Everyone's a pacifist between wars. It's like being a vegetarian between meals.

Everyone's a pacifist between wars. It's like being a vegetarian between meals.

O great corrector of enormous times,
Shaker of o'er-rank states, thou grand decider
Of dusty and old read more

O great corrector of enormous times,
Shaker of o'er-rank states, thou grand decider
Of dusty and old titles, that healest with blood
The earth when it is sick, and curest the world
O' the pleurisy of people.

War will exist until that distant day when the conscientious objector enjoys the same reputation and prestige that the warrior read more

War will exist until that distant day when the conscientious objector enjoys the same reputation and prestige that the warrior does today.

When people speak to you about a preventive war, you tell them to go and fight it. After my experience, read more

When people speak to you about a preventive war, you tell them to go and fight it. After my experience, I have come to hate war. War settles nothing.

I have always said that a conference was held for one reason only, to give everybody chance to get sore read more

I have always said that a conference was held for one reason only, to give everybody chance to get sore at everybody else. Sometimes it takes two or three conferences to scare up a war, but generally one will do it.

In modern war... you will die like a dog for no good reason.

In modern war... you will die like a dog for no good reason.

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those read more

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.

The history of those who shed those other tears, the history of those anonymous millions, is what Terkel wants readers read more

The history of those who shed those other tears, the history of those anonymous millions, is what Terkel wants readers and listeners to come away with. What's it like to be that goofy little soldier, scared stiff, with his bayonet aimed at Christ? What's it like to have been a woman in a defense-plant job during World War II? What's it like to be a kid at the front lines? It's all funny and tragic at the same time.

War is the unfolding of miscalculations.

War is the unfolding of miscalculations.