A Quote by Peter McWilliams

We have a problem with drugs? Let's declare war on drugs! We have a problem with crime? Let's declare war on crime! We have a problem with violence? Let's declare war on violence! The deeply ingrained American attitude that we can solve any problem w/enough force creates, feeds, & rewards the epidemic of violence we are currently experiencing.

Peter McWilliams

Quote Topics

American Any Attitude Creates Crime Currently Declare Deeply Enough Epidemic Experiencing Feeds Force Ingrained Problem Rewards Solve Violence War War On Drugs

Quote Author

Peter McWilliams
American - Writer
August 5, 1949 - June 14, 2000

Have you ever noticed that the only metaphor we have in our public discourse for solving problems is to declare war on it? We have the war on crime, the war on cancer, the war on drugs. But did you ever notice that we have no war on homelessness? You know why? Because there's no money in that problem. No money to be made off of the homeless. If you can find a solution to homelessness where the corporations and politicians can make a few million dollars each, you will see the streets of America begin to clear up pretty damn quick!

George Carlin

I think it's too bad that everybody's decided to turn on drugs, I don't think drugs are the problem. Crime is the problem. Cops are the problem. Money's the problem. But drugs are just drugs.

Jerry Garcia

We don't have a crime problem, a gun problem or even a violence problem. What we have is a sin problem. And since we've ordered god out of our schools, and communities, the military and public conversations, you know we really shouldn't act so surprised ... when all hell breaks loose.

Mike Huckabee

Although violence and the use of force may appear powerful and decisive, their benefits are short-lived. Violence can never bring a lasting and long term resolution to any problem, because it is unpredictable and for every problem it seems to solve, others are created. On the other hand, truth remains constant and will ultimately prevail.

Dalai Lama

but all the things Science had promised us hadn't come to pass. Disease was still a problem. Starvation was still a problem. Violence and crime and war were still problems. In spite of the advance of technology, things just hadn't changed the way everyone had hoped and thought they would.

Jim Butcher

I'm sure all of us agree that we need to overcome violence, but we first need to examine whether it has any value. From a strictly practical perspective, on certain occasions violence appears to be useful. We can solve a problem quickly by force. But this success is often at the expense of the rights and welfare of others. Although one problem has been solved, the seed of another has been planted.

Dalai Lama

The problem after a war is with the victor. He thinks he has just proved that war and violence pay. Who will now teach him a lesson?

A. J. Muste

Scheduling of drugs is a government problem, not our problem. They want to schedule something, that's their problem. My feeling of creation is to make new drugs. They're new drugs, so they're unscheduled. They've never been made before.

Alexander Shulgin

I am for violence if non-violence means we continue postponing a solution to the American black man's problem just to avoid violence.

Malcolm X

Solving the population problem is not going to solve the problems of racism, of sexism, of religious intolerance, of war, of gross economic inequality. But if you don't solve the population problem, you're not going to solve any of those problems. Whatever problem you're interested in, you're not going to solve it unless you also solve the population problem. Whatever your cause, it's a lost cause without population control.

Paul R. Ehrlich

We don't declare war any more; we declare national defense.

Eugene McCarthy

Declare it. Just the same way we declare war. That is how we will have peace... we just need to declare it.

John Lennon

Take away human beings from this planet and life would go on, nature would go on in all its loveliness and violence. Where would the problem be? No problem. You created the problem. You are the problem. You identified with "me" and that is the problem. The feeling is in you, not in reality.

Anthony de Mello

When you declare a 'war on coal' from a regulatory perspective, the question has to be asked: where's that in the statute? Where did Congress empower the EPA to declare a war on coal?

Scott Pruitt

There are nations that resist, voices that attempt to diminish the urgency or dismiss the science, or declare, either in word or indifference, that this is not our problem to solve. Well, let me tell you, it is our problem to solve... To the reticent nations, including the United States, I say this: There is such a thing as a global conscience.