Top 100 Civilians Quotes
#1. A few months ago, and again this week, bin Laden publicly vowed to publicly wage a terrorist war against America, saying, and I quote, "We do not differentiate between those dressed in military uniforms and civilians. They're all targets." Their mission is murder, and their history is bloody.
William J. Clinton
#2. He wondered how much trouble he could get into for shooting non-American civilians.
Terry Pratchett
#3. If you chase the market, it's not going to come to you. You have to have faith in yourself. I think one of the differences in what I call 'civilians' and 'authors' is that we have an antenna hat buzzing all the time.
David Morrell
#4. Thousands of civilians have lost their lives to terrorist attacks inside Pakistan, and thousands more will - because, unlike the Pakistani government, which has no coherent policy to deal with the radicals, the Taliban have one to deal with Pakistan and its citizens.
Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy
#5. Any organization or any individual that targets civilians and kills them for political agenda is a terrorist organization.
Feisal Abdul Rauf
#6. Our mission is to speak the truth to power. We send home that first rough draft of history. We can and do make a difference in exposing the horrors of war and especially the atrocities that befall civilians.
Marie Colvin
#7. A favorite Palestinian tactic was to set up a couple of cannons or rocket launchers in a Christian village, fire a few rounds into Israel, and then quickly withdraw, knowing that Israel's return fire would fall on innocent Christian civilians.
Brigitte Gabriel
#8. Unprovoked attacks on Israel's borders, murdering Israeli soldiers, taking Israeli hostages and showering rockets targeting and killing Israeli civilians are not furthering any legitimate goal.
Alcee Hastings
#9. Whatever the lengths to which others may go, His Majesty's Government will never resort to the deliberate attack on women and children and other civilians for purposes of mere terrorism.
Neville Chamberlain
#10. The longer the war drags on, more and more civilians are getting killed.
Sergey Akhromeyev
#11. Violence against embassies and civilians must be categorically condemned. At the same time, we must attempt to understand why such events occur.
Tariq Ramadan
#12. Supposedly, going to war initiates you into this gnostic priesthood of people who've had a liminal experience forever separating them from civilians. Except ... you go there, and it is what it is. A form of human activity as varied as any other.
Phil Klay
#13. Some typewriters in Whitehall, in the Pentagon, killed more civilians than our little A4 could have ever hoped to.
Thomas Pynchon
#14. Peace is a fulltime job. It's protecting civilians, overseeing elections, and disarming ex-combatants. Peace, like war, must be waged.
George Clooney
#15. To be a good reporter, writing about war, you have to write about the people. It's not about the tanks or the RPGs or military strategy. It's always about the effect war has on civilians, on society, and how it disrupts and destroys lives.
Janine Di Giovanni
#16. ISIS BEHEADS CIVILIANS WHILE WORLD KEEPS FORGETTING WHAT VICTIMS' SOULS R BEGGING:
HUMANITY SAVE KOBANE
Widad Akreyi
#17. We civilians defend our own right to free speech. The military in Iraq does not defend our right to free speech.
Medea Benjamin
#18. Asymmetrical warfare is a euphemism for terrorism, just like collateral damage is a euphemism for killing innocent civilians.
Alan Dershowitz
#19. History of warfare has not yet enabled any army, any civilized army, the army of a democracy like Israel, to be able to deal with a ruthless terrorist enemy that uses civilians as a human shield without having some incidental civilian casualties.
Benjamin Netanyahu
#20. Secondly, the Government of Sudan should commit to the disarmament and control of the Janjaweed militia and ensure that the targeting of civilians ceases immediately.
Jan Egeland
#21. We attacked selected military targets of the P.L.O. Around, civilians were hurt, I don't want to deny it. Very regrettable, very regrettable. We regret it deeply.
Menachem Begin
#22. Tonight, savagery in the streets of Iraq. Ten Americans die in a single day, four of them civilians murdered, mutilated and dragged through the streets ... What drives American civilians to risk death in Iraq? In this economy it may be, for some, the only job they can find.
Dan Rather
#23. It is up to you civilians to give a hand to show that we intend to take our responsibilities to maintain the integrity of our Empire, by giving the world proof that we have not all sold out to the Jew or Plutocrat.
John Amery
#24. Every day, police officers see the hairy, smelly underbelly of humanity, the most depraved and evil shit human beings are capable of, shit civilians thankfully can't imagine.
Lisa Genova
#25. If Americans were attacked, it does change the equation. The problem is, is that with regard to this is there've been horrendous killings of civilians with conventional weapons.
Rand Paul
#26. It should surprise no one that modern soldiers return home just as conflicted and detached as previous generations. The difference is that in the age of vapid American decadence, their simpler fundamental values are largely irrelevant to we civilians.
Tiffany Madison
#27. Under international law, the responsibility for protecting civilians in conflict falls on the belligerents. Under military occupation, responsibility for the welfare of the population falls on the occupiers.
Kofi Annan
#28. Military strength in reserve is better than military strength being reigned upon the other side including all of its innocent civilians.
Theodore C. Sorensen
#29. We know broadly from research is that religiosity does not correlate with sympathy for terrorism. It's actually quite the opposite. The more religious someone is, the more often they go to the mosque, the more likely they are to actually reject attacks on civilians.
Chuck Todd
#30. Do we really think that the United States will have the protection of innocent Afghans in mind if it rains terror down on the Afghan infrastructure? We are supposedly fighting them because they immorally killed innocent civilians. That made them evil. If we do the same, are we any less immoral?
George Lakoff
#31. Do not forget that the armed forces are the servants of the people. You do not make national policy; it is we, the civilians, who decide these issues and it is your duty to carry out these tasks with which you are entrusted.
Muhammad Ali Jinnah
#32. One day the world will notice that while E=mc2 ultimately gives you 177,000 dead Japanese civilians, F=ma lets you skate across a frozen lake on a winter's night, the wind caressing your face as you glide toward the hot-chocolate stand on the far shore.
James K. Morrow
#33. Peace ... is a morbid condition, due to a surplus of civilians, which war seeks to remedy.
Cyril Connolly
#34. The Russians would lose 305,000 troops in the last 42 miles approaching Berlin
about the number of American army soldiers who died in all of World War II. Of the 125,000 of Berlin's civilians who died in the Russian attack, 6,400 were suicides;
Andrei Cherny
#36. All sorts of artillery installations, rockets and tank units that are firing on civilians in Kosovo should be neutralized. If that means air strikes, then NATO should carry out air strikes.
Fatos Nano
#37. When Colonel Gadhafi started using his air force against civilians on the ground, we did not hesitate. Then we supported the resolution of the Security Council, which introduced arms embargo for Libya.
Sergei Lavrov
#38. Obviously this is the world descending into worse and worse standards of targeting civilians both in state violence in Iraq, Gaza and so on and the terrorist retaliation.
Clare Short
#39. Could anything justify the extermination of civilians on such a scale?
Wilfred Burchett
#40. The only place you and I disagree is with regard to the bombing. You're so goddamned concerned about the civilians, and I (in contrast) don't give a damn. I don't care." ... "I'd rather use the nuclear bomb ... Does that bother you? I just want you to think big.
Richard M. Nixon
#41. Evacuation on September 11. It was aided greatly by changes made by the Port Authority in response to the 1993 bomb= ing and by the training of both Port Authority personnel and civilians after that time. Stairwells remained lit near
Anonymous
#42. How many good soldiers will die, saving these civilians? And how many people will shrug later and say: That's their job.
Ann Aguirre
#44. I believe the connection is growing stronger. Just to think that 40-plus years ago, service members would return from combat to get spit on by so many civilians. Regardless of what we think about a conflict, we must always honor and be grateful for those men and women who serve.
Lee Zeldin
#45. It is a rule of international law that weapons and methods of warfare which do not discriminate between combatants and civilians should never be used.
Sean MacBride
#46. Even during the years of the Cold War, the intense confrontation between the Soviet Union and the United States, we always avoided any direct clash between our civilians and, most certainly, between our military.
Vladimir Putin
#47. Human beings around the world have to be taught to go, 'Tamil equals Tamil civilians first, and the Tamil Tiger is a separate thing.' And both of those groups are different. It's like a square and a circle.
M.I.A.
#48. We are using missile defense to protect our civilians, and they're using their civilians to protect their missiles.
Benjamin Netanyahu
#49. That's odd. It looks almost as if Nick is picking a fight with that elephant."
"Well, the elephant started it."
"That's irrelevant. Fighting with civilians is against the rules. Go break it up."
-Admiral Breya Andreyasn & Sergeant Schlock
Howard Tayler
#50. Patriotism, in the trenches, was too remote a sentiment, and at once rejected as fit only for civilians, or prisoners. A new arrival who talked patriotism would soon be told to cut it out.
Robert Graves
#51. Common sense should tell us that there is no reason for civilians to have access to easily concealable handguns with the capability to shoot through body armor.
Carl Levin
#52. At least 23,000 civilians have also died in the Iraqi killing field and the U.S. is stuck in a quagmire.
Charles B. Rangel
#53. Miss Marks, you see, makes her living by ... entertaining young, and not so young, sailors ... or any other members of the armed forced, or civilians, who enjoy ... being entertained by ladies who ... entertain.
Rick Yancey
#54. Killing innocent, unarmed civilians is morally wrong even if it is for some perceived higher cause. It is the very essence of terrorism. By this concept, suicide bombers and stealth bombers are both terrorists and should be equally condemned.
Dimitris Mita
#55. Adversity often leads people to depend more on one another, and that closeness can produce a kind of nostalgia for the hard times that even civilians are susceptible to.
Sebastian Junger
#56. Hamas, they are using civilians' lives, they are using children, they are using the suffering of people every day to achieve their goals. And this is what I hate.
Mosab Hassan Yousef
#58. In this atmosphere of doubt why was the extreme risk approved? Partly because exasperation at the failure of all her efforts at intimidation had led to an all-or-nothing state of mind and a helpless yielding like Bethmann's by the civilians to the military.
Barbara W. Tuchman
#59. England looked strange to us returned soldiers. We could not understand the war-madness that ran wild everywhere, looking for a pseudo-military outlet. The civilians talked a foreign language. I found serious conversation with my parents all but impossible.
Robert Graves
#60. The gas-cylinders had by this time been put into position on the front line. A special order came round imposing severe penalties on anyone who used any word but "accessory" in speaking of the gas. This was to keep it secret, but the French civilians knew all about the scheme long before this.
Robert Graves
#61. Protecting Afghan civilians is the cornerstone of our mission.
John R. Allen
#62. Well, the U.N. Security Council resolution 1973 is very clear. It says all necessary measures to be taken to protect civilians and civilian areas. I mean, that to me is very clear.
Mike Jackson
#63. We are at war to liberate Iraq, to protect the people of the United States and other countries from the devastating impact of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction being used by terrorists or the Iraqi government to kill thousands of innocent civilians.
Paul Cellucci
#64. Just as in policing there is an emphasis on civilians to help with paperwork, we must free up trained and experienced social workers to focus on children, not bureaucracy.
Andy Sawford
#65. The war against terrorism should not be used to interfere with an independent, sovereign state. We need to identify concrete terrorist targets and do no harm to civilians.
Nong Duc Manh
#66. Israel uses weapons to safeguard civilians. Hamas uses civilians to safeguard weapons.
Mark Pellegrino
#67. But if we wait on this wedding, you can make my dress crimson. I will not wear gold if my Imperial nobility is bought with the blood of innocent civilians who died while I had a party.
Elise Kova
#68. Until 1943, when Stalingrad and bombing began to change everything, most German civilians save those who lost loved ones found the conflict a numbing presence rather than a trauma.
Max Hastings
#69. Civilians are arrested every single day - including innocent ones - and they must wait until their day in court in order to argue their side of the story. Police officers must be subjected to the same rules.
Al Sharpton
#70. It's angering that not everybody has signed this treaty to ban landmines. It's disgusting, it really is, because it is fact that (mines) hurt a high percentage of civilians. They're not effective in any other real way. They've enough weapons for war.
Angelina Jolie
#71. Maybe you didn't understand American foreign policy or why we were at war. Maybe you never will. But it doesn't matter. You held up your hand and said, "I'm willing to die for these worthless civilians.
Phil Klay
#73. The military mind tends to be conservative, realistic and historical. The civilian mind tends to be liberal, idealistic and Utopian. Journalists, obviously, are civilians, and they tend to distrust, and to suspect, the military's motives.
Mark Riebling
#74. The steep decline in America's image and standing after 9/11 is a direct reflection of global distaste for the instruments of American hard power: the Iraq invasion, Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, torture, rendition, Blackwater's killings of Iraqi civilians.
Shashi Tharoor
#75. Finally, I am encouraged to note that the Security Council issued a statement today expressing its concern about the massive humanitarian crisis in Darfur and calling on all parties to the conflict to protect civilians and reach a ceasefire.
Jan Egeland
#76. Subjects in the experiments were sometimes unwitting civilians. At other times they were soldiers, prisoners, mental patients, sex offenders, cancer patients and other individuals who were unwitting, or who could not give meaningful informed consent.
Colin A. Ross
#77. It's never acceptable to target civilians. It violates the Geneva Accords, it violates the international law of war and it violates all principles of morality.
Alan Dershowitz
#78. I WILL FOLLOW ANYONE
AND THANK EVERYONE
WHO TRIES TO MAKE
A DIFFERENCE IN THE LIVES
OF VULNERABLE CIVILIANS
Widad Akreyi
#79. I think if Russia is really an honest signatory to the chemical weapons ban, if Syria wants to be, ultimately someone has to be responsible for killing civilians. And that's the hard part out of this.
Rand Paul
#80. They were civilians. Killing them was, at the very least, bad form. But then Julie whispered in the back of his mind, No one here is innocent, and he had to agree.
James S.A. Corey
#81. To protect civilians, the state needs sometimes to do things that are contrary to democratic behavior.
Anonymous
#82. We must all realise that the Israeli society is a military society - men and women. We cannot describe the society as civilian ... they are not civilians or innocent.
Yusuf Al-Qaradawi
#83. Oh, adjust yourself. You people have spent ten millennia playing at soldiers while becoming ever more dedicated civilians. We've spent the last thousand years trying hard to stay civilian while refining the legacy of a won galactic war.
Iain M. Banks
#84. They couldn't very well bag everyone wearing a cowboy hat. This was Texas, which meant there'd be plenty of hats, and besides, there was such a thing as civil rights ... and, worse, civilians with camera phones.
J. Fally
#85. American strategists have calculated the proportion of civilians killed in this century's major wars. In the First World War, 5 percent of those killed were civilians, in the Second World War 48 percent, while in a Third World War 90-95 percent would be civilians.
Colin Ward
#86. If civilians are killed in an attack on a military installation, it is certainly regrettable, but I will not morally blame the I.R.A. for it.
Peter T. King
#87. As a reporter, I embedded for modest stints with American soldiers in Afghanistan and Iraq. When I'm asked about those experiences, I always say - and mean - that we civilians don't deserve the soldiers we have.
Alex Berenson
#88. The proliferation of right-to-carry laws throughout the states has drawn plaintive complaints from the criminal element. They feel that it makes their profession too dangerous when the streets are full of "civilians" who may or may not be armed. Poor babies!
Jeff Cooper
#89. The destruction of civilian hamlets, the killing and the wounding of civilians, became vastly greater than it had been before, and it was very upsetting; but I still couldn't bring myself to understand that the policy itself was wrong.
Neil Sheehan
#90. There are no innocent civilians, so it doesn't bother me so much to be killing innocent bystanders.
Curtis LeMay
#91. You've got to forget about this civilian. Whenever you drop bombs, you're going to hit civilians.
Barry Goldwater
#92. In the history of battles and wars, the massacres of civilians were the main reason of revolutions success.
M.F. Moonzajer
#93. I messed up on the Vietnam Special, because I gave it to civilians? Only military men can handle that.
Si Robertson
#94. Today's terrorists are pursuing a distinct route. They are increasingly attacking civilians in symbolic targets, such as those of economic importance, or venues of bustling life like public transportation or entertainment, like nightclubs.
Cliff Stearns
#95. It is changing the face of terrorism. It is basically bringing it to the United States, to our great citizens. We know the terrorists are barbaric and murderers that attack innocent civilians, as they did in this case.
Hugh Shelton
#96. I am closer to the pacifist side, in that I think that the British response to German aggression, which was to try to starve the Continent into a state of revolt and to terrorize German civilians with bombing raids, was part of the total catastrophe.
Nicholson Baker
#97. After the war, they took Army dogs and rehabilitated them for civilian life. But they turned soldiers into civilians immediately, and let em sink or swim.
Audie Murphy
#98. A legitimate democracy cannot act against a terror organization because it is using civilians as a human shield, and therefore it should absorb attacks on its own civilians.
Benjamin Netanyahu
#99. I have issued instructions that while handling the situation in Upper Assam innocent civilians should not be harassed.
Sonia Gandhi
#100. We are battling fanatics who kidnap and behead civilians and shoot fleeing children in the back. There can be no dialogue with such people, and the American people understand this.
Kay Bailey Hutchison
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