Title page from The Rights of War and Peace (1901 ed.)

The Rights of War and Peace (1901 ed.)

Grotius’s magnum opus on international law and the laws of war and peace. He wrote this volume while the Thirty Years’ War raged around him in the hope that rational human beings might be able to agree to legal limits on war’s destruction.

Key Quotes

War & Peace

There are some things of such a nature, as to contribute, no way, to the support and prolongation of war: things which reason itself requires to be spared even during the heat and continuance of war: … Such are Porticos, Temples, statues, and all other elegant works and monuments of art… As this…

War & Peace

“We will begin with the human as more generally known. Now this is either a civil right, or a right more or less extensive than the civil right. The civil right is that which is derived from the civil power. The civil power is the sovereign power of the state. A state is a perfect body of free men,…