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We have war when at least one of the parties to a conflict wants something more than it wants peace.

War is a way of shattering to pieces... materials which might otherwise be used to make the masses too comfortable and... too intelligent.

There is hardly such a thing as a war in which it makes no difference who wins. Nearly always one side stands more or less for progress, the other side more or less for reaction.

War is just a racket. A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of people. Only a small inside group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few at the expense of the masses.

War is just one more big government program.

War may be made by one party, but it requires two to make peace.

So war is an extremely sad business, because the majority of people don't want to be in it.

Conflict cannot survive without your participation.

Obviously, the greater the length of a war the higher is likely to be the number of casualties in it on either side.

It is simply not true that war is solely a means to an end, nor do people necessarily fight in order to obtain this objective or that. In fact, the opposite is true: people very often take up one objective or another precisely in order that they may fight.