Top 100 Pacifist Quotes
#1. The surest way to become a pacifist is to join the infantry.
Bill Mauldin
#2. What I really learned in the army was how to be a pacifist.
Utah Phillips
#3. Being a pacifist to save your own life is normal, being a pacifist for the lives of others is true pacifism.
Ammon Hennacy
#4. Pacifist propaganda and the resolutions of the parliamentarians encouraged such treaties, and toward the end of the nineteenth century their number had increased considerably.
Ludwig Quidde
#5. I am a pacifist, danm it! And now I'm bleeding. What is wrong with you, you sick sicko?
Rachel Vail
#6. The statement by Paul McCartney that, although he was a pacifist, he couldn't be at this time of war. Which is as daft as being a vegetarian between meals.
Mark Steel
#7. I don't want any romantics to go into the military. I'm not a pacifist. I think we need a military, and the better one we have, the better off we are. I don't want kids going in there thinking that it's John Wayne on Iwo Jima. That's not healthy.
Karl Marlantes
#8. I personally am not a total pacifist. I do believe there is such a thing as a just war. I believe, for instance, the effort to destroy the Nazi regime militarily was justified military action.
Marianne Williamson
#9. The only thing for a pacifist to do is to find a substitute for war.
Freya Stark
#10. There's no way that I could be the president. You can't have a pacifist in the White House ... I'm an actor. This is what I do for a living.
Martin Sheen
#11. I had to experience how someone beside me suddenly falls over and is dead and the bullet has hit him squarely. I had to experience that quite directly. I wanted it. I'm therefore not a pacifist at all - or am I?
Otto Dix
#12. Someone once told me a joke," he said. "I'd like to be a pacifist, but people keep getting in the way.' I made a decision to fight for my friend in prison. It was a deliberate decision. It isn't the only way-it's just something I decided.
Edeet Ravel
#13. Everyone's a pacifist between wars. It's like being a vegetarian between meals.
Colman McCarthy
#15. The quietly pacifist peaceful always die to make room for men who shout.
Alice Walker
#16. The real working class, though they hate war and are immune to jingoism, are never really pacifist, because their life teaches them something different. To abjure violence it is necessary to have no experience of it.
George Orwell
#17. My father, who had lost a brother, fighting on the Austrian side in World War I, was a committed pacifist.
Walter Kohn
#18. A serious pacifist approach can't win wars against enemies whose only program is violence. That doesn't mean I think the US has fought terrorists so wisely most of the time since 9/11. But there are some enemies that need to be destroyed by force lest they destroy much much more.
Philip Gourevitch
#19. Yeah, says the Newsday reporter, he's a real pacifist. He's the Gandhi of Gangsters.
J.R. Moehringer
#20. It was the kind of sword that would make a lifelong pacifist look for tall boots and a hat with feathers.
Ilona Andrews
#21. I'm not a pacifist. I was very much for the war against Hitler and I also supported the intervention in Korea, but in this war we went in there to steal Vietnam.
Benjamin Spock
#22. I gather they are even vaguely pacifist, not on moral grounds but from an ingrained habit of belittling anything that concerns the great mass of their fellow men and from a dash of purely fashionable and literary communism.
C.S. Lewis
#23. A pacifist male is a contradiction in terms. Most self-described "pacifists" are not pacific; they simply assume false colors. When the wind changes, they hoist the Jolly Roger.
Robert A. Heinlein
#24. War! It is purification, liberation, an enormous hope ... The victory of Germany will be a paradox, nay, a wonder: a victory of the soul over numbers ... The German soul is opposed to the pacifist ideal of civilization, for is not peace the element, of civil corruption?
Thomas Mann
#25. In a world built on violence, one must be a revolutionary before one can be a pacifist.
A.J. Muste
#26. The classical example of multiple inheritance conflict is called the 'Nixon Diamond.' It arises from the observation that Nixon was both a Quaker (and hence a pacifist) and a Republican (and hence not a pacifist).
Stuart Russell
#27. The absolute pacifist is a bad citizen; times come when force must be used to uphold right, justice and ideals.
Alfred North Whitehead
#28. Together, Ben and Chon make up a collective pacifist. Ben is the paci Chon is the fist.
Don Winslow
#29. There is no evidence that Jesus himself openly advocated violent actions. But he was certainly no pacifist. "Do not think that I have come to bring peace on earth. I have not come to bring peace, but the sword" (Matthew 10:34 | Luke 12:51).
Reza Aslan
#30. Cracked was a very short warrior, whereas Marley was a pacifist warrior.
Yannick Noah
#31. Ranerio wrapped his hand around mine, guiding my fingers like Lucius had done when he'd shown me the latch behind the dressing-room door mirror. But while the warrior I loved had been offering me an escape route, the pacifist was trying to show me how to fight.
Beth Fantaskey
#32. I could never have been a pacifist. To kill a man was surely to grant him an immeasurable benefit. Oh yes, people always, everywhere, loved their enemies. It was their friends they preserved for pain and vacuity.
Graham Greene
#33. When it comes to fighting evil, the left is almost pacifist.
Dennis Prager
#34. [A pacifist is] the last and least excusable on the list of the enemies of society.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
#35. Besides a Scientist Marion is also a Pacifist and an Atheist. This means she is basically against most things, such as War, Sports, and God.
David James Duncan
#36. I prefer 'buccaneers',' he grinned. 'A small privately funded army of committed peacekeepers. Tough, but fair. Our motto is: We put the fist in 'pacifist'.
Cash Peters
#37. I'm not a pacifist. I do believe that, unfortunately, war is necessary.
Mike Hoffman
#38. I'm not a pacifist. I think the suffering of innocent people can be a catalyst for moral action. But empathy puts too much weight on the scale in favor of war. Empathy can really lead to violence.
Paul Bloom
#40. He who cherishes the value of cultures cannot fail to be a pacifist.
Albert Einstein
#41. Bye-bye, Elan. P.S., Next time you implicate someone falsely, try to pick a pacifist.
J.R. Ward
#42. He liked to think of himself as fighting trim. At this point though, he was more like pacifist fat. Or at least he felt that way, stuffed to the gills.
Marie Ferrarella
#43. the subject described himself as a pacifist who can't tolerate conflict. He claims to be an outsider in the family, ignored unless he is the object of criticism.
Jere Krakoff
#44. We were a savage little lot, Liverpool kids, not pacifist or vegetarian or anything. But I feel I've gone beyond that, and that it was immature to be so prejudiced and believe in all the stereotypes.
Paul McCartney
#45. You know, for a pacifist, you sure beg to get stabbed a lot
Brian K. Vaughan
#46. The pacifist is as surely a traitor to his country and to humanity as is the most brutal wrongdoer.
Theodore Roosevelt
#47. In so far as it takes effect at all, pacifist propaganda can only be effective against those countries where a certain amount of freedom of speech is still permitted; in other words it is helpful to totalitarianism.
George Orwell
#48. I'm a pacifist. I don't believe in 'good' wars.
Wendy Doniger
#49. A total prohibition against lying is also ethically incoherent in anyone but a true pacifist.
Sam Harris
#50. I am an absolute pacifist ... It is an instinctive feeling. It is a feeling that possesses me, because the murder of men is disgusting.
Albert Einstein
#51. Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King are great examples of fantastic nonviolents who died violently. I can never work that out. We're pacifists, but I'm not sure what it means when you're such a pacifist that you get shot. I can never understand that.
John Lennon
#52. While I am a convinced pacifist there are circumstances in which I believe the use of force is appropriate - namely, in the face of an enemy unconditionally bent on destroying me and my people.
Albert Einstein
#53. Peace is a militant thing ... any peace movement must have behind it a higher passion than the desire for war. No one can be a pacifist without being ready to fight for peace and die for peace.
Mary Heaton Vorse
#54. I'm not a pacifist at all; I think there is a notion of "just war" that can be persuasively argued. I think in the face of Nazis, in the face of apartheid, that I would have joined those armies. But that's the last, last resort.
Cornel West
#55. It seems to me that the only thing for a pacifist to do is to find a substitute for war: mountains and seafaring are the only ones I know. But it must be something sufficiently serious not to be a game and sufficiently dangerous to exercise those virtues which otherwise get no chance.
Freya Stark
#56. I would have fought in WW2, so I wasn't a pacifist in the broader sense. I prefer to be a pacifist, but I think there are exceptions and times to defend yourself or your country, but that war wasn't one of them.
Joe R. Lansdale
#57. Gert: Wake me when the fight scene's over.
Kitty Pryde: Oy, tell me about it. Hey, I'm Kitty. You the token pacifist of your group?
Gert: Not exactly. Pacifists are like vegans, I'm more of a vegetarian. I enjoy fish and occasional maulings.
Brian K. Vaughan
#58. If people have to put labels on me, I'd prefer the first label to be human being, the second label to be pacifist, and the third to be folk singer.
Joan Baez
#59. 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
#60. India was not a pacifist country at all. India placed great emphasis on the higher value on ... on violence. But it was never a substitute for not doing anything, or for cowardice.
Subramanian Swamy
#61. 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
#62. As a lifelong pacifist, Quaker, and a gay man, I despair that gays and lesbians are expending energy trying to get into the military when they should be using that same energy getting rid of the military completely.
Ned Rorem
#63. It was a good thing I was a pacifist, because otherwise I'd have started planning her murder.
Laurelin Paige
#64. A film that I love is 'Deliverance' from back in the day. You start out with these archetypal characters - the hero, the bookworm, the pacifist - and by the end, it's all turned upside down. I love that.
Frank Grillo
#66. The pacifist's task today is to find a method of helping and healing which provides a revolutionary constructive
substitute for war.
Vera Brittain
#67. I must honor those who fight of their own free will, he said to himself. And I must try to imitate their courage by following my path as a pacifist, wherever it takes me.
Christopher Isherwood
#68. A sane person doesn't think war is a good idea. I'm not a pacifist. I feel that there are situations where fighting is inescapable, but we don't go looking for those things.
Bruce Cockburn
#69. I'm really interested in how conflicts arise and how they reach points of no return. I'm no pacifist. Sometimes force is necessary. But war is a choice.
Paolo Bacigalupi
#70. Did not. My stubbornness doesn't even own a gun. My stubbornness is a pacifist.
Sophie Oak
#72. I am not an absolute pacifist, because I can't rule out the possibility that under some, carefully defined circumstances, some degree of violence may be justified, if it is focused directly at a great evil.
Howard Zinn
#73. A pacifist between wars is like a vegetarian between meals.
Ammon Hennacy
#74. And so the landing party set out, leaving Weatherlight in the hands of an inexperienced pilot, a cowering lookout, and a pacifist guard.
Peter Archer
#75. Who else but a pacifist would attack somebody as little as Wiggin?
Orson Scott Card
#77. I am a pacifist, but be aware that I also carry a gun.
M.F. Moonzajer
#78. Even a pacifist should admire the military virtues.
John Keegan
#79. I have always hated war and am by nature and philosophy a pacifist, but it is the English who are forcing war on us, and the first principle of war is to kill the enemy.
Constance Markievicz
#80. Sequestered in the depths of the average pacifist - as one will invariably discover - resides a killer. That is why the person has become a pacifist in the first place.
Norman Mailer
#81. One sometimes gets the impression that the mere words 'Socialism' and 'Communism' draw towards them with magnetic force every fruit-juice drinker, nudist, sandal-wearer, sex-maniac, Quaker, 'Nature Cure' quack, pacifist, and feminist in England.
George Orwell
#82. I'm going to kill him. Even as I said it, I couldn't believe my reaction. Apparently there's something in the Montana water that instantly transforms an agnostic, Starbucks-loving, vegetarian pacifist into a God-and-country-loving protector of all women and cattle.
Renee Carlino
#83. The whole world knows that Jesus is a pacifist, except for the Christians.
Mahatma Gandhi
#84. I am not a terrorist, but neither am I a pacifist. I am simply a regular guy from the Palestinian street advocating only what every other oppressed person has advocated-the right to help myself in the absence of help from anywhere else.
Marwan Barghouti
#85. I shall die ... as I have lived, rationalist, socialist, pacifist, and humanitarian.
Henry Stephens Salt
#86. A pacifist will often - at least nowadays - be an internationalist and vice versa. But history shows us that a pacifist need not think internationally.
Christian Lous Lange
#87. There was a time when liberalism was identified with anti-Communism. But the Vietnam War led liberals into the arms of the Left, which had been morally confused about Communism since its inception and had become essentially pacifist following the carnage of World War I.
Dennis Prager
#88. Oh, fantastic," Vic muttered. "Just bloody fantastic. The goddess has given me to a bleeding pacifist-
Jennifer Estep
#89. Yeah right,' Jacob muttered. 'I'm sure he's quite the pacifist.
Stephenie Meyer
#92. Gandhi Topi' is no longer an attire of the pacifist.
Mukesh Kwatra
#94. From pacifist to terrorist, each person condemns violence - and then adds one cherished case in which it may be justified.
Gloria Steinem
#95. I'm not a pacifist, but I'm not a violent person. I mean, I have a gun. I shoot guns, but I wouldn't say I love guns. It doesn't work that way for me.
David Rasche
#96. Since pacifists have more freedom of action in countries where traces of democracy survive, pacifism can act more effectively against democracy than for it. Objectively the pacifist is pro-Nazi.
George Orwell
#97. I am a pacifist, yes, but sometimes you have to get those bastards!
Kamal Jumblatt
#98. They just want to continue playing their little game of power. And I feel that us people have the responsibility and also the obligation to demand to our leaders to give us the pacifist solutions. To give us a world in peace.
Shakira
#99. Santa Claus wears a Red Suit, he must be a communist. And a beard and long hair, must be a pacifist. What's in that pipe that he's smoking?
Arlo Guthrie
#100. A pacifist has a lot of difficulty reconciling pacifism with scripture.
Mark Driscoll
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