Thomas Paine Quotes on War & Peace (9 Quotes)

That there are men in all countries who get their living by war, and by keeping up the quarrels of nations, is as shocking as it is true but when those who are concerned in the government of a country, make it their study to sow discord, and cultivate prejudices between nations, it becomes the more unpardonable.

It is the object only of war that makes it honorable. And if there was ever a just war since the world began, it is this in which America is now engages.

War involves in its progress such a train of unforeseen circumstances that no human wisdom can calculate the end; it has but one thing certain, and that is to increase taxes.

He who is the author of a war lets loose the whole contagion of hell and opens a vein that bleeds a nation to death.

It is not a field of a few acres of ground, but a cause, that we are defending, and whether we defeat the enemy in one battle, or by degrees, the consequences will be the same.

I have as little superstition in me as any man living, but my secret opinion has ever been, and still is, that God Almighty will not give up a people to military destruction, or leave them unsupportedly to perish, who have so earnestly and so repeatedly sought to avoid the calamities of war, by every decent method which wisdom could invent. Neither have I so much of the infidel in me, as to suppose that He has relinquished the government of the world, and given us up to the care of devils.

To establish any mode to abolish war, however advantageous it might be to Nations, would be to take from such Government the most lucrative of its branches.

Let the world see that this nation can bear prosperity And that her honest virtue in time of peace is equal to her bravest valor in time of war.

If there must be trouble, let it be in my day, that my child may have peace.