Technical Pacifist/Quotes

Zoe: Preacher, don't The Bible have some pretty specific things to say about killin'?
Book: Quite specific. It is, however, somewhat fuzzier on the subject of kneecaps.

—Firefly

It's just too easy to blow somebody up. Non-lethal combat is far more challenging.

—Trestkon, The Nameless Mod

I will not shed the blood of children and women, but if they starve, my hands are clean.

—Eeluk, Wolf of the Plains

Aang: But you didn't really kill Chin! Technically, he fell to his own doom because he was too stubborn to get out of the way.
Kiyoshi: Personally, I don't really see the difference.

—Avatar: The Last Airbender

PACIFIST CRUSH! KINDNESS TO ALL MANKIND KICK!

—Slayers

"Actually, Spirit Father, they don't seem to be killing anyone. They're just beating the crap out of us."

—Dominic Deegan

"The thing is, Sims was not playing. She did understand the situation, just as well as I did. But she still took those oaths, she was still serious about them, deadly serious, and there is nothing so dangerous as an enemy who leaves themselves so few limitations.... They will go right to the limit of their oaths, if the situation calls for it. Sims and Caeghlin didn't kill anyone when they destroyed Willan's Olympus Mons facility, but the crater that used to be a volcano is still visible from Homeworld with an amateur's telescope."

—Endless Waltz

"You know, for a man who abhors violence, I took great satisfaction in doing that."

—The Third Doctor, observing the remains of a Dalek

It's not like I'm an innocent. I've taken lives. I got worse; I got clever. Manipulated people into taking their own.

—The (very anti-gun) Tenth Doctor, Doctor Who

Nick Fury: I thought this guy was a pacifist!
Thor: (grinning) A pacifist with a big, scary hammer.

John Hancock: Mr. Franklin, where do you stand on the war issue?
Benjamin Franklin: I believe that if we are to form a new country, we cannot be a country that appears war-hungry and violent to the rest of the world. However, we also cannot be a country that appears weak and unwilling to fight to the rest of the world. So, what if we form a country that appears to want both?
Thomas Jefferson: Yes. Yes, of course. We go to war, and protest going to war at the same time.
John Dickinson: Right. If the people of our new country are allowed to do whatever they wish, then some will support the war and some will protest it.
Benjamin Franklin: And that means that as a nation, we could go to war with whomever we wished, but at the same time, act like we didn't want to. If we allow the people to protest what the government does, then the country will be forever blameless.
John Adams: (holding a slice of chocolate cake) It's like having your cake, and eating it, too.
Congressman: Think of it: an entire nation founded on saying one thing and doing another.
John Hancock: And we will call that country the United States of America.

—South Park, "I'm a Little Bit Country"

I am not only a pacifist but a militant pacifist. I am willing to fight for peace.

—Albert Einstein

Tesla:: Should an intense young man and a wild-eyed gentleman ever approach you and mention the word "Tunguska", I want you to shoot them. Promise me.
Robo: But, Mr. Tesla, you're a pacifist.
Tesla: Yes, Robo. But you are not.

—Atomic Robo

Franklin gives an illuminating account of "the embarrassment given them (in the Pennsylvania assembly) whenever application was made to grant aids for military purposes." Unwilling to offend the government, and averse to violating their principles, he says, they used "a variety of evasions," the commonest one being to grant money "for the king's use" and avoid all inquiry as to the disbursement. But once, when New England asked Pennsylvania for a grant to buy powder, this ingenious device would not serve:
They could not grant money to buy powder, for that was an ingredient of war; but they voted an aid of 3000 Pounds, and appropriated it for the purchasing of bread, flour, wheat "and other grain." Some of the council, desirous of giving the House still further embarrassment, advised the governor not to accept the provision, as not being the thing he had demanded; but he reply'd, "I shall take the money, for I understand very well their meaning — other grain is gunpowder." Which he accordingly bought, and they never objected to it.

—from Quakers and the War (1917 Newspaper Editorial), via The Quaker Writings