Quotes & Sayings About War Albert Einstein

I recently discussed with an intelligent and well-disposed man the threat of another war, which in my opinion would seriously endanger the existence of mankind, and I remarked that only a supranational organization would offer protection from that danger. Thereupon my visitor, very calmly and coolly, said to me: "Why are you so deeply opposed to the disappearance of the human race?". — Albert Einstein

We have emerged from a war in which we had to accept the degradingly low ethical standards of the enemy. But instead of feeling liberated from his standards, and set free to restore the sanctity of human life and the safety of noncombatants, we are in effect making the low standards of the enemy in the last war our own for the present. Thus we are starting toward another war degraded by our own choice. — Albert Einstein

This must be changed, if only in America's own interest. The last war has shown that there are no longer any barriers between the continents and that the destinies of all countries are closely interwoven. The people of this country must realize that they have a great responsibility in the sphere of international politics. The part of passive spectator is unworthy of this country and is bound in the end to lead to disaster all round. — Albert Einstein

Anybody who really wants to abolish war must resolutely declare himself in favor of his own country's resigning a portion of sovereignty in place of international institutions. — Albert Einstein

To my mind, to kill in war is not a whit better than to commit ordinary murder. — Albert Einstein

I do not know how the Third World War will be fought, but I can tell you what they will use in the Fourth - rocks. - Albert Einstein, in an interview with Alfred Werner for Liberal Judaism (1949) — Robert Masello

There is one ray of hope. It seems to me that today the responsible leaders of the several peoples have, in the main, the honest will to abolish war. — Albert Einstein

May the conscience and the common sense of the peoples be awakened, so that we may reach a new stage in the life of nations, where people will look back on war as an incomprehensible aberration of their forefathers! — Albert Einstein

I don't know what weapons will be used in the Third World War. But I can tell you what they'll use in the Fourth - rocks! — Albert Einstein

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. — Albert Einstein

The war is won, but the peace is not. — Albert Einstein

[There is] a duty in refusing to cooperate in any undertaking that violates the Constitutional rights of the individual. This holds in particular for all inquisitions that are concerned with the private life and the political affiliations of the citizens. — Albert Einstein

Mere praise of peace is easy and ineffective. What is needed is acitve participation in the fight against war and everything which leads to it. — Albert Einstein

The Nuremberg Trial of the German war criminals was tacitly based on the recognition of the principle: criminal actions cannot be excused if committed on government orders; conscience supersedes the authority of the law of the state. — Albert Einstein

I have survived two wars, two wives and Hitler. — Albert Einstein

When men are engaged in war and conquest, the tools of science become as dangerous as a razor in the hands of a child of three. We must not condemn man because his inventiveness and patient conquest of the forces of nature are being exploited for false and destructive purposes. Rather, we should remember that the fate of mankind hinges entirely upon man's moral development. — Albert Einstein

We must dedicate our lives to drying up the source of war: ammunition factories. — Albert Einstein

As long as armies exist, any serious quarrel will lead to war. — Albert Einstein

As long as there will be a man, there will be wars. — Albert Einstein

Mankind must give up war in the Atomic Era. What is at stake is the life or death of humanity. — Albert Einstein

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

With all my heart I believe that the world's present system of sovereign nations can only lead to barbarism, war and inhumanity, and that only world law can assure progress towards a civilized peaceful community. — Albert Einstein

It cannot be doubted that the world crisis and the suffering and privations of the people resulting from the crisis are in some measure responsible for the dangerous upheavals of which we are the witness. In such periods discontent breeds hatred, and hatred leads to acts of violence and revolution, and often even to war. — Albert Einstein

A country cannot simultaneously prepare and prevent war. — Albert Einstein

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

There are two ways of resisting war: the legal way and the revolutionary way. The legal way involves the offer of alternatinve service not as a privilege for a few but as a right for all. The revolutionary view involves an uncompromising resistance, with a view to breaking the power of militarism in time of peace or the resources of the state in time of war. — Albert Einstein

We must begin to inculcate our children against militarism by educating them in the spirit of pacifism. Our schoolbooks glorify war and conceal it's horror. I would teach peace rather than war. — Albert Einstein

Nor do I take into account a danger of starting a chain reaction of a scope great enough to
destroy part or all of the planet ... But it is not necessary to imagine the earth being destroyed like a nova by a stellar explosion to understand vividly the grow ing scope of atomic war and to recognize that unless another war is prevented it is likely to bring destruction on a scale never before held possible, and even now hardly conceived, and that little civilization would survive it. — Albert Einstein

In my opinion there is no other salvation for civilization and even for the human race than the creation of a world government with security on the basis of law. As long as there are sovereign states with their separate armaments and armament secrets, new world wars cannot be avoided. — Albert Einstein

War cannot be humanized. It can only be abolished. — Albert Einstein

My pacifism is not based on any intellectual theory but on a deep antipathy to every form of cruelty and hatred. — Albert Einstein

To have security against atomic bombs and against the other biological weapons, we have to prevent war, for if we cannot prevent war every nation will use every means that is at their disposal; and in spite of all promises they make, they will do it. At the same time, so long as war is not prevented, all the governments of the nations have to prepare for war, and if you have to prepare for war, then you are in a state where you cannot abolish war. — Albert Einstein

Every thoughtful, well-meaning and conscientious human being
should assume in time of peace,
the solemn and unconditional obligation
not to participate in any war, for any reason
or to lend support of any kind, whether direct or indirect. — Albert Einstein

Peace is not merely the absence of war but the presence of justice, of law, of order - in short, of government. — Albert Einstein

One does not make wars less likely by formulationg rules of warfare ...
war cannot be humanized. It can only be eliminated ... — Albert Einstein

The conflict that exists today is no more than an old-style struggle for power, once again presented to mankind in semireligious trappings. The difference is that, this time, the development of atomic power has imbued the struggle with a ghostly character; for both parties know and admit that, should the quarrel deteriorate into actual war, mankind is doomed. — Albert Einstein

If I had known they were going to do this, I would have become a shoemaker. — Albert Einstein

This subject brings me to that vilest offspring of the herd mind
the odious militia. The man who enjoys marching in line and file to the strains of music falls below my contempt; he received his great brain by mistake
the spinal cord would have been amply sufficient. This heroism at command, this senseless violence, this accursed bombast of patriotism
how intensely I despise them! War is low and despicable, and I had rather be smitten to shreds than participate in such doings. — Albert Einstein

You cannot prepare for war and peace at the same time. — Albert Einstein

Relations between the Facist regime and the American government were rapidly cooling. Italian newspapers did nothing to help, charging that Jews ruled the United States. They offered a list of the all-Jewish makeup of what was said to be the likely next American cabinet, headed by the President Bernard Baruch and Vice President Albert Einstein. Leon Trotsky was slated to be secretary of war; the face that he was neither American nor lived in the country was apparently no impediment. — David I. Kertzer

Striving for peace and preparing for war are incompatible with each other, and in our time more so than ever. — Albert Einstein

We must be prepared to make the same heroic sacrifices for the cause of peace that we make ungrudgingly for the cause of war. — Albert Einstein

The man with the greatest soul will always face the greatest war with the low minded person. — Albert Einstein

The next world war will be fought with stones. — Albert Einstein

Is it not better for a man to die for a cause in which he believes, such as peace, than to suffer for a cause in which he does not believe, such as war? — Albert Einstein

Today we must abandon competition and secure cooperation. This must be the central fact in all our considerations of international affairs; otherwise we face certain disaster. Past thinking and methods did not prevent world wars. Future thinking must prevent wars ... The stakes are immense, the task colossal the time is short. But we may hope- we must hope- that man's own creation, man's own genius, will not destroy him. — Albert Einstein

I do not believe that civilization will be wiped out in a war fought with the atomic bomb. Perhaps two-thirds of the people of the earth will be killed. — Albert Einstein

I believe serious progress (in the abolition of war) can be achieved only when men become organized on an international scale and refuse, as a body, to enter military or war service. — Albert Einstein

I appeal to all men and women, whether they be eminent or humble, to declare that they will refuse to give any further assistance to war or the preparation of war. — Albert Einstein

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

Einstein was attending a music salon in Germany before the second world war, with the violinist S. Suzuki. Two Japanese women played a German piece of music and a woman in the audience exclaimed: "How wonderful! It sounds so German!" Einstein responded: "Madam, people are all the same." — Albert Einstein

So long as the individual state, despite its official condemnation of war, has to consider the possibility of engaging in war, it must influence and educate its citizens - and its youth in particular - in such a way that they can easily be converted into efficient soldiers in the event of war. Therefore it is compelled not only to cultivate a technical-military training and type of thinking but also to implant a spirit of national vanity in its people in order to secure their inner readiness for the outbreak of war. — Albert Einstein

As long as there are sovereign nations possessing great power, war is inevitable. — Albert Einstein

I would teach peace rather than war, love rather than hate. — Albert Einstein

I have made no secret, either privately or publicly, of any sense of outrage over officially enforced military and war service. I regard it as a duty of conscience to fight against such barbarous enslavement of the individual with every means available. — Albert Einstein

I would absolutely refuse any direct or indirect war service and would try to persuade my friends to do the same, regardless of the reasons for the cause of a war. — Albert Einstein

It seems to me an utterly futile task to prescribe rules and limitations for the conduct of war. War is not a game; hence one cannot wage war by rules as one would in playing games. Our fight must be against war itself. The masses of people can most effectively fight the institution of war by establishing an organization for the absolute refusal of military service. — Albert Einstein

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

Every man has a right over his own life and war destroys lives that were full of promise; it forces the individual into situations that shame his manhood, obliging him to murder fellow men, against his will.
Sigmund Freud wrote to Albert Einstein — Sigmund Freud

Those who have an interest in keeping the machinery of war going will stop at nothing to make public opinion subservient to their murderous ends. — Albert Einstein

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

You cannot prevent and prepare for war at the same time. — Albert Einstein

I realized that more and more I was saying, 'It seems to me that we have come to the time war ought to be given up. It no longer makes sense to kill 20 million or 40 million people because of a dispute between two nations who are running things, or decisions made by the people who really are running things. It no longer makes sense. Nobody wins. Nobody benefits from destructive war of this sort and there is all of this human suffering.' And Einstein was saying the same thing of course. So that is when we decided - my wife and I - that first, I was pretty effective as a speaker. Second, I better start boning up, studying these other fields so that nobody could stand up and say, 'Well, the authorities say such and such '. — Linus Pauling

Scientists expected that the Super, a fusion or "thermonuclear" weapon, would be an awesomely destructive horror that could unleash the equivalent of several million tons of TNT. This was hundreds of times more powerful than atomic bombs. A few well-placed hydrogen bombs could kill millions of people. Among the foes of development were famous scientists who had supported atomic development during World War II. One was Albert Einstein, who took to the radio to say that "general annilihation beckons. — James T. Patterson