Top 70 Civilians Quotes

We burned to death 100,000 Japanese civilians in Tokyo – men, women and children. LeMay recognized that what he was doing would be thought immoral if his side had lost. But what makes it immoral if you lose and not immoral if you win?

It seems like such a terrible shame that innocent civilians have to get hurt in wars, otherwise combat would be such a wonderfully healthy way to rid the human race of unneeded trash.

Indiscriminate attacks on civilians ought, under all circumstances, to be illegal in war as in peacetime.

It is a rule of international law that weapons and methods of warfare which do not discriminate between combatants and civilians should never be used.

There is no moral equivalency between those who would kill using children, innocent civilians, children and adults, in their homes and in their places of worship, to that of a government that is seeking those terrorists before they can engage in that awful activity.

Contrary to what some believe, taking all reasonable and feasible precautions to protect civilians – and mitigating the resulting anger when we harm them – does not need to impede military operations.

Any organization or any individual that targets civilians and kills them for political agenda is a terrorist organization.

I think carpet bombing is an absolutely tremendous idea if the enemy accommodates you by laying himself out like a carpet in the middle of the desert without any civilians or infrastructure around him. Sadly, the Islamic State has learned that that is a losing proposition and does not accommodate us in that way.

Every day, we at the United Nations see the human toll of an absence of regulations or lax controls on the arms trade. We see it in the suffering of civilian populations trapped by armed conflict or pervasive crime. We see it in the killing and wounding of civilians – including children, the most vulnerable of all.

Anti-U.S. sentiment has been born out of many grievances – support and weapons for such dictators as Mubarak, unquestionable support for Israel in its occupation of Palestine, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and drone attacks in Pakistan and Yemen that kill more civilians than intended targets.

No, the United States does not target civilians.

You don’t need any indictment in order to arrest someone; probable cause is sufficient to arrest civilians, so it must be enough to arrest police.

In March 1943, my parents, four-year-old sister and I were interned with other foreign civilians at Lunghua camp, a former teacher training college outside Shanghai, where we remained until the end of August 1945.

The destruction of civilian hamlets, the killing and the wounding of civilians, became vastly greater than it had been before, and it was very upsetting; but I still couldn’t bring myself to understand that the policy itself was wrong.

When things did go wrong for the IRA, when civilians were killed, I tried to put it in context, not defend it.

Common sense should tell us that there is no reason for civilians to have access to easily concealable handguns with the capability to shoot through body armor.

The steep decline in America’s image and standing after 9/11 is a direct reflection of global distaste for the instruments of American hard power: the Iraq invasion, Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, torture, rendition, Blackwater’s killings of Iraqi civilians.

On the rare occasions when U.N. blue helmets have made the news in the past, it has unfortunately too often been in the context of situations where peacekeepers have failed to shield civilians, or even when the peacekeepers themselves have been involved in abuse.

All astronauts, even civilians like me without pilot experience, have to learn how to co-pilot a jet called a T-38.

In my view, it is only when civilians are protected that we will defeat ISIS, and until that is at the centre of our plan, I will remain an outspoken advocate for that cause.

You’ve got to forget about this civilian. Whenever you drop bombs, you’re going to hit civilians.

We are at war to liberate Iraq, to protect the people of the United States and other countries from the devastating impact of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction being used by terrorists or the Iraqi government to kill thousands of innocent civilians.

Twenty-first century war adds new risks: more and more often there are no front lines, no central command, no rules of engagement – only a chaotic collision of politics, power, faith and bloodlust. Victims are as likely to be civilians as soldiers.

If civilians are going to be killed, I would rather have them be their civilians than our civilians.

I’ve always had a lot of time for servicemen. Yet there’s been this bad relationship between civilians and the armed services. We say to soldiers, ‘We want you when we want you, but stay away in peacetime. We’re proud of you, but keep away from my daughter and don’t come drinking in my pub.’

It is vital that Iraq and the United States together send the clearest possible signal that those who commit acts of violence against American military forces and American civilians will not be rewarded with amnesty.

My view is that we shouldn’t be supplying the Saudis with arms while they’re bombing civilians in Yemen and, by the way, while they’re arming al-Qaida and it’s fighting our own counterterrorist operations in Yemen.

If civilians are killed in an attack on a military installation, it is certainly regrettable, but I will not morally blame the I.R.A. for it.

Yes, war is hell. It is awful. It involves human beings killing other human beings, sometimes innocent civilians. That is why we despise war.

The country of the Two Holy Places has in our religion a peculiarity of its own over the other Muslim countries. In our religion, it is not permissible for any non-Muslim to stay in our country. Therefore, even though American civilians are not targeted in our plan, they must leave.

The Islamic method of waging war is not to kill innocent civilians, but it was Christians in World War II who bombed innocent civilians in Dresden and dropped the nuclear bomb on Hiroshima, neither of which were military targets.

Wanton killing of innocent civilians is terrorism, not a war against terrorism.

We are battling fanatics who kidnap and behead civilians and shoot fleeing children in the back. There can be no dialogue with such people, and the American people understand this.

The commonly accepted definition of terrorism is that it is politically motivated violence directed at civilians by entities other than a state. These kind of attacks can come from the far right, the far left, racists of every stripe, as well as jihadists.

To be a good reporter, writing about war, you have to write about the people. It’s not about the tanks or the RPGs or military strategy. It’s always about the effect war has on civilians, on society, and how it disrupts and destroys lives.

Secondly, the Government of Sudan should commit to the disarmament and control of the Janjaweed militia and ensure that the targeting of civilians ceases immediately.

Can a nation use the methods of terrorism? Can it harm innocent civilians in the process? What are the costs? Where is the line?

In fighting terror, you cannot let it interfere with the normal life of civilians in Israel.

Today’s terrorists are pursuing a distinct route. They are increasingly attacking civilians in symbolic targets, such as those of economic importance, or venues of bustling life like public transportation or entertainment, like nightclubs.

The attack on Pearl Harbor is one of the darkest moments in our nation’s history, and we will forever remember the thousands of service members and civilians whose lives were tragically taken on that horrible day.

Stop exposing your children to danger by sending them to throw bombs and stones at soldiers and civilians.

The traditional stand adopted by the Cuban Revolution, which was always opposed to any action that could jeopardize the life of civilians, is well known.

Hiroshima has become a metaphor not just for nuclear war but for war and destruction and violence toward civilians. It’s not just the idea we should not use nuclear arms. We should not start another war because it’s madness.

Obama is making a choice now that will lead to the deaths of many thousands of civilians in Afghanistan by American hands. By ordinary standards of presidents, he is a decent man. But those standards aren’t good enough. He’s in a position either to kill or not to kill, and he’s made the decision to kill.

Each day, millions of police officers do the selfless work of putting their lives on the line to protect civilians, frequently responding to or preventing crises completely with no recognition.

Among the achievements celebrated in Trump’s first 100 days are the 59 cruise missiles launched at the Syrian airfield from which the gas attack on civilians allegedly came, and the dropping of the 22,000-pound MOAB bomb in Afghanistan. But what did these bombings accomplish?

The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are as much every U.S. citizen’s wars as they are the veterans’ wars. If we don’t assume that civilians have just as much ownership and the moral responsibilities that we have as a nation when we embark on something like that, then we’re in a very bad situation.