I venture to say no war can be long carried on against the will of the people.

For me every ruler is alien that defies public opinion.

When you go to war as a boy, you have a great illusion of immortality. Other people get killed, not you… Then, when you are badly wounded the first time, you lose that illusion, and you know it can happen to you.

Drama usually has some sort of intense conflict.

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

I don’t oppose all wars. What I am opposed to is a dumb war. What I am opposed to is a rash war.

People are skeptical of many televangelists, and I’m sensitive to that.

War is the continuation of politics by other means.

There’s a tremendous gap between public opinion and public policy.

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.

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.

There is hardly such a thing as a war in which it makes no difference who wins. Nearly always one side stands more or less for progress, the other side more or less for reaction.

Organized murder is war, and though we demonstrate against a particular war, the nuclear, or any other kind of war, we have never demonstrated against war.

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.

Washington still refuses to provide evidence to support the claims in 1990 that a huge Iraqi military build-up on the Saudi border justified war.

I am well aware that there are prisoners of conscience in the Soviet Union, including some who have said they have chosen to resist the law because of religious reasons.

We are not trying to entertain the critics. I’ll take my chances with the public.

The sinews of war are infinite money.

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

War is a poor chisel to carve out tomorrow.

When the war of the giants is over the wars of the pygmies will begin.

War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.

The American escalation of the war in Laos provoked a response by the Communist forces, which now control more of Laos than ever before.

Laws are silent in time of war.

For a war to be just three conditions are necessary – public authority, just cause, right motive.

The earth is bountiful, and where her bounty fails, nitrogen drawn from the air will refertilize her womb. I developed a process for this purpose in 1900. It was perfected fourteen years later under the stress of war by German chemists.

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

The first panacea for a mismanaged nation is inflation of the currency; the second is war. Both bring a temporary prosperity; both bring a permanent ruin. But both are the refuge of political and economic opportunists.

An unjust peace is better than a just war.

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

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

Mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.

Communism has never come to power in a country that was not disrupted by war or corruption, or both.

War may sometimes be a necessary evil. But no matter how necessary, it is always an evil, never a good. We will not learn how to live together in peace by killing each other’s children.

You can not divorce religious belief and public service. I’ve never detected any conflict between God’s will and my political duty. If you violate one, you violate the other.

The many questions about the bombing of Yugoslavia by the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation – meaning primarily the United States – come down to two fundamental issues: ‚What are the accepted and applicable ‚rules of world order,‘ and how do these apply in the case of Kosovo?‘

A revolution is a struggle to the death between the future and the past.

War is the greatest plague that can afflict humanity, it destroys religion, it destroys states, it destroys families. Any scourge is preferable to it.

The walls, the bars, the guns and the guards can never encircle or hold down the idea of the people.

The most dangerous word in any human tongue is the word for brother. It’s inflammatory.

Prime Minister Maliki, released from American restraint, acted on his worst instincts, creating enormous distrust in Iraq’s Kurdish population and deeply embittering Sunnis in western Iraq’s Al Anbar, who lost any confidence in a Baghdad government they saw as adversarial.

Politics is almost as exciting as war, and quite as dangerous. In war you can only be killed once, but in politics many times.

Man becomes his most creative during war.

A very large majority of the U.S. population is in favor of establishing diplomatic relations with Cuba and has been for a long time with some fluctuations. And even part of the business world is in favor of it, too. But the government won’t allow it.

Even philosophers will praise war as ennobling mankind, forgetting the Greek who said: ‚War is bad in that it begets more evil than it kills.‘

The political object is the goal, war is the means of reaching it, and the means can never be considered in isolation from their purposes.

In the early days of the military Arpanet, my daughter was studying in Nicaragua. Because the U.S. was essentially at war with them, contact was difficult. I managed to use MIT’s Arpanet connection, and she found one, so we could communicate thanks to the Pentagon!

Unconditional war can no longer lead to unconditional victory. It can no longer serve to settle disputes… can no longer be of concern to great powers alone.

You pick up some fans and a handful of haters along the way.

No policy that does not rest upon some philosophical public opinion can be permanently maintained.

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

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

Woman begins by resisting a man’s advances and ends by blocking his retreat.

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.

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.

The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions that I wish it to be always kept alive.

The most successful war seldom pays for its losses.

Take the diplomacy out of war and the thing would fall flat in a week.

Writers are lampposts and critics are dogs. Ask lampposts what they think about dogs. Does the dog hurt the lamppost?

I am never going to have anything more to do with politics or politicians. When this war is over I shall confine myself entirely to writing and painting.

When a man wants to murder a tiger he calls it sport; when a tiger wants to murder him he calls it ferocity.