"If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy." - James Madison

"War has been avoided from a due sense of the miseries, and the demoralization it produces, and of the superior blessings of a state of peace and friendship with all mankind." - Thomas Jefferson

"Never was so much false arithmetic employed on any subject, as that which has been employed to persuade nations that it is their interest to go to war." - Thomas Jefferson

"There was never a good war or a bad peace." - Benjamin Franklin

"Preparation for war is a constant stimulus to suspicion and ill will." - James Monroe

"The fiery and destructive passions of war reign in the human breast with much more powerful sway than the mild and beneficent sentiments of peace." - Alexander Hamilton

"My first wish is to see this plague of mankind, war, banished from the earth." - George Washington

"Of all the enemies to public liberty, war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debt and taxes and armies are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few. In war, too, the discretionary power of the Executive is extended; its influence in dealing out offices, honors, and emoluments is multiplied; and all the means of seducing the minds, are added to those of subduing the force, of the people...
[There is also an] inequality of fortunes, and the opportunities of fraud, growing out of a state of war, and....degeneracy of manners and morals....No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare." -- James Madison

"War is the common harvest of all those who participate in the division and expenditure of public money, in all countries. It is the art of conquering at home: the object of it is an increase of revenue: and as revenue cannot be increased without taxes, a pretence must be made for expenditures. In reviewing the history of the English Government, its wars and its taxes, a bystander, not blinded by prejudice, nor warped by interest, would declare, that taxes were not raised to carry on wars, but that wars were raised to carry on taxes." --Thomas Paine, Rights of Man, Part 1