Civilians Quotes

“Subjects in the experiments were sometimes unwitting civilians. At other times they were soldiers, prisoners, mental patients, sex offenders, cancer patients and other individuals who were unwitting, or who could not give meaningful informed consent.”

— Colin A. Ross

“But if she'd come then, she would never have properly appreciated it. She'd have seen the happy crowds and the Union Jacks and the bonfires, but she'd have no idea of what it meant to see the lights on after years of navigating in the dark, what it meant to look up at an approaching plane without fear, to hear church bells after years of air-raid sirens. She'd have had no idea of the years of rationing and shabby clothes and fear which lay behind the smiles and the cheering, no idea of what it had cost to bring this day to pass
the lives of all those soldiers and sailors and airmen and civilians.”

— Connie Willis

“[He] had seen firsthand the horrific results of appeasement. It was a path chosen by feebleminded people who were morally incapable of confronting evil. He saw many parallels between the Nazis, the communists, and these jihadists. They were all sociopaths at heart
obsessed with their own tribal desires and utterly incapable of conferring justice or compassion on those outside the tribe. If you were not one of them, you were a lesser human, and thus deserved to be treated in any way they saw fit. And if that meant blowing up airliners and buses full of innocent civilians, then so be it.”

— Vince Flynn

“It seems logical that he who supports total war in principle cannot complain of a war against civilians.”

— John Hersey

“As Wilson mourned his wife, German forces in Belgium entered quiet towns and villages, took civilian hostages, and executed them to discourage resistances. In the town of Dinant, German soldiers shot 612 men, women, and children. The American press called such atrocities acts of "frightfulness," the word then used to describe what later generations would call terrorism. On August 25, German forces bean an assault on the Belgian city of Louvain, the "Oxford of Belgium," a university town that was home to an important library. Three days of shelling and murder left 209 civilians dead, 1,100 buildings incinerated, and the library destroyed, along with its 230,000 books, priceless manuscripts, and artifacts. The assault was deemed an affront to just to Belgium but to the world. Wilson, a past president of Princeton University, "felt deeply the destruction of Louvain," according to his friend, Colonel House; the president feared "the war would throw the world back three or four centuries.”

— Erik Larson

“When civilians are not asked to pay any price, it's easy to be at war - not just to intervene in a foreign land in the first place, but to keep on fighting there. The justifications for staying at war don't have to be particularly rational or cogently argued when so few Americans are making the sacrifice that it takes to stay.”

— Rachel Maddow

“Eleven men and women, exhausted, battered, and armed with captured weapons, against fifty battle-armored foes desperate to kill them. Every one of those eleven knew exactly what their odds of living through the next three minutes were, but it didn't matter. They were all that stood between six hundred civilians and cold-blooded murder, and Alicia's green eyes were hard as she watched the gaps being punched through the western wall.
"Make it count, people," she said, almost conversationally.”

— David Weber

“It was a dangerous habit: once policemen stopped being civilians the only other thing they could be was soldiers.”

— Terry Pratchett

“And in a nasty war, where's the best place to be? Apart from on the moon, o' course? No one?"
Slowly, Jade raised a hand.
"Go on, then," said the sergeant.
"In the army, sarge," said the troll. "'cos ... " She began to count on her fingers. "One, you got weapons an' armour an' dat. Two, you are surrounded by other armed men. Er ... Many, youse gettin' paid and gettin' better grub than the people in Civilian Street. Er ... Lots, if'n you gives up, you getting taken pris'ner and dere's rules about that like Not Kicking Pris'ners Inna Head and stuff, 'cos if you kick their pris'ners inna head they'll kick your pris'ners inna head so dat's, like, you're kickin' your own head, but dere's no rule say you can't kick enemy civilians inna head. There's other stuff too, but I ran outa numbers.”

— Terry Pratchett

“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.”

— Al Sharpton

“Asymmetrical warfare is a euphemism for terrorism, just like collateral damage is a euphemism for killing innocent civilians.”

— Alan Dershowitz

“If the president of the United States says that attacks on civilians, starvation, and denial of religious freedom in Sudan are important international issues, they become so.”

— Elliott Abrams

“Israelis cannot be blamed for the conflicts and civilians casualties nor do the Palestinians. We can argue endlessly about it, the only one that can be blamed for this lasting battle is the Saudis fueling the conflicts for enduring their supremacy in the Arab world.”

— M.F. Moonzajer

“In my 20 years as a photographer, covering conflicts from Bosnia to Gaza to Iraq to Afghanistan, injured civilians and soldiers have passed through my life many times.”

— Anja Niedringhaus

“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.”

— George Pataki

“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.”

— Shashi Tharoor

“From out of nowhere, Phury felt an overwhelming tide of guilt, like someone had popped the lid off all
his deepest concerns and his fears for the future of the race. He had to respond to it, couldn't bear the
pressure.
Riding the wave, he found himself saying in a rush, We live and die for our kind. The species is our first
and only concern. We fight every night and count the jars of thelessers we kill. Stealth is the way we
protect the civilians. The less they know about us, the safer they are. That is why we disappeared.”

— J.R. Ward

“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.”

— Sean MacBride

“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.”

— Carl Levin

“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.”

— Janine Di Giovanni

“I think it is tragic that a situation should arise where civilians on any side are killed. But it is almost a cliche to say that it is virtually unavoidable and this isn't unique to us alone.”

— Joe Slovo

“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.”

— Peter T. King

“Supposedly, going to war initiates you into this gnostic priesthood of people who've had a liminal experience forever separating them from civilians. Except ... you go there, and it is what it is. A form of human activity as varied as any other.”

— Phil Klay

“Terrorism, to me, is the use of terror for political purpose, and terror is indiscriminate murder of civilians to make a political point.”

— Al Franken

“Civilians are arrested every single day - including innocent ones - and they must wait until their day in court in order to argue their side of the story. Police officers must be subjected to the same rules.”

— Al Sharpton

“As a reporter, I embedded for modest stints with American soldiers in Afghanistan and Iraq. When I'm asked about those experiences, I always say - and mean - that we civilians don't deserve the soldiers we have.”

— Alex Berenson

“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.”

— Nancy Gibbs

“My aunt and uncle are clearly civilians.”

— Jimmy Kimmel

“These people are civilians, Moira. Look at them. They didn't try to hurt Holcomb's workers and they're certainly no threat to the Cabal." I smiled and waved my right hand, palm out. "Come on. You know these aren't the druids you're looking for." No one even chuckled. So much for diffusing the situation with humor.”

— Mercedes Lackey

“When Colonel Gadhafi started using his air force against civilians on the ground, we did not hesitate. Then we supported the resolution of the Security Council, which introduced arms embargo for Libya.”

— Sergei Lavrov

“My strength is looking for composition and light, and I think those things come in the quieter times of war or photographing people affected on the margins of war - civilians, refugees; that is where I really excel.”

— Lynsey Addario

“These are not soldiers, these are men. They are notadventurers or warriors, designed for human butchery - as butchers or cattle. They are the ploughmen or workers that one recognizes even in their uniforms. They are uprooted civilians. They are ready, waiting for the signal for death or murder, but when you examine their faces between the vertical ranks of bayonets, they are nothing but men.”

— Henri Barbusse

“Egypt firmly and strongly condemns such attacks on civilians and soldiers that led to the deaths of a large number of innocent victims.”

— Hosni Mubarak

“If the Palestinian people really wish to decide that they will battle to the very end to prevent partition or annexation of even an inch of their ancestral soil, then I have to concede that that is their right. I even think that a sixty-year rather botched experiment in marginal quasi-statehood is something that the Jewish people could consider abandoning. It represents barely an instant in our drawn-out and arduous history, and it's already been agreed even by the heirs of Ze'ev Jabotinsky that the whole scheme is unrealizable in 'Judaea and Samaria,' let alone in Gaza or Sinai. But it's flat-out intolerable to be solicited to endorse a side-by-side Palestinian homeland and then to discover that there are sinuous two-faced apologists explaining away the suicide-murder of Jewish civilians in Tel Aviv, a city which would be part of a Jewish state or community under any conceivable 'solution.' There's that word again ...”

— Christopher Hitchens

“There is no effort to acknowledge some equivalent accountability by associating "terrorism" with all violence that is deliberately aimed at civilians, either directly or as foreseeable effects of violent acts, whether the actor is a non-state individual or group or the state.”

— Richard A. Falk

“'Civilians' is a term I love. It's what Elizabeth Hurley used to describe people who weren't on TV.”

— Alan Carr

“I refuse to finance the mass murder of innocent
civilians ... What is one more life thrown away in this
sad and useless national tragedy? If one death can
atone for anything, in any small way, to say to the
world: I apologize for what we have done to you, I am
ashamed for the mayhem and turmoil caused by my
country.”

— Malachi Ritscher

“In fact, as far as one can tell, Obama seems to have killed more civilians during his first year than Bush did in his first year, and maybe even than Bush killed in his final year.”

— Allan Nairn

“We're capable of understanding that someone has to drop an atomic bomb on a town of innocent civilians, but not that others have to cut up prostitutes who spread disease and moral depravity in the slums of London. Hence we call the former realism and the latter madness.”

— Jo Nesbo

“Our mission is to speak the truth to power. We send home that first rough draft of history. We can and do make a difference in exposing the horrors of war and especially the atrocities that befall civilians.”

— Marie Colvin

“The military mind tends to be conservative, realistic and historical. The civilian mind tends to be liberal, idealistic and Utopian. Journalists, obviously, are civilians, and they tend to distrust, and to suspect, the military's motives.”

— Mark Riebling

“Terrorism is the intentional use of, or threat to use violence against civilians or against civilian targets, in order to attain political aims.”

— Boaz Ganor

“We know broadly from research is that religiosity does not correlate with sympathy for terrorism. It's actually quite the opposite. The more religious someone is, the more often they go to the mosque, the more likely they are to actually reject attacks on civilians.”

— Chuck Todd

“The only rule Muslims know is to win. It does not matter how. All rules can be broken as long as they win the war. They can lie, they can deceive, they can break their treaties as Muhammad did, they can ambush or use terror, assassinate, massacre the children and bomb civilians. Muslims can even kill each other as long as this improves their chance of winning.”

— Ali Sina

“When I was developing the [Daredevil] idea, we were really doing something closer to what was in the comic book. By that, I mean in terms of civilians in the street knew that superpowers were an everyday matter of fact. When it finally ended up at Netflix, they really decided to land it in the Marvel Universe that exists in the cinematic universe. That changes the story entirely. It was no longer about the other, which is what that metaphor was. It's really more about the character herself, which I love.”

— Melissa Rosenberg

“We are using missile defense to protect our civilians, and they're using their civilians to protect their missiles.”

— Benjamin Netanyahu

“Some of my best sources are ex-policemen, just to get a feeling of what it's like to be one. And it's quite different from being a civilian - except, of course, that I believe that policemen are just special sorts of civilians. Things like how hard it is to hold someone that doesn't want to be held. This is the kind of thing that is worth knowing.”

— Terry Pratchett

“In 2013, there were 6,261 black homicide victims in the US - almost all killed by black civilians.”

— John Podhoretz

“I have never met anyone who built a bomb shelter and felt protected by it. I have never met a modern military man who did not realize that military victory is a concept which became obsolete with the coming of the nuclear age, and most civilians realize this also. Wisdom demands that we stop preparing to wage a war which would eliminate mankind - and start preparing to eliminate the seeds of war.”

— Peace Pilgrim

“A lot of guns there's no need for civilians to own those those are for military”

— Willie Nelson