80+ Anti War Quotes to Encourage Peace and Cessation

Anti-war quotes promote world peace by opposing wars and their conduct.

Originating from various global conflicts, these quotes, including many from the US anti-Vietnam War movement, aim to inspire peace and discourage war participation.

Noteworthy quotes from popular figures like Tolstoy, Carter, Reagan, Madison and Bush are compiled in a list of 80+ wise anti-war quotes and sayings.

Anti War Quotes

Sharing these quotes can spread peace and awareness during times of conflict, reminding people that war brings harm and loss to innocent lives.

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Top 10 Anti War Quotes

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War does not determine who is right, only who is left. ~ Bertrand Russell.

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Peace is constructed, not fought for. ~ Brent Davis.

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War is terrorism, magnified a hundred times. ~ Howard Zinn.

How can you have a war on terrorism when war itself is terrorism? ~ Howard Zinn.

There never was a good war or a bad peace. ~ Benjamin Franklin.

War settles nothing. ~ Dwight D Eisenhower.

The wars we haven’t had saved many lives. ~ William Stafford

The means of defence against foreign danger historically have become the instruments of tyranny at home. ~ James Madison.

It’s time for us to turn to each other, not on each other. ~ Jesse Jackson.

You cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war. ~ Albert Einstein.

Best Anti War Quotes

If you like war, be a nationalist. If you like peace, be a citizen of the world. ~ Oliver Markus Malloy.

The heights of popularity and patriotism are still the beaten road to power and tyranny… ~ David Hume.

War, in the end, is always about betrayal, betrayal of the young by the old, of soldiers by politicians, and of idealists by cynics. ~ Chris Hedges.

Every good war film, if you want to use that phrase – I don’t think it’s a good phrase, but if you want to use that phrase – every good film, a first-rate film about war, is an anti war movie. ~ Michael Cimino.

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The nuclear arms race is like two sworn enemies standing waist deep in gasoline, one with three matches, the other with five. ~ Carl Sagan.

It is a universal truth that the loss of liberty at home is to be charged to the provisions against danger, real or pretended, from abroad. ~ James Madison.

Peace is the virtue of civilization. War is its crime. ~ Victor Hugo.

Society has arisen out of the works of peace; the essence of society is peacemaking. Peace and not war is the father of all things. ~ Ludwig Von Mises.

What is absurd and monstrous about war is that men who have no personal quarrel should be trained to murder one another in cold blood. ~ Aldous Huxley.

I’m fed up to the ears with old men dreaming up wars for young men to die in. ~ George McGovern.

Observe good faith and justice toward all nations. Cultivate peace and harmony with all. ~ George Washington.

A country which prefers guns to flowers will live the beauty of the flowers only in its graveyards! ~ Mehmet Murat ildan.

The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift. ~ Albert Einstein.

War prosperity is like the prosperity that an earthquake or a plague brings. ~ Ludwig von Mises.

We will not learn how to live together in peace by killing each other’s children. ~ Jimmy Carter.

A people free to choose will always choose peace. ~ Ronald Reagan.

You can no more win a war than you can win an earthquake. War is the slaughter of human beings, temporarily regarded as enemies, on as large a scale as possible. ~ Jeannette Rankin.

Popular Anti War Quotes

There is nothing so likely to produce peace as to be well prepared to meet the enemy. ~ George Washington.

If they want peace, nations should avoid the pin-pricks that precede cannon shots. ~ Napoleon Bonaparte.

Just war theory has been converted into a form of apologetics for whatever atrocities your favored state is carrying out. ~ Noam Chomsky.

Free nations are peaceful nations. Free nations don’t attack each other. Free nations don’t develop weapons of mass destruction. ~ George W. Bush.

My religion is based on truth and nonviolence. ~ Mahatma Gandhi.

My personal opinion is that if someone writes honestly about war, it will inherently be anti-war. ~ Kevin Powers.

The most shocking fact about war is that its victims and its instruments are individual human beings, and that these individual beings are condemned by the monstrous conventions of politics to murder or be murdered in quarrels not their own. ~ Aldous Huxley.

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.

It is my conviction that killing under the cloak of war is nothing but an act of murder. ~ Albert Einstein.

Politicians who took us to war should have been given the guns and told to settle their differences themselves, instead of organizing nothing better than legalized mass murder. ~ Harry Patch.

Famous Anti War Quotes

Society advances further on the backs of the living than it does on the backs of its dead. ~ Allan McLeod.

I appeal for cessation of hostilities, not because you are too exhausted to fight, but because war is bad in essence. ~ Mahatma Gandhi.

The more money you spend on guns, the less money you spend on people! More weapons, less happiness; more guns, more misery! ~ Mehmet Murat İldan.

Only in time of fear is government thrown back to its primitive and sole function of self defence and the many interests of which it is the guardian become subordinate to that. ~ Jane Addams.

Wars based on principle are far more destructive… the attacker will not destroy that which he is after. ~ Alan Watts.

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

Though times have changed, it’s a nice surprise to see that youthful feeling of anti war sentiment returning once more to the cobbled main streets of Europe. ~ Cat Stevens.

War is like a vacuum cleaner that sucks tax dollars out of your pocket and funnels the money directly into the pockets of the robber barons who own the weapons factories. ~ Oliver Markus Malloy.

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

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

No protracted war can fail to endanger the freedom of a democratic country. ~ Alexis de Tocqueville.

A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual doom. ~ Martin Luther King Jr.

Peace is not achieved by controlling nations, but mastering our thoughts. ~ John Harricharan.

Great Anti War Quotes

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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.

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.

War… is as much a punishment to the punisher as to the sufferer. ~ Thomas Jefferson.

Anyone who thinks must think of the next war as they would of suicide. ~ Eleanor Roosevelt.

The real and lasting victories are those of peace and not of war. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson.

No more wars, no more bloodshed. Peace unto you. Shalom, salaam, forever. ~ Menachem Begin.

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

You don’t liberate a country standing on the soil of another. ~ Fadia Faqir.

The executive has no right, in any case, to decide the question, whether there is or is not cause for declaring war. ~ James Madison.

Make no mistake: the anti-war voices long for us to lose any war they cannot prevent. ~ Ralph Peters.

Whoever wants peace among nations must seek to limit the state and its influence most strictly. ~ Ludwig Von Mises.

Yes, there are plenty of politicians who are liars, there is no doubt about this! But some of them are not only liars but also serial killers because they deliberately send people to the wars! ~ Mehmet Murat ildan.

History teaches us that men and nations behave wisely once they have exhausted all other alternatives. ~ Abba Eban.

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

Preemptive war is like committing suicide out of fear of death. ~ Otto von Bismarck.

The world is a dangerous place to live; not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don’t do anything about it. ~ Albert Einstein.

War may sometimes be a necessary evil. But no matter how necessary, it is always an evil, never a good. ~ Jimmy Carter.

Nothing will end war unless the people themselves refuse to go to war. ~ Albert Einstein.

Tribalism is the root of all wars. ~ Oliver Markus Malloy.

Bullets cannot be recalled. They cannot be uninvented. But they can be taken out of the gun. ~ Martin Amis.

If you’re anti-war it doesn’t mean you are pro one side or the other in a conflict. ~ Eddie Vedder.

Wise Anti War Quotes

Great is the guilt of an unnecessary war. ~ John Adams.

There is a higher court than courts of justice, and that is the court of conscience. It supersedes all other courts. ~ Mahatma Gandhi.

People do not make wars; governments do. ~ Ronald Reagan.

Europeans are far more anti war than Americans. They’ve had more wars, and they really just don’t believe in it anymore. ~ Mark Kurlansky.

There isn’t a viler creature on earth than a politician who sends the children of others to the war but not his own children! ~ Mehmet Murat ildan.

No more war, war never again! Peace, it is peace, which must guide the destinies of people and of all mankind. ~ Pope Paul VI.

Never, ‘for the sake of peace and quiet,’ deny your own experience or convictions. ~ Dag Hammarskjold.

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.

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. ~ Dwight D. Eisenhower.

Nations who are proud of their guns, tanks, missiles etc. are deprived of humanity! ~ Mehmet Murat İldan.


So these were the 81 top Anti War quotes and sayings.

If you like these quotes and sayings, then you can also read my other posts on Mary McLeod Bethune quotes and D A Carson quotes.

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Chandan Negi
Chandan Negi

I’m the Founder of Internet Pillar - I love sharing quotes and motivational content to inspire and motivate people - #quotes #motivation #internetpillar