Civilians Quotes

#1. Hezbollah must stop this cowardly blending in among women and children. I heard they were making statements that they were proud of losing fewer armed men than civilians. It's hard to see how they could be proud of such a situation.

Jan Egeland

#2. These mercenaries and hirelings kidnapped civilians in the Al-Faw Peninsula so that they might claim that they captured Iraqi soldiers.

Mohammed Saeed Al-Sahaf

#3. So, let me get this straight," Winston says. "Our plan is basically seduce the soldiers and civilians of Sector 45 into fighting with us?"
Kenji crossed his arms. "Yeah, it sounds like we're going to go all peacock and hope they find us attractive enough to mate with."
"Gross," Brendan frowns.

Tahereh Mafi

#4. For much of my life as a journalist, I've viewed myself as being embedded with civilians and with those people who live on the other side of the barrel of a gun.

Jeremy Scahill

#5. Except when war is waged in a desert, noncombatants, also known as civilians or 'the people,' constitute the great majority of those affected.

Martin Van Creveld

#6. Certainly, the murder of civilians for political statement did not just begin on September 11, 2001.

Cliff Stearns

#7. There are far more statues of soldiers out there than there are of civilians.

George Armstrong Custer

#8. Twenty-first century war adds new risks: more and more often there are no front lines, no central command, no rules of engagement - only a chaotic collision of politics, power, faith and bloodlust. Victims are as likely to be civilians as soldiers.

Nancy Gibbs

#9. How is it that I could run into a gunfight against overwhelming odds and put myself between bullets and civilians, but I couldn't scrape together enough courage to speak to the one person who mattered the most to me?

Ilona Andrews

#10. Civilians listened to officers, which said a lot about the intelligence of civilians.

Tom Clancy

#11. I think a lot of people, including me, clammed up when a civilian asked about battle, about war. It was fashionable. One of the most impressive ways to tell your war story is to refuse to tell it, you know. Civilians would then have to imagine all kinds of deeds of derring-do.

Kurt Vonnegut

#12. When things did go wrong for the IRA, when civilians were killed, I tried to put it in context, not defend it.

Peter T. King

#13. The Pentagon got fed up with its recruits getting ripped off by payday lenders and in 2007 got Congress to make it illegal to extend such loans to members of the military. But civilians remain fair game.

Timothy Noah

#14. I have no stories to sell. A lot of my relationships are with civilians, and no one wants to hear about those.

David Spade

#15. I disagreed with the conduct of the war, with bombing civilians, categorizing everyone as the enemy or simply as armed men, with the racism and the disregard for those people.

Joe Glenton

#16. I just want to say something. 655,000 Iraqi civilians are dead. Who are the terrorists?

Rosie O'Donnell

#17. You and your ship will immediately familiarize yourselves with the guidelines for dealing with citizen civilians. And you will follow them.

Ann Leckie

#18. It is vital that Iraq and the United States together send the clearest possible signal that those who commit acts of violence against American military forces and American civilians will not be rewarded with amnesty.

Ike Skelton

#19. The tragedy of civil wars in countries like Angola and Mozambique is that they left many civilians maimed. Poverty is the reason HIV/AIDS spread so rapidly in the African townships and slums. Poverty is the real killer.

Miriam Makeba

#20. No, the United States does not target civilians.

Douglas Feith

#21. You whiny little piece of shit," Rogan growled. Another punch. "We don't kill civilians. We don't show off in public and scare people." Another punch. "We don't abuse our power, you fucking moron. You're a disgrace.

Ilona Andrews

#22. You don't need any indictment in order to arrest someone; probable cause is sufficient to arrest civilians, so it must be enough to arrest police.

Al Sharpton

#23. The very nature of interstate war puts innocent civilians into great jeopardy, especially with modern technology.

Murray Rothbard

#24. Those people who kill women, children, and defenseless civilians are about as Muslim as mass murderer Christopher Columbus was a Christian.

Immortal Technique

#25. The Palestinians fight for their rights and their land using stones and catapults but the Israelis retaliate with disproportional and overwhelming power by using bullets and bombs thus killing so many innocent civilians

Bernard Membe

#26. We are protecting civilians. We are unarmed. We are no threat to you. Please do not shoot.

Rachel Corrie

#27. Holy Christ! There was a frickin' melee in the alley. Lessers. Brothers. Two civilians crouched and quivering in the middle. And big bad Butch O'Neal.

J.R. Ward

#28. The purpose of modern warfare is to slay as many civilians as possible.

David Mitchell

#29. There is no effort to acknowledge some equivalent accountability by associating "terrorism" with all violence that is deliberately aimed at civilians, either directly or as foreseeable effects of violent acts, whether the actor is a non-state individual or group or the state.

Richard A. Falk

#30. This policy represents a massive injustice against Iraqi civilians, ... and it must be ended - not after Mr. Clinton leaves office, but now.

Ralph Nader

#31. It is a myth that rape is an inevitable part of conflict ... There is nothing inevitable about it. It is a weapon of war aimed at civilians. It has nothing to do with sex - everything to do with power. It is done to torture and humiliate innocent people and often very young children.

Angelina Jolie

#32. Israelis cannot be blamed for the conflicts and civilians casualties nor do the Palestinians. We can argue endlessly about it, the only one that can be blamed for this lasting battle is the Saudis fueling the conflicts for enduring their supremacy in the Arab world.

M.F. Moonzajer

#33. I believe the United States should make the protection of Syrian civilians from war crimes and crimes against humanity a higher priority.

Bob Casey Jr.

#34. He had no racial feeling - not because he was superior to his brother civilians, but because he had matured in a different atmosphere, where the herd instinct does not flourish.

E. M. Forster

#35. In 30 minutes, at high noon, more than 200 civilians are killed. Zionism carries out a massacre in the city of Lydda.

Ari Shavit

#36. If civilians are going to be killed, I would rather have them be their civilians than our civilians.

Stuart Symington

#37. I wouldn't characterize anybody who fought in Vietnam as a war hero. In 23 bombing sorties, there must have been civilians that were killed and there's no heroism to that.

Medea Benjamin

#38. I would wager that the number of civilians that were killed [in] a typical week under Saddam Hussein was probably more than we killed during the weeks we were at war there.

Bill Maher

#39. I've always had a lot of time for servicemen. Yet there's been this bad relationship between civilians and the armed services. We say to soldiers, 'We want you when we want you, but stay away in peacetime. We're proud of you, but keep away from my daughter and don't come drinking in my pub.'

Ross Kemp

#40. I took a trip in 2004, a year after the war started in Iraq. I played music on the streets of Baghdad for Iraqi civilians. I'd also play for U.S. soldiers at night when they were off duty in the bars. Then I would talk to people, and I would film them and ask them about their life and the conflict.

Michael Franti

#41. When John Murtha, for example, said the Marines are killing innocent civilians in cold blood.

George W. Bush

#42. In my 20 years as a photographer, covering conflicts from Bosnia to Gaza to Iraq to Afghanistan, injured civilians and soldiers have passed through my life many times.

Anja Niedringhaus

#43. We are in control, they are in a state of hysteria. Losers, they think that by killing civilians and trying to distort the feelings of the people they will win. I think they will not win, those bastards.

Mohammed Saeed Al-Sahaf

#44. Warfare against civilians must never be answered in kind. Terror must never be answered with terror.

Caleb Carr

#45. Civilians who volunteer generally wish to escape, not to share, privatizations worse than their own.

Barbara W. Tuchman

#46. Since cowardice must occur at a time and place where an enemy either has already appeared or may yet turn up, servicemen in peacetime - and ordinary civilians - can breathe a sigh of relief. If you are yellow-bellied back home, you're not technically a coward.

Charles Duhigg

#47. To live, mankind must recover its essential humanness and its innate divinity; men must recover their capacity for humility, sanity and integrity; soldier and civilians must see their hope in some other world than one completely dominated by the physical and chemical sciences.

George Stanley

#48. A lot of people who didn't understand the need for civilians to bear arms on Sept. 10 were pretty clear on the issue by Sept. 12.

Tim Slagle

#49. The vital thing for me is to integrate the history from above with the history from below because only in that way can you show the true consequences of the decisions of Hitler or Stalin or whomever on the ordinary civilians caught up in the battle.

Antony Beevor

#50. who can dare claim to believe in God when they slaughter civilians merely to gain a slight advantage?

Christopher G. Nuttall

#51. It's not the generals, it's the civilians who authorise and organise the worst war crimes.

Noam Chomsky

#52. Since 2006, when the Second Lebanon War killed perhaps 2,000 Lebanese, many of them civilians, and led to the destruction of an entire section of Beirut, the northern border has been absolutely quiet.

Martin Van Creveld

#53. There is no moral equivalency between those who would kill using children, innocent civilians, children and adults, in their homes and in their places of worship, to that of a government that is seeking those terrorists before they can engage in that awful activity.

George Pataki

#54. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are as much every U.S. citizen's wars as they are the veterans' wars. If we don't assume that civilians have just as much ownership and the moral responsibilities that we have as a nation when we embark on something like that, then we're in a very bad situation.

Phil Klay

#55. We're capable of understanding that someone has to drop an atomic bomb on a town of innocent civilians, but not that others have to cut up prostitutes who spread disease and moral depravity in the slums of London. Hence we call the former realism and the latter madness.

Jo Nesbo

#56. It's troubling to see how often Winston Churchill is a proponent of massive programs that are really aimed at civilians - starvation blockades and chemical warfare stockpiles and so on.

Nicholson Baker

#57. To this day I don't know if he was struggling with the moral implications of gunning down half a dozen civilians, or if he was mentally counting to see if he had that many shells left in the gun.

David Wong

#58. Egypt firmly and strongly condemns such attacks on civilians and soldiers that led to the deaths of a large number of innocent victims.

Hosni Mubarak

#59. Chasing a burning girl down a city street is a lot harder than it sounds. Civilians tend to stop and stare and this turns them into human bowling pins. Slow whiny bowling pins.

Richard Kadrey

#60. We don't make a distinction between civilians and non-civilians, innocents and non-innocents. Only between Muslims and unbelievers. And the life of an unbeliever has no value. It has no sanctity.

Omar Bakri Muhammad

#61. Military guys are rarely as smart as they think they are, and they've never gotten over the fact that civilians run the military.

Maureen Dowd

#62. Let's stand against the killing of innocent civilians. It is time to make the future better than today. Together we can bring peace and unity to our communities.

Widad Akreyi

#63. A phased decision can avoid there being a key moment when the moral issue about killing civilians has to be confronted.

Jonathan Glover

#64. For the most part, I think American armies are awfully good in the business of protecting civilians, of not going over the line.

Morley Safer

#65. A writer has a use for his experiences that most civilians simply don't; he or she discerns material in situations that others simply live through. Perhaps there are some who disapprove of this, but without this double consciousness, literature would not get made at all.

Walter Kirn

#66. We don't want civilians walking around who know about us. Got it? (Tee) Wow, you're like a ferocious bunny, aren't you? (Nathan) Worse. A bunny can be fluffy sometimes. Tee always goes for the throat. Trust me. I'm her partner and she's shot me three times now. (Joe)

Sherrilyn Kenyon

#67. Our days are exactly the same. Shoot at the enemy. Hit some civilians. Apologize. Reload your rifle. Shoot again.

David Christopher Perez

#68. They say a good soldier fights a battle, never a war. That's for civilians.

John Steinbeck

#69. rifle, you best grab one now," the XO tells the civilians. I have the rifle from the drop ship,

Marko Kloos

#70. People talk about smart sanctions and crippling sanctions. I've never seen smart sanctions, and crippling sanctions cripple everyone, including innocent civilians, and make the government more popular.

Mohamed ElBaradei

#71. We firmly oppose the use of violence in the course of current transformations in Arab States, especially against civilians. We are well aware of the fact that the transformation of a society is a complex and generally long process, which rarely goes smoothly.

Sergei Lavrov

#72. Needless to say, this would be an unthinkable crime - as it would kill tens of millions of innocent civilians in a single day - but it may be the only course of action available to us, given what Islamists believe

Sam Harris

#73. In fact, as far as one can tell, Obama seems to have killed more civilians during his first year than Bush did in his first year, and maybe even than Bush killed in his final year.

Allan Nairn

#74. Truly intelligent beings do not drop bombs on innocent civilians.

Hiroshi Yamamoto

#75. Terrorism is the intentional use of, or threat to use violence against civilians or against civilian targets, in order to attain political aims.

Boaz Ganor

#76. Wanton killing of innocent civilians is terrorism, not a war against terrorism.

Noam Chomsky

#77. It seems logical that he who supports total war in principle cannot complain of a war against civilians.

John Hersey

#78. All those involved in the firebombing of Tokyo .. were war criminals interviews recorded in the movie The Fog of War.. the firebombing of Tokyo occurred before the atom bombs.. 100,000 civilians died in one night from American bombs.. 500,000 altogether over several days say some.

Robert McNamara

#79. On the rare occasions when U.N. blue helmets have made the news in the past, it has unfortunately too often been in the context of situations where peacekeepers have failed to shield civilians, or even when the peacekeepers themselves have been involved in abuse.

Samantha Power

#80. Hamas hides among unwitting civilians, who have no way of controlling its activities. This fact does not give Israel the right to kill innocent non-combatants, not even unintentionally. Besides, murder is not 'unintentional' when you know it is inevitable.

Ilana Mercer

#81. We burned to death 100,000 Japanese civilians in Tokyo - men, women and children. LeMay recognized that what he was doing would be thought immoral if his side had lost. But what makes it immoral if you lose and not immoral if you win?

Robert McNamara

#82. It was a dangerous habit: once policemen stopped being civilians the only other thing they could be was soldiers.

Terry Pratchett

#83. Osama bin Laden's own words stated he has a war against the United States. He declared that American civilians should be considered as combatants.

Cofer Black

#84. In March 1943, my parents, four-year-old sister and I were interned with other foreign civilians at Lunghua camp, a former teacher training college outside Shanghai, where we remained until the end of August 1945.

J.G. Ballard

#85. The SAS Reserve tends to be made up of former paratroopers and commandos who still want a challenge, but it is open to civilians.

Bear Grylls

#86. Why do decent young men and women become bullies? Why do soldiers dream of being heroes but end up abusing prisoners and shooting civilians? Why do politicians become corrupt? Why do cops beat suspects senseless and break the laws they're meant to protect?

Louise Penny

#87. Hiroshima has become a metaphor not just for nuclear war but for war and destruction and violence toward civilians. It's not just the idea we should not use nuclear arms. We should not start another war because it's madness.

Max Von Sydow

#88. Sacrificing American soldiers or innocent civilians in an unprecedented preemptive attack on a separate sovereign nation may well prove itself a most temporary medicine.

Sean Penn

#89. Civilians is one term journalists use to describe non-journalists. Another is laypeople. Or normals.

Dan Lyons

#90. Somewhere in the dead space between house and shelter civilians became soldiers.

Sara Novic

#91. The definition of terrorism is killing civilians with the intent of changing their political affiliation.

Caleb Carr

#92. Al Qaeda is not a nation-state and it has not signed the Geneva Conventions. It shows no desire to obey the laws of war; if anything it directly violates them by disguising themselves as civilians and attacking purely civilian targets to cause massive casualties.

John Yoo

#93. In 2013, there were 6,261 black homicide victims in the US - almost all killed by black civilians.

John Podhoretz

#94. The nature of the new war places a high premium on other factors, such as the ability to quickly obtain information from captured terrorists and their sponsors in order to avoid further atrocities against American civilians.

Alberto Gonzales

#95. The Goths didn't destroy Rome, nor did they massacre the population. On the contrary, the Barbarians took particular care to provide safe-houses for civilians and not to harm public buildings.

Terry Jones

#96. U.S. Government propaganda tries to give the impression that aerial bombardment achieves near-surgical accuracy, so that military targets can be destroyed with minimal effect on civilians. Technical documents give a different picture.

Noam Chomsky

#97. 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

#98. Any time bombs are used to target civilians it is an act of terror

Barack Obama

#99. Islamic law is clearly against terrorism, against any kind of deliberate killing of civilians or similar 'collateral damage.'

Feisal Abdul Rauf

#100. Torturing innocents, murdering civilians and destroying public property; they are all the gifts we have been given by religion.

M.F. Moonzajer