Hebbel, German poet and dramatist

The state has, in order to control us, introduced division into our thinking, so that we come to distrust others and look to the state for protection.

~Butler Shaffer

Terrorism is the war of the poor, and war is the terrorism of the rich.

~Sir Peter Ustinov

The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding.

~Louis D. Brandeis

Peace...is the product of Faith, Strength, Energy, Will, Sympathy, Justice, Imagination, and the triumph of principle.

~Dorothy Thompson

We believed ourselves indestructable... watching only the madmen outside our frontiers, and we remained defenseless against our own madmen.

~Jacobo Timerman

There is no morality in war. Morality is the privilege of those judging from the distance. War is only death and destruction...

~John Cory

That there are men in all countries who get their living by war, and by keeping up the quarrels of Nations is as shocking as it is true...

~Thomas Paine

We Americans have no commission from God to police the world.

~Benjamin Harrison

About the quote: from an 1888 address to Congress
In war, there are no winners.

~Ramman Kenoun

...The very nature of interstate war puts innocent civilians into great jeopardy, especially with modern technology.

~Murray Rothbard

Peace hath higher tests of manhood than battle ever knew.

~John Greenleaf Whittier

It's more humane to cure your enemies than to kill them.

~Hugh Mann

There is nothing more frightening than active ignorance.

~Goethe

Education is a better safeguard of liberty than a standing army.

~Edward Everett

We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security.

~Dwight D. Eisenhower

The biggest lesson I learned from Vietnam is not to trust [our own] government statements.

~Senator James W. Fulbright

Coercive practices that threaten our neighbor(s) also threaten us.

~Butler Shaffer

We need a type of patriotism that recognizes the virtues of those who are opposed to us.

~Francis John McConnell

A man who kills on his own is a murderer. A man who kills at his government's request is a national hero.

~Ramman Kenoun

We seek peace, knowing that peace is the climate of freedom.

~Dwight D. Eisenhower

War is the tool of small-minded scoundrels who worship the death of others on the altar of their greed.

~John Cory

The State acquires power... and because of its insatiable lust for power it is incapable of giving up any of it. The State never abdicates.

~Frank Chodorov

No great dependence is to be placed on the eagerness of young soldiers for action...fighting is agreeable to those who are strangers to it.

~Vegetius

To the wicked, everything serves as pretext.

~Voltaire

I'm afraid, based on my own experience, that fascism will come to America in the name of national security.

~Jim Garrison

The only security for the American people today, or for any people, is to be found through the control of force rather than the use of force.

~Norman Cousins

We must get away from the idea that America is to be the leader of the world in everything.

~Francis John McConnell

The heights of popularity and patriotism are still the beaten road to power and tyranny...

~David Hume
If this phrase of the 'balance of power' is to be always an argument for war, the pretext for war will never be wanting, and peace can never be secure.

~John Bright

Mankind deserves sacrifice - but not of mankind.

~Stanislaw Jerzy Lec

No matter that patriotism is too often the refuge of scoundrels. Dissent, rebellion, and all-around hell-raising remain the true duty of patriots.

~Barbara Ehrenreich

War is the cemetery of futures promised.

~John Cory

To kill a man is not to defend a doctrine, but to kill a man.

~Michael Servetus

Phony pretexts repeated often enough become real reasons. Things that...are not true become true in the public mind simply through endless repetition.

~Lenny Bloom

They wrote in the old days that it is sweet and fitting to die for one’s country. But in modern war, there is nothing sweet nor fitting in your dying. You will die like a dog for no good reason.

~Ernest Hemingway

About the quote: from "Notes on the Next War," published in Esquire Magazine, 1935.
War is eternity jammed into frantic minutes that will fill a lifetime with dreams and nightmares.

~John Cory

Peace is not absence of conflict, it is the ability to handle conflict by peaceful means.

~Ronald Reagan

You can no more win a war than you can win an earthquake.

~Jeanette Rankin

It is unfortunately none too well understood that, just as the State has no money of its own, so it has no power of its own.

~Albert J. Nock

Wars are poor chisels for carving out peaceful tomorrows.

~Martin Luther King, Jr.

All those who seek to destroy the liberties of a democratic nation ought to know that war is the surest and shortest means to accomplish it.

~Alexis de Tocqueville

The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not sufficient warrant.

~John Stuart Mill

The moral and constitutional obligations of our representatives in Washington are to protect our liberty, not coddle the world, precipitating no-win wars, while bringing bankruptcy and economic turmoil to our people.

~Ron Paul

Force always attracts men of low morality.

~Albert Einstein

War is just a racket...I believe in adequate defense at the coastline and nothing else.

~General Smedley Butler

War technology is science in the service of obscene anatomical vandalism.

~Stan Goff

There are only two things we should fight for. One is the defense of our homes and the other is the Bill of Rights. War for any other reason is simply a racket.

~General Smedley Butler

What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans, and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty and democracy?

~Mahatma Gandhi

The loss of liberty at home is to be charged to the provisions against danger, real or imagined, from abroad.

~James Madison

Allow the president to invade a neighboring nation, whenever he shall deem it necessary to repel an invasion, and you allow him to do so whenever he may choose to say he deems it necessary for such a purpose—and you allow him to make war at pleasure.

~Abraham Lincoln

Our nation is somewhat sad, but we’re angry. There’s a certain level of blood lust, but we won’t let it drive our reaction. We’re steady, clear-eyed and patient, but pretty soon we’ll have to start displaying scalps.

~George W. Bush

It is part of the general pattern of misguided policy that our country is now geared to an arms economy which was bred in an artificially induced psychosis of war hysteria and nurtured upon an incessant propaganda of fear.

~General Douglas MacArthur

'Emergencies' have always been the pretext on which the safeguards of individual liberty have been eroded.

~FA Hayek

And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free.

~John 8:32

When fanatics are on top there is no limit to oppression.

~H.L. Menken

To plunder, to slaughter, to steal, these things they misname empire; and where they make a desert, they call it peace.

~Tacitus

About the quote: This quote is attributed to Calgacus in the Roman historian Tacitus' "Agricola."
War should be the politics of last resort. And when we go to war, we should have a purpose that our people understand and support.

~Colin Powell

Vietnam was the first war ever fought without censorship. Without censorship, things can get terribly confused in the public mind.

~General William Westmoreland

They talk about conscription as a democratic institution. Yes; so is a cemetery.

~Rep. Meyer London

The slightest acquaintance with history shows that powerful republics are the most warlike and unscrupulous of nations.

~Ambrose Bierce

War, n: A time-tested political tactic guaranteed to raise a president’s popularity rating by at least 30 points. It is especially useful during election years and economic downturns.

~Chaz Bufe

I learned nothing from war. War is not an activity for human beings; war is for criminals—rape, robbery and murder.

~Roman Podabedov (Russian anti-tank gunner)

There is no flag large enough to cover the shame of killing innocent people.

~Howard Zinn

War is a racket.

~Smedley Butler

We have to show the American People that war is not patriotic.

~Justin Raimondo

If my soldiers were to begin to think, not one of them would remain in the army.

~Frederick the Great

Either war is obsolete, or men are.

~R. Buckminster Fuller

Are bombs the only way of setting fire to the spirit of a people? Is the human will as inert as the past two world-wide wars would indicate?

~Gregory Clark

I'm fed up to the ears with old men dreaming up wars for young men to die in.

~George McGovern

If I'm fighting for freedom here, and I go home and I'm opressed, what does that mean?

~Pv2 Frederick Phoenix, MP, US Army

War is too serious a matter to entrust to military men.

~Georges Clemenceau

Nothing except a battle lost can be half as melancholy as a battle won.

~Duke of Wellington

I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its futility, its stupidity.

~Dwight D. Eisenhower

Mankind must put an end to war, or war will put an end to mankind.

~John F. Kennedy

Every government has as much of a duty to avoid war as a ship's captain has to avoid a shipwreck.

~Guy de Maupassant

War is a quarrel between two thieves too cowardly to fight their own battle.

~Thomas Carlyle

Why should you ask blood be spilled for a cause that is not in the interest of the American people?

~Rep. Wally Herger

All wars are fought for money.

~Socrates

Tis nobler to lose honor to save the lives of men than it is to gain honor by taking them.

~David Borenstein

Man is the only animal that is cruel. It kills just for the sake of it.

~Mark Twain

Force is all-conquering, but its victories are short-lived.

~Abraham Lincoln

The first casualty when war comes is the truth.

~Sen. Hiram Johnson

This war is not necessary. We are truly sleepwalking through history.

~Sen. Robert Byrd

Washington...has become an alien city-state that rules America, and much of the rest of the world, in the way that Rome ruled the Roman Empire.

~Richard Maybury

Arbitrary power is most easily established on the ruins of liberty abused to licentiousness.

~George Washington

Great is the guilt of an unnecessary war.

~John Adams

A belligerent state permits itself every such misdeed, every such act of violence, as would disgrace the individual.

~Sigmund Freud

Our government has kept us in a perpetual state of fear - kept us in a continuous stampede of patriotic fervor - with the cry of grave national emergency.

~General Douglas MacArthur

After each war there is a little less democracy to save.

~Brooks Atkinson

I want to scare the hell out of the rest of the world.

~General Colin Powell

Violence and arms can never resolve the problems of men.

~Pope John Paul II

If peace...only had the music and pagaentry of war, there'd be no wars.

~Sophie Kerr

God hates violence. He has ordained that all men fairly possess their property, not seize it.

~Euripides

Every man thinks god is on his side.

~Jean Anouilh

All the gods are dead except the god of war.

~Eldridge Cleaver

The bombs in Vietnam explode at home; they destroy the hopes and possibilities for a decent America.

~Martin Luther King, Jr.

Wars should be over in three days or less...and the American people must be all for it from the outset.

~Evan Thomas

We used to wonder where war lived, what it was that made it so vile. And now we realize that we know where it lives...inside ourselves.

~Albert Camus

The supreme excellence is to subde the armies of your enemies without even having to fight them.

~Sun Tzu

From fanaticism to barbarism is only one step.

~Denis Diderot

The time has come to stop beating our heads against stone walls under the illusion that we have been appointed policeman to the human race.

~Walter Lippmann

It is our true policy to steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world.

~George Washington

We must recognize the chief characteristic of the modern era--a permanent state of what I call violent peace.

~Admiral James D. Watkins

The spirit of this country is totally adverse to a large military force.

~Thomas Jefferson

No nation ever had an army large enough to guarantee it against attack in time of peace, or ensure it of victory in time of war.

~Calvin Coolidge

Can anything be more ridiculous than that a man has a right to kill me because he lives on the other side of the water, and because his ruler has quarrel with mine, although I have none with him?

~Blaise Pascal

An empire founded by war has to maintain itself by war.

~Montesquieu

War will exist until that distant day when the conscientious objector enjoys the same reputation and prestige that the warrior does today.

~John F. Kennedy

Most quarrels are inevitable at the time; incredible afterwards.

~E. M. Forster

It is the youth who must inherit the tribulation, the sorrow...that are the aftermath of war.

~Herbert C. Hoover

There's no difference between one's killing and making decisions that will send others to kill. It's exactly the same thing, or even worse.

~Golda Meir

The military doesn't start wars. The politicians start wars.

~General William Westmoreland

It is the merit of a general to impart good news, and to conceal the truth.

~Sophocles

In war, truth is the first casualty.

~Aeschylus

A thing is not necessarily true because a man dies for it.

~Oscar Wilde

Man is the only animal of which I am thoroughly and cravenly afraid...There is no harm in a well-fed lion. It has no ideals, no sect, no party...

~George Bernard Shaw

"My country right or wrong" is like saying, "My mother drunk or sober."

~G. K. Chesterton

History is littered with wars which everybody knew would never happen.

~Enoch Powell

At least we're getting the kind of experience we need for the next war.

~Allen Dulles

War is the greatest plague that can affect humanity; it destroys religion, it destroys states, it destroys families. Any scourge is preferable to it.

~Martin Luther

How vile and despicable war seems to me! I would rather be hacked to pieces than take part in such an abominable business.

~Albert Einstein

Have you ever thought that war is a madhouse and that everyone in the war is a patient?

~Oriana Fallaci

War is the unfolding of miscalculations.

~Barbara Tuchman

War is mainly a catalogue of blunders.

~Winston Churchill

Hate is able to provoke disorders, to ruin a social organization, to cast a country into a period of bloody revolutions; but it produces nothing.

~Georges Sorel

We are all familiar with the argument: Make war dreadful enough, and there will be no war. And we none of us believe it.

~John Galsworthy

War is not an adventure. It is a disease. It is like typhus.

~Antoine De Saint-Exupery

War would end if the dead could return.

~Stanley Baldwin

There are no warlike people--just warlike leaders.

~Ralph Bunche

Name me an emperor who was ever struck by a cannonball.

~Charles V of France

As for being a General, well, at the age of four with paper hats and wooden swords, we're all Generals. Only some of us never grow out of it.

~Sir Peter Ustinov

You're not supposed to be so blind with patriotism that you can't face reality. Wrong is wrong no matter who does it or who says it.

~Malcolm X

To wage war, you need first of all money; second, you need money, and third, you also need money.

~Prince Montecuccoli

Wars are not paid for in wartime, the bill comes later.

~Benjamin Franklin

A man may build himself a throne of bayonets, but he cannot sit on it.

~William Ralph Inge

You can wipe out your opponents. But if you do it unjustly you become eligible for being wiped out yourself.

~Ernest Hemingway

No weapon has ever settled a moral problem. It can impose a solution but it cannot guarantee it to be a just one.

~Ernest Hemingway

You can't have this kind of war. There just aren't enough bulldozers to scrape the bodies off the streets.

~Dwight D. Eisenhower

The Atomic Age is here to stay--but are we?

~Bennett Cerf

You've got to forget about this civilian. Whenever you drop bombs, you're going to hit civilians.

~Barry Goldwater

We must realize that no arsenal, or no weapon in the arsenals of the world, is so formidable as the will and moral courage of free men and women.

~Ronald Reagan

Peace cannot be kept by force. It can only be achieved by understanding.

~Albert Einstein

Let us not deceive ourselves; we must elect world peace or world destruction.

~Bernard M. Baruch

It is not reasonable that those who gamble with men's lives should not pay with their own.

~H. G. Wells

Only the winners decide what were war crimes.

~Gary Wills

True patriotism hates injustice in its own land more than anywhere else.

~Clarence Darrow

If you live long enough, you'll see that every victory turns into a defeat.

~Simone de Beauvoir

It takes twenty years or more of peace to make a man; it only takes twenty seconds of war to destroy him.

~King Baudouin I of Belgium

The time not to become a father is eighteen years before a war.

~E. B. White

In peace, sons bury their fathers; in war, fathers bury their sons.

~Herodotus

When you are winning a war almost everything that happens can be claimed to be right and wise.

~Winston Churchill

One more such victory and we are undone.

~Pyrrhus of Epirus

The urge to save humanity is almost always only a false-face for the urge to rule it.

~H. L. Mencken

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.

~H. L. Mencken

Those who stand for nothing fall for anything.

~Alexander Hamilton

One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors.

~Plato

The obligations of our representatives in Washington are to protect our liberty, not coddle the world, precipitating no-win wars, while bringing bankruptcy and economic turmoil to our people.

~Ron Paul

Government is not reason, it is not eloquence, it is force...Never for a moment should it be left to irresponsible action.

~George Washington

It is our true policy to steer clear of entangling alliances with any portion of the foreign world.

~George Washington

I believe in only one thing: liberty; but I do not believe in liberty enough to want to force it upon anyone.

~H. L. Mencken

America does not go abroad in search of monsters to destroy.

~John Quincy Adams

Our reluctance for conflict should not be misjudged as a failure of will.

~Ronald Reagan

Civilized society is perpetually menaced with disintegration through this primary hostility of men towards one another...

~Sigmund Freud

The coward threatens when he is safe.

~Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

People who talk of outlawing the atomic bomb are mistaken — what needs to be outlawed is war.

~Leslie Richard Groves

Peace has its victories no less than war, but it doesn't have as many monuments to unveil.

~Kin Hubbard

A coward is much more exposed to quarrels than a man of spirit.

~Thomas Jefferson

How strangely will the Tools of a Tyrant pervert the plain Meaning of Words!

~Samuel Adams

Do not ever say that the desire to "do good" by force is a good motive. Neither power-lust nor stupidity are good motives.

~Ayn Rand

Most wars are started by well-fed people with time on their hands to dream up half-baked ideologies or grandiose ambitions, and to nurse real or imagined grievances.

~Thomas Sowell

The worst evils which mankind has ever had to endure were inflicted by bad governments.

~Ludwig von Mises

Economically considered, war and revolution are always bad business.

~Ludwig von Mises

War can really cause no economic boom, at least not directly, since an increase in wealth never does result from destruction of goods.

~Ludwig von Mises

War is the Health of the State.

~Randolph Bourne

Whoever wishes peace among peoples must fight statism.

~Ludwig von Mises

The attainment of the economic aims of man presupposes peace.

~Ludwig von Mises

History has witnessed the failure of many endeavors to impose peace by war, cooperation by coercion, unanimity by slaughtering dissidents…. A lasting order cannot be established by bayonets.

~Ludwig von Mises

Peace and abstinence from European interferences are our objects, and so will continue while the present order of things in America remain uninterrupted.

~Thomas Jefferson

Commerce with all nations, alliance with none, should be our motto.

~Thomas Jefferson

There never was a good war or a bad peace.

~Benjamin Franklin

Of all the enemies to public liberty, war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded because it comprises and develops the germ of every other.

~James Madison

The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule.

~H.L. Mencken

America does not go abroad in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all.

~John Quincy Adams

When the tyrant has disposed of foreign enemies by conquest or treaty, and there is nothing to fear from them, then he is always stirring up some war or other, in order that the people may require a leader.

~Plato

An eye for an eye makes us all blind.

~Mahatma Gandhi

In all history there is no war which was not hatched by the governments, the governments alone, independent of the interests of the people, to whom war is always pernicious even when successful.

~Leo Tolstoy

The constitution vests the power of declaring war in Congress; therefore no offensive expedition of importance can be undertaken until after they shall have deliberated upon the subject and authorized such a measure.

~George Washington