Best 50 quotes in «war and peace quotes» category

All we can know is that we know nothing. And that's the height of human wisdom.

... as long as mankind shall continue to bestow more liberal applause on their destroyers than their benefactors, the thirst of military glory will ever be the vice of the most exalted characters.

[Alon Johnson] Later wrote that, "coming through a battered building near a well known and dangerous doorway. I heard something unfamiliar -- the sound of excited voices somewhere in the distance. The significance of this babble seemed to escape the tired company, but to me it suggested a sudden and radical change in the situation. Important enough to risk being shot at by showing myself in the doorway. Nothing happened, so I stepped into the street,...

Being peaceful may not be exciting like war, but it is the bliss and joy of life that you really enjoy.

A strange night, he thought. Somewhere now there is shooting and men are being hunted and imprisoned and tortured and murdered, some corner of a peaceful world is being trampled upon, and one knows it, helplessly, and life buzzes on in the bright bistros of the city, no one cares, and people go calmly to sleep, and I am sitting here with a woman between pale chrysanthemums and a bottle of calvados, and the shadow of love rises, trembling, lonesome, strange and sad, it too an exile from the safe gardens of the past, shy and wild and quick as if it had no right

Be the radiator of peace. Go to the center of your inner being. Radiate peace in every direction.

But believe me, my dear boy, there is nothing stronger than those two: patience and time, they will do it all.

Freethinkers are those who are willing to use their minds without prejudice and without fearing to understand things that clash with their own customs, privileges, or beliefs. This state of mind is not common, but it is essential for right thinking; where it is absent, discussion is apt to become worse than useless.

But in spacious, vigorous story-telling, in the use of an historical framework, in the relating of human events to a larger philosophical and spiritual context, in the deployment of fiction as a social and political weapon, in the exultation of 'the people' as a supreme authority, in the treatment of suffering as a dominant theme--in all these matters Hugo exerted a profound influence on Tolstoy.

Expectations are at war, if good feeling and discomfort clash. When we are expecting zest and joy, our good karma may be ousted by distress and frustration, if negative downbeat waves are emitted. Just with a feel of realism, without prejudice, should we step into the future. What will be, will be. Only the fortune of war will tell, since life may be war or peace. ("Fish for silence.")

Fighting fire with fire will burn the whole world to ashes.

Anna Mikhaylovna was already embracing her and weeping. The countess wept too. They wept because they were friends, and because they were kindhearted, and because they - friends from childhood - had to think about such a base thing as money, and because their youth was over.... But those tears were pleasant to them both.

He had suddenly felt that wealth, and power, and life - all that people arrange and preserve with such care - all this, if it is worth anything, is only so because of the pleasure with which one can abandon it all. It was that feeling on account of which a volunteer recruit drinks up his last kopeck, a man on a drunken binge smashes mirrors and windows without any apparent reason and knowing it will cost him his last penny; that feeling on account of which a man does (in the banal sense) insane things, as if testing his personal power and strength, claiming the presence of a higher judgement over life, which stands outside human conventions.

He got up, wishing to go around, but the aunt handed him the snuffbox right over Helene, behind her back. Helene moved forward so as to make room and, smiling, glanced around. As always at soirees, she was wearing a gown in the fashion of the time, quite open in front and back. Her bust, which had always looked like marble to Pierre, was now such a short distance from him that he could involuntarily make out with his nearsighted eyes the living loveliness of her shoulders and neck, and so close to his lips that he had only to lean forward a little to touch her. He sensed the warmth of her body, the smell of her perfume, and the creaking of her corset as she breathed. He saw not her marble beauty, which made one with her gown, he saw and sensed all the loveliness of her body, which was merely covered by clothes. And once he had seen it, he could not see otherwise, as we cannot return to a once-exposed deception.

He is not a great man. None of us are great men. We are just caught in the wave of history.

He was in a fairy kingdom where everything was possible. He looked up at the sky. And the sky was a fairy realm like the earth. It was clearing, and over the tops of the trees clouds were swiftly sailing as if unveiling the stars.

Human beings are born for peace; they like to grow up in peace. They like to raise their children in peace, and they like to say goodbye to this beautiful life in peace. Then why are we always preparing for war?

I am always at peace even when I am in the midst of war.

In historical events great men-so called-are but the labels that serve to give a mane to an event, and like labels, they have the last possible connection with the event itself. Every action of theirs, that seems to them an act of their own free will, is in an historical sense not free at all, but in bondage to the whole course of previous history, and predestined from all eternity.

If we can't prevent nuclear disaster that will be not just a political failure, but be the highest spiritual failure of mankind. Whether we are Hindu, Christian, Buddhist, Muslim, Sikh, Jewish or others we must work to prevent that failure.

It is most unfortunate that researchers are crazy to build AI based autonomous weapons systems, without understanding that it can destroy humanity in totality.

I took a speed-reading course where you run your finger down the middle of the page and was able to read "War and Peace" in 20 minutes. It’s about Russia.

It seemed clear that wars were not made by genereations and their special stupidities, but that wars were made instead by something ignorant in the human heart.

It would be good," thought Prince Andrei, glancing at the little image that his sister had hung around his neck with such reverence and emotion, "It would be good if everything were as clear and simple as it seems to Princess Marya . How good it would be to know where to seek help in this life, and what to expect after it, beyond the grave! How happy and at peace I should be if I could now say:" Lord have mercy on me!... But to whom should I say this? To some power--- indefinable and incomprehensible, to which I not only cannot appeal, but which I cannot express in words---The Great All or Nothing," he said to himself, "or to that God who has been sewn into this amulet by Marya? There is nothing certain, nothing except the nothingness of everything that is comprehensible to me, and the greatness of something incomprehensible but all important!

Peace is a road to happiness and the future. War is a road to destruction and death.

Nuclear weapons free world is not a dream but a necessity for human survival. We need stop waiting for things to happen. We need to go ahead and make things happen.

One who stops a war before it starts, is the real victor.

Teapots are not generally known for their aerodynamic qualities, hence the proclivity for their use during breaks between fighting rather than as an actual weapon of war.

Sure, the disease- the inner illness- kills. nevertheless, it's the symptoms - right?- which disfigure, which denude, which scrofulate and scar and maim. it hurts, we say, but we don't care a howl about it; we never cared about it before the pain came, only until the pain came, only because the pain came (perhaps that's why we have to suffer now); and we don't care about it today. we care about the presence of our feeling. period. we want it gone. soonest. make the pain go away doc; rub the spots out; make the quarreling stop; let the war end. peace is the death we rest in under that stone that says so. [...] peace is everybody's favourite teddy, peace is splendiferous, and it's not simply the habit of the sandy-nosed. it's the "get well" word. but after all, without a symptom, what do we see? without an outbreak of anger or impatience, what do we feel? without a heart-warming war, would we ever know or care or concern ourselves with what was wrong? the trouble is that the wrong we care for is soon the war itself, the family wrangle, the bellyache, the coated tongue, the blurry eyes, the fever-ah- the fever in the fevertube.

Pierre's madness consisted in not waiting, as he had formerly done, to discover personal attributes which he called "good qualities" in people before loving them: his heart overflowed with love, and by loving without cause he never failed to discover undeniable reasons for loving.

Sometimes war may become the only resort available, but never try to justify it, by saying that it's the right thing to do, because war is never the right thing to do, no matter how right you feel. When you fire that first shot, no matter how right you feel, you have no idea who's going to die - you don't know whose children are going to scream and burn - how many hearts will be broken - how many lives shattered - how much blood will spill until everybody does what they are always gonna have to do from the very beginning - sit down, talk and try to understand each other beyond the petty little differences born from instinctual tribalism.

The coming era of Artificial Intelligence will not be the era of war, but be the era of deep compassion, non-violence, and love.

The enemy stopped shooting, and that strict, menacing, inaccessible, and elusive line that separates two enemy armies became all the more clearly felt. “One step beyond that line, reminiscent of the line separating the living from the dead, and it’s the unknown, suffering, and death. And what is there? who is there? there, beyond this field, and the tree, and the roof lit by the sun? No one knows, and you would like to know; and you’re afraid to cross that line, and would like to cross it; and you know that sooner or later you will have to cross it and find out what is there on the other side of the line, as you will inevitably find out what is there on the other side of death. And you’re strong, healthy, cheerful, and excited, and surrounded by people just as strong and excitedly animated.” So, if he does not think it, every man feels who finds himself within sight of an enemy, and this feeling gives a particular brilliance and joyful sharpness of impression to everything that happens in those moments.

The descent to barbarism had begun with Rotterdam. It ended with Dresden and then with Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Whatever moral differences had existed when the war began were erased by its end. The victors had been morally conquered by the enemy.

There is no calm in war…no peace.

There are two sides to the life of every man, his individual life, which is the more free the more abstract its interests, and his elemental hive life in which he inevitably obeys laws laid down for him. Man lives consciously for himself, but is an unconscious instrument in the attainment of the historic, universal, aims of humanity. A deed done is irrevocable, and its result coinciding in time with the actions of millions of other men assumes an historic significance. The higher a man stands on the social ladder, the more people he is connected with and the more power he has over others, the more evident is the predestination and inevitability of his every action.

The Revolution was a grand thing!" continued Monsieur Pierre, betraying by this desperate and provocative proposition his extreme youth and his wish to express all that was in his mind.

They say: misfortunes, sufferings...well, if someone said to me right now, this minute: do you want to remain the way you were before captivity, or live through it all over again? For God's sake, captivity again and horsemeat! Once we're thrown off our habitual paths, we think all is lost; but it's only here that the new and the good begins. As long as there's life, there's happiness. There's much, much still to come.

Those whom God wishes to destroy he drives mad.

This is high time to stop building AI based autonomous weapons systems and focus more AI energy on building compassionate artificial intelligent systems for serving humanity.

War is the biggest tax hike ever; if this is properly understood many would stop warring. - On War and Personal Finances

When he reached home Prince Andrei began thinking of his life in Petersburg during those last four months, as if it were something new. He recalled his exertions and solicitations, and the history of his project of army reform, which had been accepted for consideration and which they were trying to pass over in silence simply because another, a very poor one, had already been prepared and submitted to the Emperor. He thought of the meetings of a committee of which Berg was a member. He remembered how carefully and at what length everything relating to form and procedure was discussed at those meetings, and how sedulously and promptly all that related to the gist of the business was evaded. He recalled his labours on the Legal Code, and how painstakingly he had translated the articles of the Roman and French codes into Russian, and he felt ashamed of himself. Then he vividly pictured to himself Bogucharovo, his occupations in the country, his journey to Ryazan, he remembered the peasants, and Dron the village elder, and mentally applying to them the Personal Rights he had divided into paragraphs, he felt astonished that he could have spent so much time on such useless work.

When he won, it proved that God was on his side. When he didn't win, it meant that God wanted him to try harder.

When our ancestors picked up weapons in the jungle, it was necessity - when their children picked up weapons, it was tradition - but when we pick up weapons, it is stupidity.

Women can end all wars right now, just deny sex to your partners until they stop fighting.

With you the very paradigm of war shall change - it shall change from violence to non-violence - it shall change from individual triumph to collective triumph - it shall change from two people fighting against each other for the same reasons, to two people fighting together against their innate evils of prejudices and bigotry. The paradigm must change - the cycle must break – and it can only happen once you wake up.

You may have heard the phrase "make love, not war" – well, these are all useless words, unless you can actually, genuinely, humanely feel your true oneness with all humans at the very core of your existence. Once you feel that oneness - that unity - that simple yet glorious uniformity, then only will the drumbeats of war begin to fade away.

You are a fool.

You make peace with one sister only to declare war on the other. It’s always like that with peace, isn’t it? Always to someone’s detriment, already sowing the seed for the next war.

Tsar Alexander I was prone to tears and he did weep over Borodino, but not at Borodino, as Tolstoy would have it. This was definitely poetic licence. Alexander was never on the field at Borodino.