A man who kills on his own is a murderer. A man who kills at his government's request is a national hero.

War is not a word, it's an acronym for "Wasting Another's Resources."

One keeps healthy in wartime...by a vigorous assertion of values in which war has no part.

War is the Health of the State.

War is the ultimate tool of politics.

Either war is obsolete, or men are.

War has become a spectator sport for Americans.

I hate it when they say, ‘He gave his life for his country.’ They don’t die for the honor and glory of their country. We kill them.

They talk about conscription as a democratic institution. Yes; so is a cemetery.

Why should you ask blood be spilled for a cause that is not in the interest of the American people?

We may extend our dominion over the whole continent...but be assured it will be at the price of our free institutions.

Patriotism at the expense of another nation is as wicked as racism at the expense of another race...Let us resolve to be patriots always, nationalists never.

Wars have ever been but another aristocratic mode of plundering and oppressing commerce.

Washington...has become an alien city-state that rules America, and much of the rest of the world, in the way that Rome ruled the Roman Empire.

It is a truism that almost any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so...

I do not believe any policy which has behind it the threat of military force is justified as part of the basic foreign policy of the United States except to defend the liberty of our own people.

What a cruel thing is war...to fill our hearts with hatred instead of love for our neighbors, and to devastate the fair face of this beautiful world.

The war...was an unnecessary condition of affairs, and might have been avoided if forebearance and wisdom had been practiced on both sides.

This much is clear: violence breeds violence, repression brings retaliation, and only a cleansing of our whole society can remove this sickness from our soul.

...History shows that ... (people) can be deflected from their natural tendencies by artful propaganda, bogus crises, or other political trickery.

Robert Higgs is a Senior Fellow in Political Economy for The Independent Institute.

Since the end of the nineteenth century, if not earlier, presidents have misled the public about their motives and their intentions in going to war.

When American presidents prepare for foreign wars, they lie.

It is the function of the citizen to keep the government from falling into error.

The belief in the possibility of a short decisive war appears to be one of the most ancient and dangerous of human illusions.

Never is the power of the state greater, and never are the forces of political parties of opposition less effective, than at the outbreak of war.

From "Political Parties: A Sociological Study of the Oligarchical Tendencies of Modern Democracy", Collier Books, 1962, p. 357. Michels wrote this for the 1915 edition after the outbreak of WW I. The book propounds the "iron law of oligarchy" showing why even the German Social Democratic Party tended to betray its socialist and democratic principles.