When governments state that certain events have not happened, and yet we have the victims before us to testify that they did, government loses its credibility, and it loses its authority. We see before us today governments that lack natural authority and have to make up for that by the use of force. They do not have the support of the people because they are not trusted by the people. We hear many fine words seeking national unity, cooperation and harmony, yet, almost in the same breath orders are given to military units to shoot civilians, protesters are rounded up, many disappear, many are tortured. No government which governs by the use of force can survive except by force. There is no going back because force begets force and the perpetrators of crimes live in fear that they might become victims in their turn.
- Bishop Carlos Felipe Ximenes Belo [Reconciliation Speech of 24/2/99 at St Mary's Cathedral Hall, Sydney, NSW]

The death of a single human being is too heavy a price for the vindication of any principle, however sacred.
- Daniel Berrigan ===

What our leaders and pundits never let slip is that the terrorists – whatever else they might be – might also be rational human beings; which is to say that in their own minds they have a rational justification for their actions. Most terrorists are people deeply concerned by what they see as social, political, or religious injustice and hypocrisy, and the immediate grounds for their terrorism is often retaliation for an action of the United States...
- William Blum

... No "terrorist" gene is known to exist or is likely to be found... Surely the(y), and their supporters were afflicted by something that caused their metamorphosis from normal human beings capable of gentleness and affection into desperate, maddened, fiends with nothing but murder in their hearts and minds. What was that? Simple logic says that we must go to the roots of terror. Only a fool can believe that the services of a suicidal terrorist can be purchased, or that they can be bred at will anywhere.
- Ouch Borith, Permanent Representative Of The Kingdom Of Cambodia to the UN (10/03/2001)

So let us regard this as settled: what is morally wrong can never be advantageous, even when it enables you to make some gain that you believe to be to your advantage. The mere act of believing that some wrongful course of action constitutes an advantage is pernicious.
- Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43 B.C.)

Political history is largely an account of mass violence and of the expenditure of vast resources to cope with mythical fears and hopes.
- Murray Edelman

War seems to me to be a mean, contemptible thing: I would rather behacked in pieces than take part in such an abominable business. And yet so high, in spite of everything, is my opinion of the human race that I believe this bogey would have disappeared long ago, had the sound sense of the nations not been systematically corrupted by commercial and political interests acting through the schools and the Press.
- Albert Einstein

There are some whose only reason for inciting war is to use it as a means to exercise their tyranny over their subjects more easily. For in times of peace the authority of the assembly, the dignity of the magistrates, the force of the laws stand in the way to some extent of the ruler doing what he likes. But once war is declared then the whole business of state is subject to the will of a few... They demand as much money as they like. Why say more?
- Erasmus of Rotterdam (1469-1536), [Adages IV.i.1]

The direct use of force is such a poor solution to any problem, it is generally employed only by small children and large nations.
- David Friedman

War, we have come to believe, is a spectator sport. The military and the press... have turned war into a vast video arcade game. Its very essence – death – is hidden from public view.
- Chris Hedges, Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter for New York Times

The bad thing of war is, that it makes more evil people than it can take away.
- Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), German philosopher

Non-violence is a powerful and just weapon which cuts without wounding and ennobles the man who wields it.
- Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968), Clergyman, Civil Rights Leader

They asked if our own nation wasn't using massive doses of violence to solve its problems, to bring about the changes it wanted. Their questions hit home, and I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today – my own government. For the sake of those boys, for the sake of this government, for the sake of hundreds of thousands trembling under our violence, I cannot be silent.
- Rev. Martin Luther King [4 April 1967; Speech delivered by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., on April 4, 1967, at a meeting of Clergy and Laity Concerned at Riverside Church in New York City]

If the innocent honest Man must quietly quit all he has for Peace sake, to him who will lay violent hands upon it, I desire it may be considered what kind of Peace there will be in the World, which consists only in Violence and Rapine; and which is to be maintained only for the benefit of Robbers and Oppressors.
- John Locke (1632-1704) English philosopher and political theorist. Considered the ideological progenitor of the American Revolution. [Second Treatise of Civil Government (1690), #228 (Lasslet Edition, Cambridge University Press, 1960), p. 465.]

Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes. And armies, and debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few.

In war, too, the discretionary power of the Executive [President] is extended. Its influence in dealing out offices, honors, and emoluments is multiplied; and all the means of seducing the minds, are added to those of subduing the force of the people. The same malignant aspect in republicanism may be traced in the inequality of fortunes, and the opportunities of fraud, growing out of a state of war...and in the degeneracy of manners and morals, engendered by both. No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.
- James Madison, 4th President of the USA [April 20, 1795]

In violence, we forget who we are.
- Mary McCarthy (1912-1989), American novelist and critic

He is not strong and powerful who throweth people down; but he is strong who witholdeth himself from anger.
- Muhammad

The fact is that every war suffers a kind of progressive degradation with every month that it continues, because such things as individual liberty and a truthful press are simply not compatible with military efficiency...
- George Orwell [Homage to Catalonia]

You have to show violence the way it is. If you don't show it realistically, then that's immoral and harmful. If you don't upset people, then that's obscenity.
- Roman Polanski

If you had only known the man you were trying to kill, you would have risked your life, to save his.
- Harry Pope, WW2, Pacific USS LSM 41, 1944 - Occupied Japan, 1950

It's odd how those who dismiss the peace movement as utopian, don't hesitate to proffer the most absurdly dreamy reasons for going to war: to stamp out terrorism, install democracy, eliminate fascism, and most entertainingly, to "rid the world of evil-doers."
- Arundhati Roy

There is no flag large enough to cover the shame of killing innocent people for a purpose which is unattainable.
- U.S. historian Howard Zinn [1993]