Quotes & Sayings About Armed Conflict

Across the world, the lack of accountability for the harm to the environment and public health caused by conflict and military activities undermines global efforts to help fragile countries recover from armed conflicts — Widad Akreyi

I sometimes wonder where the world would have been if we didn't have corruption, racism, dictatorial leadership, international terrorism, armed conflict, the spread of infectious diseases, climate change, poverty, hunger and lack of drinking water, the caste system, tribalism, communism, international media propaganda, the Colonial Borders of Africa created by Europeans for their own gains, the Ignorance of the Books of Machiavelli, Hegel & Darwinism (You are either with us or against us) and Lack of Domestic Leadership Education. — Henry Johnson Jr

During the civil war, the Sudanese government armed the Misseriya nomads as proxy. Even though both groups had coexisted quite well prior to the conflict, it all become much more difficult as a consequence. — Rebecca Hamilton

The Disarmament Conference has become the focal point of a great struggle between anarchy and world order ... between those who think in terms of inevitable armed conflict and those who seek to build a universal and durable peace. — Arthur Henderson

Historically, and notably in the 1905 Russo-Japanese war, the Japanese army's conduct towards defeated enemies had been characterised by mercy. The ruling Tokyo "control group" changed all that, instilling a culture of ruthlessness indistinguishable from barbarism into its armed forces; in 1934 the Ministry of War published a pamphlet which ennobled conflict as "the father of creation and mother of culture. Rivalry for supremacy does for the state what struggle against adversity does for the individual." The Allies now began to discover the significance of this merciless vision for those who fell into enemy hands. Before — Max Hastings

An educated child earns more later in life, knows how to keep their own children from dying, produces more food, is less likely to get AIDS, and in the case of boys, is less likely to engage in armed civil conflict. — Marianne Williamson

When the United States stands up for human rights, by example at home and by effort abroad, we align ourselves with men and women around the world who struggle for the right to speak their minds, to choose their leaders, and to be treated with dignity and respect. We also strengthen our security and well being, because the abuse of human rights can feed many of the global dangers that we confront - from armed conflict and humanitarian crises, to corruption and the spread of ideologies that promote hatred and violence. — Barack Obama

As a matter of international law, the United States is in an armed conflict with al-Qa'ida, the Taliban, and associated forces, in response to the 9/11 attacks, and we may also use force consistent with our inherent right of national self-defense. — John O. Brennan

I do occasionally wonder, if you were to bring to life one of those young men who sacrificed themselves in what was advertised to them as the Great War, and the war to end all war, and show them that we're still engaged in armed conflict in the same area, I'm not sure that they would be pleased about what their sacrifices amounted to. — Russell Crowe

I believe in MasterPeace. World leaders cannot push back armed conflict alone. We need the whole world to make this happen. — Desmond Tutu

The voices of peace can't be silenced by bombs, shootings, sieges, brutality and barbarism. Despite the challenges we face as peace-makers in a troubled region, all we want is peace and our campaign #WeWantPeace continues. — Widad Akreyi

political environment. But there is always a thin line between a peaceful election and armed conflict. We acknowledge this close relationship in the way we use martial jargon to discuss our politics. Candidates battle for states, campaigns are run from war rooms, commercials are part of a media blitz, and campaign volunteers are foot soldiers. "Politics," the Prussian military theorist Carl Von Clausewitz said, "is the womb in which war develops." Violent conflict is born out in other nations where the martial language of politics is not metaphorical. In the same year that McCain and Obama — Scott Farris

I'm really still a child of the Forties. I still think about it a lot, about the repercussions of armed conflict. Until 1953 we had rationing. We couldn't buy meat, we couldn't buy pleasurable goods like cigarettes and sweets. I didn't starve - my family were lucky - but I knew what it was like standing in line waiting for foodstuffs. — Eric Burdon

From the prophets' dreams of the time when nations would beat their swords into plowshares to today's aspirations of a nuclear-weapons-free world, we have sought to avoid armed conflict and not yield to despair in the search for universal peace. The nuclear threats from Iran, North Korea, and terrorists can only be overcome through international cooperation. We call upon Congressional leaders and those worldwide to join together to ensure the fulfillment of these long-overdue initiatives and the achievement of a safer future without nuclear weapons. — David Saperstein

I am quite confident that in the foreseeable future armed conflict will not take the form of huge land armies facing each other across extended battle lines, as they did in World War I and World War II or, for that matter, as they would have if NATO had faced the Warsaw Pact on the field of battle. — Norman Schwarzkopf

Peace requires the provision of a platform for discussion and the exchange of information on matters and activities relevant to the prevention of armed violence. — Widad Akreyi

The institutions founded 'to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war' have failed. Since the end of WW2, some thirty million people have been killed in armed conflict. Most of them were civilians. — George Monbiot

We stopped the fighting [in 1991] on an agreement that Iraq would take steps to assure the world that it would not engage in further aggression and that it would destroy its weapons of mass destruction. It has refused to take those steps. That refusal constitutes a breach of the armistice which renders it void and justifies resumption of the armed conflict. — Harry Reid

Chilvalry's essential function, Maurice Keen has written, is always to hold up an idealised image of armed conflict in defiance of the harsh realities of actual warfare. By definition, chivalry also reaffirms the paramount importance of custom, hierarchy and inherited rank. — Linda Colley

Acheson immediately understood the urgency of this message. He summoned Ambassador Franks and told him that the United States resolutely opposed "the use of force or the threat of the use of force" against Iran, and that Truman himself had "stressed most strongly that no situation should be allowed to develop into an armed conflict between a body of British troops and the Persian forces. — Stephen Kinzer

Propaganda analysis can contribute to world peace by exposing those techniques that lead to armed conflict by creating misapprehension of reality. — Randal Marlin

An armed conflict between nations horrifies us. But the economic war is no better than an armed conflict. This is like a surgical operation. An economic war is prolonged torture. And its ravages are no less terrible than those depicted in the literature on war property so called. We think nothing of the other because we are used to its deadly effects .... The movement against war is sound. I pray for its success. But I cannot help the gnawing fear that the movement will fail if it does not touch the root of all evil-human greed. — Mahatma Gandhi

Few today believe that engaging in wrestling, boxing, or even much more violent combat sports such as Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) will help prepare either them as individuals or their nations for eventual armed conflict. — Martin Van Creveld

Condemning war has not curbed armed conflict. Religion and education did not eliminate war. Warfare did not terminate more wars. Armed combat simply breeds endless wars. — Kilroy J. Oldster

During the fiscal year ending in 1861, expenses of the federal government had been $67 million. After the first year of armed conflict they were $475 million and, by 1865, had risen to one billion, three-hundred million dollars. On the income side of the ledger, taxes covered only about eleven per cent of that figure. By the end of the war, the deficit had risen to $2.61 billion. That money had to come from somewhere. — G. Edward Griffin

I wish to assure you that there can never be any return to the state of armed conflict which existed before our commitment to peace and the democratic process of election under the Lancaster House agreement. — Robert Mugabe

They want to derail peace because they want to plunge Northern Ireland back into armed conflict. — Peter Mandelson

In recent years, academics, policy-makers, and experts have raised the question of the applicability of peacetime environmental law in times of armed conflict. — Widad Akreyi

Every day, we at the United Nations see the human toll of an absence of regulations or lax controls on the arms trade. We see it in the suffering of civilian populations trapped by armed conflict or pervasive crime. We see it in the killing and wounding of civilians - including children, the most vulnerable of all. — Ban Ki-moon

Which war are you referring to, I asked, when you say the "last"? I meant the big one, the world war, he answered, because little ones, like ours, don't count as real wars. For those who are no longer alive, I said, every war is real. That is correct agreed Isak Levi, but a local war is actually abuse of the noun war, since it is most often armed conflict of limited intensity being waged on limited territory. Of course, he said, most of the conflicts registered in history belong to that category, I admit, and there are few wars that were truly grandiose. You speak of wars, I said, at least of the big ones, as though you admire them, and I see no justification for that. He saw no reason to admire them either, Isak Levi replied, but if they did exist, there was no point in closing one's eyes to the fact. — David Albahari

Our men and women in our armed forces are the real heroes in this conflict. — Wayne Allard

Climate change could produce a lot of misery and waste without necessarily leading to large-scale armed conflict, which depends more on ideology and bad governance than on resource scarcity. — Steven Pinker

The United States is the first nation to regularly conduct strikes using remotely piloted aircraft in an armed conflict. Other nations also possess this technology. Many more nations are seeking it, and more will succeed in acquiring it. — John O. Brennan

It is my belief that whereas the twentieth century has been a century of war and untold suffering, the twenty-first century should be one of peace and dialogue. As the continued advances in information technology make our world a truly global village, I believe there will come a time when war and armed conflict will be considered an outdated and obsolete method of settling differences among nations and communities. — Dalai Lama

The United States contributes to peace in both by serving as a buffer between and among regional powers that, while not preparing for armed conflict, do not fully trust one another. — Michael Mandelbaum

We are not at war with Egypt. We are in an armed conflict. — Anthony Eden

Long-term trauma for women who have survived armed conflict is a haunting reminder that health issues and depression can follow decades after the end of war, but women who hope for healing can and do move forward. — Zainab Salbi

The military-industrial complex corporations never complain of higher prices for bombs, planes, drones, and missiles. They benefit when prices rise and when cost overruns are covered with more money from the US Treasury. Those who profit are the greatest champions of the military readiness and armed conflict. They are represented by lobbyists who greatly influence both political parties. Corporate war profits and high union wages bring about remarkable cooperation between the two parties despite the political rhetoric suggesting passionate disagreement. And these militaristic policies are defended with patriotic zeal, and in appeals regarding our moral obligation to take care of all the world's needs and to meet our obligation to spread our "goodness" around the world. — Ron Paul

The victims of Ankara peace rally sacrificed their lives for peace and their only wish was We Want Peace. — Widad Akreyi

The impact of armed conflict on children is everyone's responsibility. And it must be everyone's concern. — Graca Machel

Together, cotton and slavery would ensure that there would be no war. Since southerners did not want an armed conflict, it could only come as a result of northern aggression. But northerners would be insane to attempt to challenge the South militarily. Alexander Stephens, soon to become Vice-President of the Confederacy, was not an ardent secessionist. But he struck the same note as the most extreme secessionist when he declared that there was "not a flourishing village or hamlet in the North, to say nothing of their towns and cities, that does not owe its prosperity to Southern cotton". Moreover "England, with her millions of people and billions upon billions of pounds sterling, could not survive six months without it". — John Ashworth

War provides some people with a sense of purposefulness. The drumbeat of war quickens the pulse of neighbors, relatives, tribes, and nations. Hostile nations amass weapons of destruction claiming that they seek peace through deterrence. When war comes, advocates of arms galvanize the citizenry by proclaiming the inevitability of conflict. Each side's propaganda machine cast the campaign of present war as the next Great War. Generals brashly promote armed conflict as the war to end all other wars. Saber-rattlers proclaim that the opposition's militant disciples instituted this ordeal of conquest and destruction. — Kilroy J. Oldster

Come on, people. Doesn't anybody remember how to take a big old knife, whack open a pumpkin, scrape out the seeds, and bake it? We can carve a face onto it, but can't draw and quarter it? Are we not a nation known worldwide for our cultural zest for blowing up flesh, on movie and video screens and/or armed conflict? Are we in actual fact too squeamish to stab a large knife into a pumpkin? Wait till our enemies find out. — Barbara Kingsolver

There would be no need for political power in the Marxist sense of the organized power of one class used to oppress another. Nor, given Marx's idea that communism would come first to the most industrially advanced societies, and would be international in character, would there be any need for the state in the sense of an organization existing to defend the nation against attacks from other nations. Relieved from oppressive conditions that bring their interests into conflict, people would voluntarily co-operate with each other. The political state resting on armed force would become obsolete; its place would be taken by 'an association, in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all' (CM 238). — Anonymous

The role of democracy is not to banish disagreement but rather to prevent political disagreements from devolving into armed conflict. — Michael C. Munger

Universal ratification of the Optional Protocol on the Involvement of Children in Armed Conflict will establish an international moral consensus that no child should take part in hostilities or be involuntarily recruited and that former child soldiers should be assisted by their governments after a life of violence and distress. — Ban Ki-moon

Armed conflict between nations is a nightmare to me, but if I were convinced that any nation had made up its mind to dominate the world by fear of its force I should feel it should be resisted. — Neville Chamberlain

Men and women are learning animals. If you do not see what they have learned, you're blind. They are creatures ever changing, ever improving, ever expanding their vision and the capacity of their hearts. You are not fair to them when you speak of this as the most bloody century; you are not seeing the light that shines ever more radiantly on account of the darkness; you are not. seeing the evolution of the human soul! ... ... True, what you say about war. Yes, and the cries of the dying, I too have heard them; we have all heard them, through all the decades; and even now, the world is shocked by daily reports of armed conflict. But it is the outcry against these horrors which is the light I speak of; it's the attitudes which were never possible in the past. It is the intolerance of thinking men and women in power who for the first time in the history of the human race truly want to put an end to injustice in all forms.
Marius to Akasha (The Vampire Chronicles) — Anne Rice

Try to be pleasant to one another, get plenty of fresh air, read a good book now and then, depose your government when it suspends the free press, try to use the mechanism of the state to adjudicate fairly and employ diplomatic means wherever possible to avoid armed conflict. — Jasper Fforde

The world is rapidly being divided into two camps, the comradeship of anti-Christ and the brotherhood of Christ. The lines between these two are being drawn. How long the battle will be we know not whether swords will have to be unsheathed we know not whether blood will have to be shed we know not whether it will be an armed conflict we know not. But in a conflict between truth and darkness, truth cannot lose. — Fulton J. Sheen

Thanks to superior organization, the Egyptian armed forces scored a dual victory, on land and sea, over that second alliance. The fleet of the "Peoples of the North" was entirely destroyed and the invasion route through the Delta was cut. At the same time a third coalition of the same white-skinned Indo-Aryans was being assembled, again in Libya, against the Black Egyptian nation. Yet, this was not a racial conflict in the modern sense. To be sure, the two hostile groups were fully conscious of their ethnic and racial differences, but it was much more a question of the great movement of disinherited peoples of the north toward richer and more advanced countries. Ramses III demolished that third coalition as he had destroyed the first two.... As a result of this third victory over the Indo-Aryans, he took an exceptional number of prisoners. — Cheikh Anta Diop

Readiness,' far far from assuring peace, has at all times and in all countries been instrumental in precipitating armed conflicts. — Emma Goldman

Some people view Gene as a man with a wild futuristic utopian fantasy, but that's too simple. Star Trek did not promise that people would magically become inherently "better," but that they would progress, always reaching for their highest potential and noblest goals, even if it took centuries of taking two steps forward and one step back. Ideally, humankind would be guided in its quest by reason and justice. The ultimate futility of armed conflict, terrorism, dictatorial rule, prejudice, disregard for the environment, and exercising power for its own sake was demonstrated time and again — Nichelle Nichols