I don’t think the war in Afghanistan was ruthlessly enough waged.

I think with the Romans, that the general of today should be a soldier tomorrow if necessary.

War – An act of violence whose object is to constrain the enemy, to accomplish our will.

This is not Johnson’s war. This is America’s war. If I drop dead tomorrow, this war will still be with you.

By very conservative estimates, Turkish repression of Kurds in the 1990s falls in the category of Kosovo. It peaked in the early 1990s; one index is the flight of more than a million Kurds from the countryside to the unofficial Kurdish capital, Diyarbakir, from 1990 to 1994, as the Turkish army was devastating the countryside.

We make war that we may live in peace.

I think war is so incredibly backward, and I don’t think it’s intelligent, and it’s not sane. So why would you want to support it?

Tonight, we gather to affirm the greatness of our nation – not because of the height of our skyscrapers, or the power of our military, or the size of our economy. Our pride is based on a very simple premise, summed up in a declaration made over two hundred years ago.

If the battle for civilization comes down to the wimps versus the barbarians, the barbarians are going to win.

War grows out of the desire of the individual to gain advantage at the expense of his fellow man.

Some of the generals are saying, ‚We’re making progress. We are clearing an area.‘ But you really don’t defeat the Taliban by clearing an area. They move.

People are finding it harder and harder to relate to foreign policy.

Every writer has his writing technique – what he can and can’t do to describe something like war or history. I’m not good at writing about those things, but I try because I feel it is necessary to write that kind of thing.

Brave men rejoice in adversity, just as brave soldiers triumph in war.

Israelis would mostly breathe a sigh of relief if Palestinians were to disappear.

Many intelligence reports in war are contradictory; even more are false, and most are uncertain.

How could man rejoice in victory and delight in the slaughter of men?

The American escalation of the war in Laos provoked a response by the Communist forces, which now control more of Laos than ever before.

Pakistan will never be able to match the Indian militarily, and the effort to do so is taking an immense toll on the society.

I did 20 years in the Navy. I joined the Navy right out of high school and went through Navy boot camp, went to SEAL training, got done with that, and then showed up at a SEAL team, where I did 20 years. That was pretty much my whole adult life.

There was never a good war, or a bad peace.

I come from – I came from Wales, and it’s a strong, butch society. We were in the war and all that. People didn’t waste time feeling sorry for themselves. You had to get on with it. So my credo is get on with it. I don’t waste time being soft. I’m not cold, but I don’t like being, wasting my time with – life’s too short.

As I’ve said, there were patriots who supported this war, and patriots who opposed it. And all of us are united in appreciation for our servicemen and women, and our hopes for Iraqis‘ future.

Something’s very wrong with a nation that would rather spend money on war than take care of its children.

In remembering the appalling suffering of war on both sides, we recognise how precious is the peace we have built in Europe since 1945.

War may sometimes be a necessary evil. But no matter how necessary, it is always an evil, never a good. We will not learn how to live together in peace by killing each other’s children.

So while I will never minimize the costs involved in military action, I am convinced that a failure to act in Libya would have carried a far greater price for America.

In 1962, war was avoided by Khrushchev’s willingness to accept Kennedy’s hegemonic demands.

A revolution is a struggle to the death between the future and the past.

There is no glory in battle worth the blood it costs.

The most successful war seldom pays for its losses.

The problem in defense is how far you can go without destroying from within what you are trying to defend from without.

Israel is a pretty crazy state.

The quickest way of ending a war is to lose it.

In war, when a commander becomes so bereft of reason and perspective that he fails to understand the dependence of arms on Divine guidance, he no longer deserves victory.

War should be the politics of last resort. And when we go to war, we should have a purpose that our people understand and support.

A very large majority of the U.S. population is in favor of establishing diplomatic relations with Cuba and has been for a long time with some fluctuations. And even part of the business world is in favor of it, too. But the government won’t allow it.

No war is over until the enemy says it’s over.

Clinton himself acted in ways which increased the threat of terror.

I have a scheme for stopping war. It’s this – no nation is allowed to enter a war till they have paid for the last one.

No one doubts that innocent men, women and children have been the victims of chemical weapons attacks in Syria. And there’s no doubt who is responsible for this heinous use of chemical weapons in Syria: the Syrian regime.

War is evil, but it is often the lesser evil.

Martyrs do not underrate the body, they allow it to be elevated on the cross. In this they are at one with their antagonists.

Men are by nature merely indifferent to one another; but women are by nature enemies.

Morality is contraband in war.

Never forget that no military leader has ever become great without audacity.

Soldiers generally win battles; generals get credit for them.

This was not an act of terrorism, but it was an act of war.

We all hoped in 2001 that we could put in place an Afghan government under President Karzai that would be able to control the country, make sure al-Qaeda didn’t come back, and make sure the Taliban wasn’t resurging. It didn’t work out.

It is my conviction that killing under the cloak of war is nothing but an act of murder.

America has fought five wars since 1945 and has gained its objectives in only one of them, the Gulf War.

In war, you win or lose, live or die – and the difference is just an eyelash.

No foreign policy – no matter how ingenious – has any chance of success if it is born in the minds of a few and carried in the hearts of none.

Other than being crazy enough to press a button, there is nothing that Putin can do militarily to fundamentally alter American interests.

Operations in Iraq and Afghanistan and the war on terrorism have reduced the pace of military transformation and have revealed our lack of preparation for defensive and stability operations. This Administration has overextended our military.

In war as in life, it is often necessary when some cherished scheme has failed, to take up the best alternative open, and if so, it is folly not to work for it with all your might.

Oceania was at war with Eurasia; therefore Oceania had always been at war with Eurasia.

Organized murder is war, and though we demonstrate against a particular war, the nuclear, or any other kind of war, we have never demonstrated against war.

I don’t see the wisdom in modern politicians that I once saw in men like Dean Acheson, David Bruce, or George Marshall. In my day, the northeastern establishment dominated foreign policy formulation, but the composition and distribution of our population is very different today.

Telling us to obey instinct is like telling us to obey ‚people.‘ People say different things: so do instincts. Our instincts are at war… Each instinct, if you listen to it, will claim to be gratified at the expense of the rest.

Diplomats are just as essential to starting a war as soldiers are for finishing it… You take diplomacy out of war, and the thing would fall flat in a week.