In the final analysis, means and ends must cohere because the end is preexistent in the means, and, ultimately, destructive means cannot bring about constructive ends.
—Martin Luther King Jr.
Everyone speaks of peace; no one knows what peace is. We know at best a poisoned peace. No one has lived on an earth without weapons, without war and the threat of war on a large and small scale.
—Christina Thürmer-Rohr
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 evildoers.”
—Arundhati Roy
J. Robert Oppenheimer, witnessing the first test of a nuclear weapon, confessed to tasting sin. But he and all his colleagues knew from the beginning what lay waiting at the end of the project. And which was the stronger flavor, the sin, or the satisfaction of having stolen fire from the gods?
—Theodore Roszak
The guns and the bombs, the rockets and the warships, are all symbols of human failure.
—Lyndon B. Johnson
A wrong war brings wrong; so does a right war.
—Ignazio Silone
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
What is the only provocation that could bring about the use of nuclear weapons? Nuclear weapons. What is the priority target for nuclear weapons? Nuclear weapons. What is the only established defense against nuclear weapons? Nuclear weapons. How do we prevent the use of nuclear weapons? By threatening to use nuclear weapons. And we can’t get rid of nuclear weapons, because of nuclear weapons.
—Martin Amis
Weapons of mass destruction are always in the wrong hands.
—Deepak Chopra
He that voluntarily continues ignorant is guilty of all the crimes which ignorance produces.
—Samuel Johnson
The growth of the intellect is spontaneous in every expansion. The mind that grows could not predict the times, the means, the mode of that spontaneity. God enters by a private door into every individual.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
Each generation imagines itself to be more intelligent than the one that went before it, and wiser than the one that comes after it.
—George Orwell
The test of a first rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.
—F. Scott Fitzgerald
Character is higher than intellect. A great soul will be strong to live as well as strong to think.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
Curiosity is one of the permanent and certain characteristics of a vigorous intellect.
—Samuel Johnson