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.

Wars are, of course, as a rule to be avoided; but they are far better than certain kinds of peace.

To compromise simply means that you go a tiny bit below what you know is right.

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.

Allow the president to invade a neighboring nation whenever he shall deem it necessary to repel an invasion,and you allow him to do so whenever he may choose to say he deems it necessary for such purpose – and you allow him to make war at pleasure.

There are horrible people who, instead of solving a problem, tangle it up and make it harder to solve for anyone who wants to deal with it. Whoever does not know how to hit the nail on the head should be asked not to hit it at all.

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.

I do believe that in order to be a successful negotiator that as a diplomat, you have to be able to put yourself into the other person’s shoes. Unless you can understand what is motivating them, you are never going to be able to figure out how to solve a particular problem.

The Oslo Accords in 1993 determined that the Gaza Strip and the West Bank are a single territorial entity which cannot be divided. Immediately, the United States and Israel set about separating the two and making sure that they would not be united.

The Bush Administration’s failure to be consistently involved in helping Israel achieve peace with the Palestinians has been both wrong for our friendship with Israel, as well as badly damaging to our standing in the Arab world.

War is war. The only good human being is a dead one.

One of the good things about the way the Gulf War ended in 1991 is, you’d see the Vietnam veterans marching with the Gulf War veterans.

We used to wonder where war lived, what it was that made it so vile. And now we realize that we know where it lives… inside ourselves.

We did not raise armies for glory or for conquest.

As long as war is regarded as wicked, it will always have its fascination. When it is looked upon as vulgar, it will cease to be popular.

Always remember that your calmness under fire is your best defense in any argument or discussion.

We should pass the U.N.’s Comprehensive Convention on International Terrorism. At least it will clearly establish whom you view as a terrorist and whom you don’t. We need to delink terrorism from religion – to isolate terrorists who use this interchange of arguments between terrorism and religion.

One of the greatest casualties of the war in Vietnam is the Great Society… shot down on the battlefield of Vietnam.

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

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

I have been to the Occupied Palestinian Territory, and I have witnessed the racially segregated roads and housing that reminded me so much of the conditions we experienced in South Africa under the racist system of Apartheid.

The argument that resistance to the war should remain strictly nonviolent seems to me overwhelming.

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

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.

Nobody’s ever said that pins are a tool of diplomacy.

In war there is no prize for runner-up.

We cannot be both the world’s leading champion of peace and the world’s leading supplier of the weapons of 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.

Don’t hit at all if it is honorably possible to avoid hitting; but never hit soft.

In February 2004, the two traditional torturers of Haiti – France and the United States – combined to back a military coup and send President Aristide off to Africa. The U.S. denies him permission to return to the entire region.

I can easily imagine Obama sitting down and talking to any leader – or any person – in the world, with no baggage of past servitude or race supremacy to mar their talks.

War is not merely a political act but a real political instrument, a continuation of political intercourse, a carrying out of the same by other means.

In war the heroes always outnumber the soldiers ten to one.

Example is leadership.

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.

The truth of the matter is that Iran is a cancer.

For a sitting U.S. president to see our allies as freeloaders is nuts.

Remind yourself that winning an argument or proving your point really gets you nowhere in the long run. Win through your actions, not your words.

Once we have a war there is only one thing to do. It must be won. For defeat brings worse things than any that can ever happen in war.

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

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

No weapon has ever settled a moral problem. It can impose a solution but it cannot guarantee it to be a just one.

Have we not come to such an impasse in the modern world that we must love our enemies – or else? The chain reaction of evil – hate begetting hate, wars producing more wars – must be broken, or else we shall be plunged into the dark abyss of annihilation.

Free nations are peaceful nations. Free nations don’t attack each other. Free nations don’t develop weapons of mass destruction.

The Washington leadership has put aside non-proliferation programmes and devoted its energies and resources to driving the country to war by extraordinary deceit, then trying to manage the catastrophe it created in Iraq.

Many things shall change in Cuba, but they shall change because of our efforts and despite the United States. Perhaps that empire shall crumble first.

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

In my dreams I hear again the crash of guns, the rattle of musketry, the strange, mournful mutter of the battlefield.

Arguments are to be avoided: they are always vulgar and often convincing.

I know that war is very cruel and that life is harder when you aren’t able to live in the place you called home.

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

As this long and difficult war ends, I would like to address a few special words to the American people: Your steadfastness in supporting our insistence on peace with honor has made peace with honor possible.

Morality is contraband in war.

In 1963, the U.N. Security Council declared a voluntary arms embargo on South Africa. That was extended to a mandatory embargo in 1977. And that was followed by economic sanctions and other measures – sometimes officials, countries, cities, towns – some organized by popular movements.

What is absurd and monstrous about war is that men who have no personal quarrel should be trained to murder one another in cold blood.

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.

Disagreement is something normal.

I used to wish there was a useful term for those of us who thought American power should be used to remove psychopathic dictators.

I hope my own children never have to fight a war.

The most peaceable way for you, if you do take a thief, is, to let him show himself what he is and steal out of your company.

We’ve persevered because of a belief we share with the Iraqi people – a belief that out of the ashes of war, a new beginning could be born in this cradle of civilization. Through this remarkable chapter in the history of the United States and Iraq, we have met our responsibility. Now, it’s time to turn the page.