Pacifist Quotes

I'm not a pacifist. I do believe that, unfortunately, war is necessary.

I think that religions must seek peace and love and therefore be pacifist.

We're not really pacifists, we're nonviolent soldiers.

I'm not a pacifist, but I'm not a violent person. I mean, I have a gun. I shoot guns, but I wouldn't say I love guns. It doesn't work that way for me.

I am constantly challenged by pessimists who insist that military solutions are the only way to go. This was true in the 1980s, and it is true today. You should know that I do not consider myself a pacifist; there are times, in my view, when military action may be necessary.

I am not a pacifist, however I do believe that the U.S. tends to resort to force too quickly. I am not referring only to the current administration; the same thing happened in the Balkans, and on other occasions.

I am peaceful but I am not a pacifist in the philosophical sense.

I'm really a pacifist.

A pacifist will often - at least nowadays - be an internationalist and vice versa. But history shows us that a pacifist need not think internationally.

Jesus was a pacifist.

The quietly pacifist peaceful always die to make room for men who shout.

A pacifist has a lot of difficulty reconciling pacifism with scripture.

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

Being a pacifist to save your own life is normal, being a pacifist for the lives of others is true pacifism.

I am not only a pacifist but a militant pacifist. I am willing to fight for peace. Nothing will end war unless the people themselves refuse to go to war.

I shall die as I have lived, rationalist, socialist, pacifist, and humanitarian.

I do have an intense respect for pacifists, because I believe that ultimately, if we are to have a truly humanistic as well as libertarian society, violence will have to be banished on this planet.

If people have to put labels on me, I'd prefer the first label to be human being, the second label to be pacifist, and the third to be folk singer.

It is ... necessary to whip up the population in support of foreign adventures. Usually the population is pacifist, just like they were during the First World War. The public sees no reason to get involved in foreign adventures, killing, and torture. So you have to whip them up. And to whip them up you have to frighten them.

[A.J. Muste] never engaged in violence but he believed, as [Mahatma] Gandhi did - and he knew Gandhi slightly - he believed that a pacifist had to be active in the community.

I'm not a pacifist by any measure, but I'm also fully aware that the reasons I might go to war could be very dubious.

The Bible is clear here: I am to love my neighbor as myself, in the manner needed, in a practical way, in the midst of the fallen world, at my particular point of history. This is why I am not a pacifist. Pacifism in this poor world in which we live -- this lost world -- means that we desert the people who need our greatest help.

Pacifists become militants. Freedom fighters become tyrants. Blessings become curses. Help becomes hindrance. More becomes less.

A people of scholars, if they are physically degenerate, weak-willed and cowardly pacifists, will not storm the heavens, indeed, they will not be able to safeguard their existence on this earth.

The main problem with pacifism is that it doesn’t work in all situations. The main problem with pacifists is that they’re convinced it does.

There's this whole notion of being an Indian - the idea that "warrior" is a positive description of us [Indians as native Americans]. When an Indian guy does well, he's a warrior, even now. He could be a computer salesman, but if he does well, he's a warrior. I'm not a pacifist by any measure, but I'm also fully aware that the reasons I might go to war could be very dubious.

The necessary consequence of man's right to life is his right to self-defense. In a civilized society, force may be used only in retaliation and only against those who initiate its use. All the reasons which make the initiation of physical force an evil, make the retaliatory use of physical force a moral imperative. If some "pacifist" society renounced the retaliatory use of force, it would be left helplessly at the mercy of the first thug who decided to be immoral. Such a society would achieve the opposite of its intention: instead of abolishing evil, it would encourage and reward it.

Perhaps my dynamite plants will put an end to war sooner than your [pacifist] congresses. On the day two army corps can annihilate each other in one second all civilized nations will recoil from war in horror.

Slobodan Miloševi?, more than anyone else, caused a division within the Left and Centre Left, dividing the pacifists, anti-imperialists and anti-Americans from the anti-fascists and the internationalists. He reminded too many of us that inaction can be as toxic and murderous as action. He prepared us - for weal or woe - for the new world.

The pacifist is as surely a traitor to his country and to humanity as is the most brutal wrongdoer.

I'm not a pacifist. I'm not that brave.

It was the kind of sword that would make a lifelong pacifist look for tall boots and a hat with feathers.

Principles are what people have instead of God. To be a Christian means among other things to be willing if necessary to sacrifice even your highest principles for God's or your neighbour's sake the way a Christian pacifist must be willing to pick up a baseball bat if there's no other way to stop a man from savagely beating a child. Jesus didn't forgive his executioners on principle but because in some unimaginable way he was able to love them. 'Principle' is an even duller word than 'Religion'.

I want to put any number of assorted 'ists' - such as relativists, deconstructionists, destructivists, postmodernists, the more maudlin kind of pacifists and feminists - firmly in their place.

In the wars against Revolutionary and Napoleonic France, as in so many later conflicts, British women seem to have been no more markedly pacifist than men. Instead, and exactly like so many of their male countrymen, some women found ways of combining support for the national interest with a measure of self-promotion. By assisting the war effort, women demonstrated that their concerns were by no means confined to the domestic sphere. Under cover of a patriotism that was often genuine and profound, they carved out for themselves a real if precarious place in the public sphere.

While I am a convinced pacifist there are circumstances in which I believe the use of force is appropriate - namely, in the face of an enemy unconditionally bent on destroying me and my people.

A serious pacifist approach can't win wars against enemies whose only program is violence. That doesn't mean I think the US has fought terrorists so wisely most of the time since 9/11. But there are some enemies that need to be destroyed by force lest they destroy much much more.

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.

Nothing will end war unless the peoples themselves refuse to go to war.

The Anarchists' uncompromising rejection of the State, the subject of Marxian sneers for its "absolutist" and "Utopian" character, makes much better sense in the present era than the Marxist relativist and historical approach. The pacifists also seem to be more realistic than the Marxist both in their understanding of modern war and also in their attempts to do something about it.

In the sixties, during the Vietnam war, when anarchists and pacifists and socialists, Democrats and Republicans, decent-hearted Americans, all recoiled with horror at the bloodbath, we came together.

Those who refuse to support and defend the state have no claim to protection by that state. Killing an anarchist or a pacifist should not be considered "murder" in a legalistic sense. The offense against the state, if any, should be "Using deadly weapons within city limits," or "Creating a traffic hazard," or other misdemeanor.

I like pacifists and people who have a heavy emotional identification with deathism and war would probably call me a pacifist, but I am a non-invasivist rather than a non-violentist. That is, I believe that an invaded people have the right to defend themselves by any means necessary. This includes putting ground glass or poison in the invaders' food, shooting at them from ambush, sabotage, the general strike, armed revolution, etc. It's up to the invaded to decide which of these techniques they will use. It's not up to some moralist to tell them which techniques are permissible.

Sadly and criminally, many self-indulgent inactive pacifists have shunned me for being an outspoken supporter of X's 'by any means necessary' philosophy, even though NOT supporting me means you are supporting violence since millions of meat, dairy, egg and honey-eaters who would have had a chance to see my speeches, essays or advertisements continue along their violent paths unchallenged.

From pacifist to terrorist, each person condemns violence - and then adds one cherished case in which it may be justified.

I am not an absolute pacifist, because I can't rule out the possibility that under some, carefully defined circumstances, some degree of violence may be justified, if it is focused directly at a great evil.

I am not a terrorist, but neither am I a pacifist. I am simply a regular guy from the Palestinian street advocating only what every other oppressed person has advocated-the right to help myself in the absence of help from anywhere else.

Placing a halo around your own head by saying 'I am a pacifist' and 'I don't believe in using violent tactics' doesn't make the world a better place. It might make YOUR world better and YOU might feel better about YOURSELF, but it does NOTHING whatsoever for the victims.

pacifists lead a lonely life. Not even gathering together can take the place of that vast, warm sun of approval that is shed on motherhood, on law-abiding, on killing, and on making money. Someday will we come into our own? Well, motherhood may move into the shade. Law-abiding is going through a trauma. But killing and making money are good for a long, long time.

Talk of world peace is heard today only among the white peoples, and not among the much more numerous coloured races. This is a perilous state of affairs. When individual thinkers and idealists talk of peace, as they have done since time immemorial, the effect is negligible. But when whole peoples become pacifistic it is a symptom of senility. Strong and unspent races are not pacifistic. To adopt such a position is to abandon the future, for the pacifist ideal is a terminal condition that is contrary to the basic facts of existence. As long as man continues to evolve, there will be wars.