Drones are just another weapon, and they turn out to be a very effective weapon that puts no American troops at risk, and I don’t see why we shouldn’t use them against identified enemy targets.

If we turn our backs of the Scythians who have provoked us, how shamefully shall we march against the revolted Bactrians; but if we pass Tanais and make the Scythians feel, by dear experience, that we are invincible, not in Asia only, it is not to be doubted but that Europe itself, as well as Asia, will come within the bounds of our conquests.

It has actually been suggested that warfare may have been the principle evolutionary pressure that created the huge gap between the human brain and that of our closest living relatives, the anthropoid apes. Whole groups of hominids with inferior brains could not win wars and were therefore exterminated.

In 1993, Israel and North Korea were moving towards an agreement in which North Korea would stop sending any missiles or military technology to the Middle East and Israel would recognize that country. President Clinton intervened and blocked it.

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

Battles are won by slaughter and maneuver. The greater the general, the more he contributes in maneuver, the less he demands in slaughter.

The principle of self defense, even involving weapons and bloodshed, has never been condemned, even by Gandhi.

Total war is no longer war waged by all members of one national community against all those of another. It is total… because it may well involve the whole world.

The Iranians have shot down drones. They tried to destroy the Saudi oil fields. They tried to storm our embassy. So, when my Democratic friends say we need appeasement, well appeasement hasn’t worked. And I think that we’ve learned, with respect to Iran, that weakness invites the wolves.

No battle plan survives contact with the enemy.

Life is warfare.

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.

Battle is an orgy of disorder.

Hence it comes about that all armed Prophets have been victorious, and all unarmed Prophets have been destroyed.

Like the experience of warfare, the endurance of grave or terminal illness involves long periods of tedium and anxiety, punctuated by briefer interludes of stark terror and pain.

Wherever the enemy wants to fight, we will follow him to the ends of the Earth. We’ll adapt, we’ll train, we’ll advise, we’ll mentor, and we’ll fight, and we’ll fight well.

The great defense against the air menace is to attack the enemy’s aircraft as near as possible to their point of departure.

We should develop anti-satellite weapons because we could not have prevailed without them in ‚Red Storm Rising‘.

War is the continuation of politics by other means.

In modern war… you will die like a dog for no good reason.

What is human warfare but just this; an effort to make the laws of God and nature take sides with one party.

Even today we raise our hand against our brother… We have perfected our weapons, our conscience has fallen asleep, and we have sharpened our ideas to justify ourselves as if it were normal we continue to sow destruction, pain, death. Violence and war lead only to death.

We should not fight wars without a clearly defined end state… when you go to war, it can’t be a half-step.

Treachery has existed as long as there’s been warfare, and there’s always been a few people that you couldn’t trust.

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.

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.

You have to make sure you know why you are going to war and then use decisive force to end it as soon as possible.

The battle of Austerlitz is the grandest of all I have fought.

The best weapon against an enemy is another enemy.

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.

A prisoner of war is a man who tries to kill you and fails, and then asks you not to kill him.

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.

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

An army marches on its stomach.

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

Two days after the Boston marathon bombings, there was a drone strike in Yemen attacking a peaceful village, which killed a target who could very easily have been apprehended. But, of course, it is just easier to terrorise people. The drones are a terrorist weapon; they not only kill targets but also terrorise other people.

The most terrible job in warfare is to be a second lieutenant leading a platoon when you are on the battlefield.

General Giap was one of the most brilliant military strategists of our era, who in Dien Bien Phu was able to place missile launchers in remote, mountainous jungles, something the yankee and European military officers considered impossible.

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

The atomic bomb certainly is the most powerful of all weapons, but it is conclusively powerful and effective only in the hands of the nation which controls the sky.

Remember, weapons of mass destruction don’t mean missiles.

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

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

If atomic bombs are to be added as new weapons to the arsenals of a warring world, or to the arsenals of nations preparing for war, then the time will come when mankind will curse the names of Los Alamos and of Hiroshima.

You must not fight too often with one enemy, or you will teach him all your art of war.

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

The atomic bomb made the prospect of future war unendurable. It has led us up those last few steps to the mountain pass; and beyond there is a different country.

The Soviet Union, the socialist camp, the People’s Republic of China, and North Korea helped us resist, with essential supplies and weapons, the implacable blockade of the United States, the most powerful empire ever to exist.

The target of preventive war must have several characteristics. It must be virtually defenceless; it must be important enough to be worth the trouble; it must be possible to portray it as the ultimate evil and an imminent threat to our survival.

I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.

The power of an air force is terrific when there is nothing to oppose it.

Pre-emptive war might fall within the framework of international law.

The use of the atomic bomb, with its indiscriminate killing of women and children, revolts my soul.

The battlefield is a scene of constant chaos. The winner will be the one who controls that chaos, both his own and the enemies.

The very existence of flame-throwers proves that some time, somewhere, someone said to themselves, You know, I want to set those people over there on fire, but I’m just not close enough to get the job done.

‚Tis best to weigh the enemy more mighty than he seems.

The Army was always big on Clausewitz, the Prussian; the Navy on Alfred Thayer Mahan, the American; and the Air Force on Giulio Douhet, the Italian. But the Marine Corps has always been more Eastern-oriented. I am much more comfortable with Sun-tzu and his approach to warfare.

If we’re trying to build a world-class News Feed and a world-class messaging product and a world-class search product and a world-class ad system, and invent virtual reality and build drones, I can’t write every line of code. I can’t write any lines of code.

A siege is an act of war.

Drones overall will be more impactful than I think people recognize, in positive ways to help society.

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