Our numbers have increased in Vietnam because the aggression of others has increased in Vietnam. There is not, and there will not be, a mindless escalation.

I have known war as few men now living know it. It’s very destructiveness on both friend and foe has rendered it useless as a means of settling international disputes.

I don’t understand why or how we can bully each other.

Discourage litigation. Persuade your neighbors to compromise whenever you can. As a peacemaker the lawyer has superior opportunity of being a good man. There will still be business enough.

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.

War will never cease until babies begin to come into the world with larger cerebrums and smaller adrenal glands.

Just like the Alamo, somebody damn well needed to go to their aid. Well, by God, I’m going to Viet Nam’s aid!

The emotions in a song – the anger, aggression – have got to be legitimate.

To be clear: we have fights and problems like any other couple.

Intervention only works when the people concerned seem to be keen for peace.

It is fatal to enter any war without the will to win it.

Compassionate listening is to help the other side suffer less. If we realize that other people are the same people as we are, we are no longer angry at them.

If I hit a man, his head is gonna go into the bleachers.

Diplomacy: the art of restraining power.

Enemies are so stimulating.

War is just when it is necessary; arms are permissible when there is no hope except in arms.

We must, all of us, learn actually not to have enemies, but only confused adversaries who are ourselves in disguise.

An eye for an eye only leads to more blindness.

To me, it’s OK to have differences. But we don’t have to be mad about it. You know? And I think that’s where sometimes we get so passionate that we – you know, it turns into anger.

Chimps are very quick to have a sudden fight or aggressive episode, but they’re equally as good at reconciliation.

If you’re not very clever you should be conciliatory.

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

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.

Nothing is ever done in this world until men are prepared to kill one another if it is not done.

You beat him verbally. You beat him mentally, and then finally, you beat him physically. That’s the three ways to beat a man.

Cuba never had advisors in Vietnam. The military there knew very well how to conduct their war.

Luckily for me, people don’t scream at me that much in my everyday life.

There can be no doubt that the average man blames much more than he praises. His instinct is to blame. If he is satisfied he says nothing; if he is not, he most illogically kicks up a row.

You never need an argument against the use of violence, you need an argument for it.

Peace is not only better than war, but infinitely more arduous.

To jaw-jaw is always better than to war-war.

Insults are the arguments employed by those who are in the wrong.

The peasant must always be helped technically, economically, morally and culturally. The guerrilla fighter will be a sort of guiding angel who has fallen into the zone, helping the poor always and bothering the rich as little as possible in the first phases of the war.

It’s a lose-lose situation to get in a confrontation on the street. If you can break contact and get away, break contact and get away. That’s what you should learn self-defense for.

Together we must learn how to compose differences, not with arms, but with intellect and decent purpose.

When I was a boy we didn’t wake up with Vietnam and have Cyprus for lunch and the Congo for dinner.

Nonviolence is a good policy when the conditions permit.

Whoever has provoked men to rage against him has always gained a party in his favor, too.

We make war that we may live in peace.

War is an instrument entirely inefficient toward redressing wrong; and multiplies, instead of indemnifying losses.

The Vietnamese see their history as an unending series of struggles of resistance to aggression, by the Chinese, the Mongols, the Japanese, the French, and now the Americans.

God’s love is too great to be confined to any one side of a conflict or to any one religion.

A disagreement or incident involving someone who’s not that important to you, like a guy who cut you off in traffic or a rude cashier, is something that should roll off your shoulders. Save the effort for resolving conflicts with the people you cherish.

If you’re talking to a man who wouldn’t fight with you under any circumstances whatsoever, then you’re talking to someone for whom you have absolutely no respect.

Military school was great and especially great for leadership and then I spent two years in Vietnam.

If you can’t answer a man’s arguments, all is not lost; you can still call him vile names.

When we turn to one another for counsel we reduce the number of our enemies.

As a tactic, violence is absurd. No one can compete with the Government in violence, and the resort to violence, which will surely fail, will simply frighten and alienate some who can be reached, and will further encourage the ideologists and administrators of forceful repression.

An association of men who will not quarrel with one another is a thing which has never yet existed, from the greatest confederacy of nations down to a town meeting or a vestry.

As we dread any disease that undermines the health of the body, so should we deplore contention, which is a corroding canker of the spirit.

I want the Israeli government to be made accountable for its behaviour to the Palestinians, and I want the people of the U.S. to cease acting as if they don’t understand what is going on.

We can’t afford to be killing one another.

People generally quarrel because they cannot argue.

Wars are poor chisels for carving out peaceful tomorrows.

We win justice quickest by rendering justice to the other party.

It is our duty still to endeavor to avoid war; but if it shall actually take place, no matter by whom brought on, we must defend ourselves. If our house be on fire, without inquiring whether it was fired from within or without, we must try to extinguish it.

All wars signify the failure of conflict resolution mechanisms, and they need post-war rebuilding of faith, trust and confidence.

Since the civil war in Laos was resumed in earnest in 1963, American participation has been veiled in secrecy.

Let my enemies devour each other.

If you get down and quarell everyday, you’re saying prayers to the devil, I say.

The object of my relationship with Vietnam has been to heal the wounds that exist, particularly among our veterans, and to move forward with a positive relationship,… Apparently some in the Vietnamese government don’t want to do that and that’s their decision.