A siege is an act of war.

There is always inequality in life. Some men are killed in a war and some men are wounded and some men never leave the country. Life is unfair.

In countries where innocent people are dying, the leaders are following their blood rather than their brains.

As our enemies have found we can reason like men, so now let us show them we can fight like men also.

All the war-propaganda, all the screaming and lies and hatred, comes invariably from people who are not fighting.

My father belongs to the generation that fought the war in the 1940s. When I was a kid my father told me stories – not so many, but it meant a lot to me. I wanted to know what happened then, to my father’s generation. It’s a kind of inheritance, the memory of it.

To secure peace is to prepare for war.

Mankind must put an end to war before war puts an end to mankind.

It is often useful, if an enemy happens to see you, to pretend that you have not seen him. Or it may sometimes be useful to pretend that you have other men with you. I did this once in the Boer War when, having crept up a donga to look at a Boer fort, I was seen by the enemy, and they came out to capture me.

The basic fact about human existence is not that it is a tragedy, but that it is a bore. It is not so much a war as an endless standing in line.

Fortune, which has a great deal of power in other matters but especially in war, can bring about great changes in a situation through very slight forces.

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

War will exist until that distant day when the conscientious objector enjoys the same reputation and prestige that the warrior does today.

Peace is not an absence of war, it is a virtue, a state of mind, a disposition for benevolence, confidence, justice.

I am in politics because of the conflict between good and evil, and I believe that in the end good will triumph.

No one can guarantee success in war, but only deserve it.

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.

But does that mean that war and violence are inevitable? I would argue not because we have also evolved this amazingly sophisticated intellect, and we are capable of controlling our innate behavior a lot of the time.

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

In my view of the present aspect of affairs, there is no need of bloodshed and war. There is no necessity for it. I am not in favor of such a course, and I may say in advance, there will be no blood shed unless it be forced upon the government. The government will not use force unless force is used against it.

It is not enough to say we must not wage war. It is necessary to love peace and sacrifice for it.

It is an unfortunate fact that we can secure peace only by preparing for war.

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

No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.

There must always remain something that is antagonistic to good.

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

Russia isn’t going to start a war. They can’t afford it. I think Mr. Putin can be dealt with if we stop screaming at him. You can work with the guy. You just have to know who he is.

I understand how every healthy child, every new road, puts a country on a better path, but instability and war will arise from time to time, and I’m not an expert on how you get out of those things.

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.

For good or for ill, air mastery is today the supreme expression of military power and fleets and armies, however vital and important, must accept a subordinate rank.

It’s always interesting about God because it’s like all of the religions in the world say that they pray to the same God, and yet they ask that same one God to divide itself up and agree with this one and fight against that one.

The deliberate and deadly attacks which were carried out yesterday against our country were more than acts of terror. They were acts of war.

Laws are silent in time of war.

Politics are very much like war. We may even have to use poison gas at times.

War is a poor chisel to carve out tomorrow.

God is not on the side of the big battalions, but on the side of those who shoot best.

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

If there is not the war, you don’t get the great general; if there is not a great occasion, you don’t get a great statesman; if Lincoln had lived in a time of peace, no one would have known his name.

To Sun-tzu and the ancient Chinese, doing something extraordinary had little effect without a setup of something ordinary. You had to mix the two – to fix your opponent’s expectations with some banal, ordinary maneuver, a comfortable pattern that they would then expect you to follow.

A faction willing to take the risks of making war on the ossified status quo in the Middle East can be described as many things, but not as conservative.

In the long term we can hope that religion will change the nature of man and reduce conflict. But history is not encouraging in this respect. The bloodiest wars in history have been religious wars.

The best weapon against an enemy is another enemy.

The sinews of war are infinite money.

War is mainly a catalogue of blunders.

Everybody has a job to do. There are people in Iraq on both sides of this war who do what they do for religious reasons, and they feel with God on their side. Some people are good at annihilating people. Maybe that’s their gift.

The Middle East is obviously an issue that has plagued the region for centuries.

I was born during the war and grew up in a time of rationing. We didn’t have anything. It’s influenced the way I look at the world.

Behold a worthy sight, to which the God, turning his attention to his own work, may direct his gaze. Behold an equal thing, worthy of a God, a brave man matched in conflict with evil fortune.

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

One of the problems of organizing in the North, in the rich countries, is that people tend to think – even the activists – that instant gratification is required. You constantly hear: ‚Look I went to a demonstration, and we didn’t stop the war so what’s the use of doing it again?‘

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

Sectional football games have the glory and the despair of war, and when a Texas team takes the field against a foreign state, it is an army with banners.

Each nation feels superior to other nations. That breeds patriotism – and wars.

War settles nothing.

The essential act of war is destruction, not necessarily of human lives, but of the products of human labor.

War is what happens when language fails.

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.

An injured friend is the bitterest of foes.

What matters in the Sun-tzu universe are not positions of strength and power, but situations in which you have options, full of potential force.

When rich people fight wars with one another, poor people are the ones to die.

The Spanish Empire eventually collapsed because of its expensive taste for warfare and conquest.