8 Leo Tolstoy Quotes on War

Leo Tolstoy quotes on war

17. 'What's this? Am I falling? My legs are giving way under me,' he thought, and fell on his back. He opened his eyes, hoping to see how the struggle of the French soldiers with the artilleryman was ending, and eager to know whether the red-haired gunner artilleryman was killed or not, whether the cannons had been taken or saved. But he saw nothing of all that. Above him there was nothing but the sky - the lofty sky, not clear, but still immeasurably lofty, with gray clouds creeping quietly over it.

25. The strongest of all warriors are these two - Time and Patience.

49. Further acquaintance with the labors of the Quakers and their works--with Fox, Penn, and especially the work of Dymond (published in 1827)--showed me not only that the impossibility of reconciling Christianity with force and war had been recognized long, long ago, but that this irreconcilability had been long ago proved so clearly and so indubitably that one could only wonder how this impossible reconciliation of Christian teaching with the use of force, which has been, and is still, preached in the churches, could have been maintained in spite of it.

84. It was taught that this highest morality was only applicable to private life ...but that in public life all forms of violence, such as imprisonment, executions, and wars -might be used for the protection of the majority against a minority of evildoers, though such means were diametrically opposed to any vestige of love.

97. ...the inherent contradiction of human life has now reached an extreme degree of tension: on the one side there is the consciousness of the beneficence of the law of love, and on the other the existing order of life... an empty, anxious, restless, and troubled mode of life, conflicting as it does with the law of love and built on the use of violence. This contradiction must be faced, and the solution... has dwelt in the hearts of men from remote antiquity: the truth that the law of love is in accord with the nature of man.

114. In all history there is no war which was not hatched by the governments, the governments alone, independent of the interests of the people, to whom war is always pernicious even when successful.

122. Nietzsche was stupid and abnormal.

132. To get rid of an enemy one must love him.