Top 48 Pacifism Quotes & Sayings

I will not call myself a pacifist for the very simple reason that if something like a [Francisco] Franco should arise in Spain again, or, for that matter, in America, and tried to take away whatever dwindling civil liberties and human rights we retain, I would resist them with a club if I had to. But my admiration for pacifism as an outlook and a sensibility is enormous. I just find that it gets me into contradictions, as it often gets many pacifists into contradictory positions and strategies.

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. Nor is there any real way of remaining outside such a war as the present one. In practice, 'he that is not with me is against me'.

Pacifism as a mass movement aims to avoid suffering; pacifists often say that no cause is worth suffering or dying for. The ethos of Solidarity is based on an opposite premise - that there are causes worth suffering and dying for.

Fascism, in so far as it considers and observes the future and the development of humanity quite apart from political considerations of the moment, believes neither in the possibility nor the utility of perpetual peace. It thus repudiates the doctrine of Pacifism - born of a renunciation of struggle and an act of cowardice in the face of sacrifice. War alone brings up to its highest tension all human energy and puts the stamp of nobility upon the people who have the courage to meet it.

once your eyes get opened to pacifism, you can't shut them again. Once you see it, you can't unsee it. You may bitterly regret the fact that you happen to be one of the tiny minority of the human race who have caught this angle of vision, but you can't help it.

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.

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

My pacifism came after I joined the army and was shipped over to Korea. There was a little one-room orphanage there called Song-do. There were 180 babies in there, and they were GI babies. The U.S. government would not acknowledge this, and the Korean government had nothing to do with them. They were living on a 100-pound bag of rice a month. Some of those kids, when they were old enough, would go out and shine shoes. They would show up at the gate of our compound to shine shoes, and you'd swear they were looking for their fathers.

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.

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

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

Pacifism is objectively pro-Fascist

Pacifism means letting the non-pacifists have control ... Pacifism will remain an ideal, war a fact. If the white races are resolved never to wage war again, the colored will act differently and become rulers of the world.

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. Gandhi resisted evil with as much vigor and power as the violent resister, but True pacifism is not unrealistic submission to evil power. It is rather a courageous confrontation of evil by the power of love. . . .

Lobbying, protesting, letter-writing, American media, civil disobedience, and preaching pacifism ad nauseum, along with EDUCATION is the most effective way to enlighten the masses. Welfare concessions/campaigns, are counterproductive and simply ineffective in this day and age.

In actual fact the pacifistic-humane idea is perfectly all right perhaps when the highest type of man has previously conquered and subjected the world to an extent that makes him the sole ruler of this earth… Therefore, first struggle and then perhaps pacifism.

I really believe that Bob Dylan and others have speeded up the changes. Pacifism has found a voice at last.

Pacifism will remain an ideal, war a fact, and if the White race decides to wage it no longer, the dark ones will, and will become the masters of the world.

A pacifist has a lot of difficulty reconciling pacifism with scripture.

I know there are some Christians who believe that war and their participation in it are morally wrong. While I respect their views and must allow them to follow their consciences, I do not believe the Bible teaches pacifism.

Essentially, I'm a very real person; good and bad. And the public image is one of being very good, I suppose. But one of the reasons I'm attracted to people like Martin Luther King, Jr., Gandhi, Christ, to pacifism, is because naturally, I'm the guy that would not turn the other cheek - but, when people see you're attracted to that, they think you are that.

We believe half-instinctively that evil always defeats itself in the long run. Pacifism is founded largely on this belief. Don't resist evil, and it will somehow destroy itself. But why should it? What evidence is there that it does... unless conquered from the outside by military force?

Marihuana leads to pacifism and communist brainwashing.

The Bible is clear here: I am to love my neighbor as myself, in the manner needed, in a practical way, in the midst of the fallen world, at my particular point of history. This is why I am not a pacifist. Pacifism in this poor world in which we live -- this lost world -- means that we desert the people who need our greatest help.

Love does not imply pacifism.

There was only one virtue, pugnacity; only one vice, pacifism. That is an essential condition of war.

Wild Goose exemplifies how the Evangelical Left translates 'social justice' into Big Government and pacifism.

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.

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

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.

Pacifism is simply undisguised cowardice.

As a result of the Left's sympathetic views of pacifism and because almost no welfare state can afford a strong military, European countries rely on America to fight the world's evil, and even to defend them

I have a great admiration for pacifism, but I'm not a pacifist, mainly because I would defend myself if I were attacked.

Pacifism simply is not a matter of calm looking on; it is work, hard work.

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.

Creeds like pacifism or anarchism, which seem on the surface to imply a complete renunciation of power, rather encourage this habit of mind. For if you have embraced a creed which appears to be free from the ordinary dirtiness of politics ... the more you are in the right (and) everybody else should be bullied into thinking otherwise.

If you say that you reject violence when it exceeds the limits imposed by the needs of defense, they accuse you of pacifism, without understanding that violence is the whole essence of authoritarianism, just as the repudiation of violence is the whole essence of anarchism.

I'm sort of exploring where pacifism and socialism come into conflict. How do you reconcile a passionate rejection of might and violence with an attitude of "nil paseran" - "none shall pass" - in the face of fascism?

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.

Among pacifists it was above all the English who always insisted on the importance of disarmament. They said that the man in the street would not understand the kind of pacifism that neglected to demand immediate restriction of armaments.

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

My pacifism is an instinctive feeling, a feeling that possesses me because the murder of men is disgusting. My attitude is not derived from any intellectual theory but is based on my deepest antipathy to every kind of cruelty and hatred.

The main problem with pacifism is that it doesn’t work in all situations. The main problem with pacifists is that they’re convinced it does.

For me personally and for most other Americans, this commitment to peace and diplomacy does not imply a blind or total pacifism. There are times when war is justified, and for many centuries the moral criteria for violence have been carefully delineated.

The conflict between pacifism and socialism ultimately reflects a greater quandary of how one engages with such a system.

The concept of patriotism is not incompatible with that of humanity; on the contrary, let me state emphatically that he who best serves pacifism serves patriotism best. The nation is and can be no more than the vital basic unit of any international league.

Pacifism, to me, is primarily a way of actively struggling against injustice and inhumanity; My kind of pacifism may be called "non-violent resistance".

Pacifism is a nice idea but it can get you killed. We're not there yet. Evolution is slow, small pox is fast.