Quotes About Pacifism

In the future, a part of this class - individuals particularly sensitive to this question of the future - will realize that their happiness depends on that of others, that the human species can only survive united and pacific. They will cease to belong to the mercantile innovative class, and refuse to put themselves at the service of pirates. They will become what I call transhumans (who will give birth to a new order of abundance).

I have always hated war and am by nature and philosophy a pacifist, but it is the English who are forcing war on us, and the first principle of war is to kill the enemy.

I am an absolute pacifist...It is an instinctive feeling. It is a feeling that possesses me, because the murder of men is disgusting.

The curse of every ancient civilization was that its men in the end became unable to fight. Materialism, luxury, safety, even sometimes an almost modern sentimentality, weakened the fibre of each civilized race in turn; each became in the end a nation of pacifists, and then each was trodden under foot by some ruder people that had kept that virile fighting power the lack of which makes all other virtues useless and sometimes even harmful.

the radical pacifist message of the Gospels [was] largely abandoned when the Emperor Constantine, in the fourth century, adopted Christianity as the official doctrine of the Roman empire — turning the church of the persecuted into the church of the persecutors, as historian of Christianity Hans Küng described the transformation.

The gospels are radical pacifist material. When the emperor Constantine adopted Christianity he shifted it. He shifted Christianity from a radical pacifist religion to the religion of the Roman empire. So the cross, which was symbol of the suffering of the poor was put on the shield of roman soldiers. Since that time the church has been pretty much the church of the rich and the powerful.

a Quaker abolitionist with "a reasonable leaning toward wrath in cases of emergency

When I was a baby feminist, leading feminist thinkers were insisting that if women ran the world, there would be no sadism or war.

I abhor war and view it as the greatest scourge of mankind.

It is attributed to Henry IV of France, a man of enlarged and benevolent heart, that he proposed, about the year 1610, a plan for abolishing war in Europe. The plan consisted in constituting an European Congress, or as the French authors style it, a Pacific republic; by appointing delegates from the several nations who were to act as a court of arbitration in any disputes that might arise between nation and nation.

I completely believe in peace and non-violence.

Sequestered in the depths of the average pacifist—as one will invariably discover—resides a killer. That is why the person has become a pacifist in the first place.

Going to say it anyway, said Graff. Poor fool of a boy. Pacifism only works with an enemy that can't bear to do murder against the innocent. How many times are you lucky enough to get an enemy like that?

Pacifism only works with an enemy that can't bear to do murder against the innocent.

Pacifism only works with an enemy that can't bear to do murder against the innocent. How many times are you lucky enough to get an enemy like that?

Einstein's pacifism, world federalism, and aversion to nationalism were part of a political outlook that also included a passion for social justice, a sympathy for underdogs, an antipathy toward racism, and a predilection toward socialism.

War can be avoided, and it ought to be avoided. I want no war.

Pacifism, the preaching of peace in the abstract, is one of the means of duping the working class.

The way to do away with war is for those who do not want war, who regard participation in it a sin, to refrain from fighting.

From a very young age, militarism and trying to solve the world's problems through militarism is something that has always resonated with me as being a bad idea.

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

The nature of these challenges was not singular to the 1930s. In every era, humanity produces demonic individuals and seductive ideas of repression. The task of statesmanship is to prevent their rise to power and sustain an international order capable of deterring them if they do achieve it. The interwar years' toxic mixture of facile pacifism, geopolitical imbalance, and allied disunity allowed these forces a free hand.

Nevertheless, this one fact should be apparent: turning the other cheek is a bribe. It is a valid form of action for only so long as the Christian is impotent politically or militarily.

Pacifism simply is not a matter of calm looking on; it is work, hard work.