49 Quotes About Pacifism

Pacifism in society requires the ability to settle conflict anyway possible without disputes and violence. These quotes on pacifism encouraging the continuation of peace between people, nations, and global initiatives.

“A pacifism which can see the cruelties only of occasional military warfare and is blind to the continuous cruelties of our social system is worthless.”

“Being a pacifist to save your own life is normal, being a pacifist for the lives of others is true pacifism.”

“Creeds like pacifism or anarchism, which seem on the surface to imply a complete renunciation of power, rather encourage this habit of mind.”

“Despotic governments can stand ‘moral force’ till the cows come home; what they fear is physical force.”

“Essentially, I’m a very real person; good and bad. And the public image is one of being very good, I suppose.”

“Glass & peace alike betray proof of fragility under repeated blows.”

“I am not a committed pacifist. I would not hold that it is under all imaginable circumstances wrong to use violence, even though use of violence is in some sense unjust.”

“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.”

“If it should happen you wake up and Armageddon has come, lie still.”

“If peace is equated simply with the absence of war, it can become abject pacifism that turns the world over to the most ruthless.”

“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.”

“It was strange to us that none of these three victims made any attempt to resist the attack. Indeed, not one inhabitant in any of these worlds considered for a moment the possibility of resistance.”

“Love does not imply pacifism.”

“Men have been pacifists for every reason under the sun except to avoid danger and fighting.”

“My pacifism is an instinctive feeling, a feeling that possesses me because the murder of men is disgusting.”

“My pacifism is not based on any intellectual theory but on a deep antipathy to every form of cruelty and hatred.”

“My study of Gandhi convinced me that true pacifism is not nonresistance to evil, but nonviolent resistance to evil. Between the two positions, there is a world of difference.”

“No one won the last war, and no one will win the next war.”

“Nothing will end war unless the people refuse to go to war.”

“One ought not to return injustice, nor do evil to anybody in the world, no matter what one may have suffered from them.”

“Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn
 all that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience.”

“Pacifism in the face of war is not only irresponsible – it is immoral. Refusing to meet force with force in the name of peace will beget not peace, but further death and destruction, the very violence the pacifists seek to avoid.”

“Pacifism is a shifty doctrine under which a man accepts the benefits of the social group without being willing to pay; and claims a halo for his dishonesty.”

“Pacifism is objectively pro-fascist. This is elementary common sense. If you hamper the war effort of one side, you automatically help out that of the other.”

“Pacifism is simply undisguised cowardice.”

“Pacifism, the preaching of peace in the abstract, is one of the means of duping the working class.”

“Please be peaceful. We believe in law and order. We are not advocating violence, I want you to love your enemies… for what we are doing is right, what we are doing is just — and God is with us.”

“Principles-and I have in mind such principles as states’ rights or national sovereignty or the free market or pacifism-have a way of drying up while the sap of life goes flowing in another direction.”

“Say what you want but you NEVER say it with violence!”

“Sometimes you have to pick the gun up to put the Gun down.”

“The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult; and left untried.”

“The essential act of war is destruction, not necessarily of human lives, but of the products of human labour.”

“The goal of pacifism is possible only though a supranational organization. To stand unconditionally for this cause is the criterion of true pacifism.”

“The idea that you can somehow remain aloof from and superior to the struggle [World War II], while living on food which British sailors have to risk their lives to bring you, is a bourgeois illusion bred of money and security.”

“The majority of pacifists either belong to obscure religious sects or are simply humanitarians who object to taking life and prefer not to follow their thoughts beyond that point.”

“The noble art of losing face may one day save the human race and turn into eternal merit what weaker minds would call disgrace.”

“The peace of the man who has forsworn the use of the bullet seems to me not quite peace, but a canting impotence.”

“The people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders…tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger.”

“The result of this is that so-called peace propaganda is just as dishonest and intellectually disgusting as war propaganda. Like war propaganda, it concentrates on putting forward a ‘case’, obscuring the opponent’s point of view and avoiding awkward questions.”

“The speaker calls for a careful examination of Christ’s principle of turning the other cheek before we use it as a demand or excuse for total personal pacifism.”

“The tragedy is not that nonviolence did not work against the Nazis, but that it was so seldom utilized…”

“There are causes worth dying for, but none worth killing for.”

“There are many causes I would die for. There is not a single cause I would kill for.”

“There are perhaps many causes worth dying for, but to me, certainly, there are none worth killing for.”

“There has never been a time in my life when I felt that I could take a gun and shoot down a fellow-being. In this respect I am a Quaker.”

“Those who attempt to conquer hatred by hatred are like warriors who take weapons to overcome others who bear arms.”

“Unfortunately, that still leaves plenty of Americans who don’t read much or think much — who will still be extremely useful in unjust wars. We are sick about that. We did the best we could.”

“We must begin to inculcate our children against militarism by educating them in the spirit of pacifism. Our schoolbooks glorify war and conceal it’s horror. I would teach peace rather than war.”

“Wise men are not pacifists; they are merely less likely to jump up and retaliate against their antagonizers. They know that needless antagonizers are virtually already insecure enough.”

Pacifism requires a set of ethics and amoral choice. Keeping a non violent solution always on hand will help to resolve circumstances before they get out of hand.