Don’t forget what I discovered that over ninety percent of all national deficits from 1921 to 1939 were caused by payments for past, present, and future wars.

Wars are poor chisels for carving out peaceful tomorrows.

Wars are not paid for in wartime, the bill comes later.

The real goal should be reduced government spending, rather than balanced budgets achieved by ever rising tax rates to cover ever rising spending.

Wars have never hurt anybody except the people who die.

Money has always been in politics. And I’m not sure you’d want money to be completely out of politics.

You know people talk about federal money as if it falls from heaven. You know we thank heaven for it, but it came out of people’s pockets – and I’ve driven all over Washington, D.C., I cannot find the money tree.

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

The past is prophetic in that it asserts loudly that wars are poor chisels for carving out peaceful tomorrows.

I am not worried about the deficit. It is big enough to take care of itself.

Wars of nations are fought to change maps. But wars of poverty are fought to map change.

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

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

Cutting the deficit by gutting our investments in innovation and education is like lightening an overloaded airplane by removing its engine. It may make you feel like you’re flying high at first, but it won’t take long before you feel the impact.

If you’re worried about the deficit, pay attention to the fact that it’s almost all attributable to military spending and the totally dysfunctional health program.

We need earmark reform, and when I’m President, I will go line by line to make sure that we are not spending money unwisely.

When you look at how much we spend on social programs in our country, it separates us from a lot of countries. In our country, if you’re hungry, we’ll feed you. If you’re homeless, we’ll house you. If you’re too poor to be sick, we’ll pay for your doctor. But all of that comes at a cost.

Wars based on principle are far more destructive… the attacker will not destroy that which he is after.

The tragedy of America is that it entered all the wars with a consensus in favor of them, but within a defined period, the legitimacy of the war became a major domestic issue, with some people arguing that withdrawal was the only legitimate objective.

I know it’s going to be the private sector that leads this country out of the current economic times we’re in. You can spend your money better than the government can spend your money.

Even if the government spends itself into bankruptcy and the economy still does not recover, Keynesians can always say that it would have worked if only the government had spent more.

The problem is not that people are taxed too little, the problem is that government spends too much.

If you think nobody cares about you, try missing a couple of payments.

Balanced budget requirements seem more likely to produce accounting ingenuity than genuinely balanced budgets.

All wars are follies, very expensive and very mischievous ones.

Social struggles have been taking place throughout millennia, since human beings, by resorting to wars, were able to take hold of a surplus production to satisfy the essential needs of life.

A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual doom.

It is true we have won all our wars, but we have paid for them. We don’t want victories anymore.

Like a baseball game, wars are not over till they are over. Wars don’t run on a clock like football. No previous generation was so hopelessly unrealistic that this had to be explained to them.

Of the four wars in my lifetime, none came about because the U.S. was too strong.

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.

In liberal logic, if life is unfair then the answer is to turn more tax money over to politicians, to spend in ways that will increase their chances of getting reelected.

We can’t get to the $4 trillion in savings that we need by just cutting the 12 percent of the budget that pays for things like medical research and education funding and food inspectors and the weather service. And we can’t just do it by making seniors pay more for Medicare.

I believe – we all pay taxes. I’m happy to pay it, but I hate to have it abused, money wasted, no accountability. That’s going to bother you.

Elections should be held on April 16th- the day after we pay our income taxes. That is one of the few things that might discourage politicians from being big spenders.

It costs governments money to keep fuel prices low. Oil-rich Yemen, for instance, devotes 9 percent of its GDP to making sure its people don’t riot when oil prices rise.

Wars are caused by undefended wealth.

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

Wars may be fought with weapons, but they are won by men. It is the spirit of men who follow and of the man who leads that gains the victory.