Those wars are unjust which are undertaken without provocation. For only a war waged for revenge or defense can be just.

The main foundations of every state, new states as well as ancient or composite ones, are good laws and good arms you cannot have good laws without good arms, and where there are good arms, good laws inevitably follow.

Part of the reason there’s an injunction to the truth, for example, is that if you’re in a circumstance of extreme uncertainty, your best weapon, let’s say, or your best tool or your best defense is the truth, because it keeps things simpler.

This report, by its very length, defends itself against the risk of being read.

Experience teaches us that it is much easier to prevent an enemy from posting themselves than it is to dislodge them after they have got possession.

Revenge, lust, ambition, pride, and self-will are too often exalted as the gods of man’s idolatry; while holiness, peace, contentment, and humility are viewed as unworthy of a serious thought.

Revenge is an act of passion; vengeance of justice. Injuries are revenged; crimes are avenged.

Neither the Army nor the Navy is of any protection, or very little protection, against aerial raids.

I am not a self-help writer. I am a self-problem writer. When people read my books, I provoke some things. I cannot justify my work. I do my work; it is up to them to classify it, to judge.

Education is the cheap defense of nations.

Virtuous people often revenge themselves for the constraints to which they submit by the boredom which they inspire.

The best weapon against an enemy is another enemy.

We sleep safe in our beds because rough men stand ready in the night to visit violence on those who would do us harm.

If you prick us do we not bleed? If you tickle us do we not laugh? If you poison us do we not die? And if you wrong us shall we not revenge?

It seems strange that bears, so fond of all sorts of flesh, running the risks of guns and fires and poison, should never attack men except in defense of their young. How easily and safely a bear could pick us up as we lie asleep! Only wolves and tigers seem to have learned to hunt man for food, and perhaps sharks and crocodiles.

The problem in defense is how far you can go without destroying from within what you are trying to defend from without.

I gave ‚em a sword. And they stuck it in, and they twisted it with relish. And I guess if I had been in their position, I’d have done the same thing.

Freedom is a right ultimately defended by the sacrifice of America’s servicemen and women.

I consider myself a moderate Republican. I have very, very moderate social views, and I’m pretty strong on, on defense matters.

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

This is certain, that a man that studieth revenge keeps his wounds green, which otherwise would heal and do well.

In defense of our persons and properties under actual violation, we took up arms. When that violence shall be removed, when hostilities shall cease on the part of the aggressors, hostilities shall cease on our part also.

There are minds so impatient of inferiority that their gratitude is a species of revenge, and they return benefits, not because recompense is a pleasure, but because obligation is a pain.

No matter what cause one defends, it will suffer permanent disgrace if one resorts to blind attacks on crowds of innocent people.

I will never relent in defending America – whatever it takes.

Nothing is more dangerous to one’s own faith than the work of an apologist. No doctrine of that faith seems to me so spectral, so unreal as one that I have just successfully defended in a public debate.

To be angry is to revenge the faults of others on ourselves.

We have to distrust each other. It is our only defense against betrayal.

The Marine Corps is the Navy’s police force and as long as I am President that is what it will remain. They have a propaganda machine that is almost equal to Stalin’s.

It may be laid down as a primary position, and the basis of our system, that every Citizen who enjoys the protection of a Free Government, owes not only a proportion of his property, but even of his personal services to the defense of it.

The means of defense against foreign danger historically have become the instruments of tyranny at home.

Before Nelson Mandela was arrested in 1962, he was an angry, relatively young man. He founded the ANC’s military wing. When he was released, he surprised everyone because he was talking about reconciliation and forgiveness and not about revenge.

Today, India is a nuclear weapons state.

Revenge is a kind of wild justice, which the more a man’s nature runs to, the more ought law to weed it out.

I am the commander in chief of the United States armed forces, and Iraq is gonna have to ultimately provide for its own security.

Certainly, in taking revenge, a man is but even with his enemy, but in passing it over, he is superior; for it is a prince’s part to pardon.

In taking revenge, a man is but even with his enemy; but in passing it over, he is superior.

Men ought either to be indulged or utterly destroyed, for if you merely offend them they take vengeance, but if you injure them greatly they are unable to retaliate, so that the injury done to a man ought to be such that vengeance cannot be feared.

Men should be either treated generously or destroyed, because they take revenge for slight injuries – for heavy ones they cannot.

A man that studieth revenge keeps his own wounds green.

When a nation is surrounded by weaponized nations, she has to equip herself.

If you lose a big fight, it will worry you all of your life. It will plague you – until you get your revenge.

God’s first line of defense – and offense – for every situation is prayer.

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

The best revenge is to be unlike him who performed the injury.

Nobody ever defended anything successfully, there is only attack and attack and attack some more.

Morality arose largely as an empirical defence of the individual and society. Ever since intelligent beings began to be in contact, and consequently in friction, they have felt the need to guard themselves against each other’s encroachments.

Bobby Knight told me this: ‚There is nothing that a good defense cannot beat a better offense.‘ In other words a good offense wins.

In our time political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible.

Debt is part of the human condition. Civilization is based on exchanges – on gifts, trades, loans – and the revenges and insults that come when they are not paid back.

To refrain from imitation is the best revenge.

A well regulated militia, composed of the body of the people, trained in arms, is the best most natural defense of a free country.

And if you’re horrible to me I’m going to write a song about you and you are not going to like it. That’s how I operate.

If you are not prepared to use force to defend civilization, then be prepared to accept barbarism.

We cannot continue to rely only on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives that we’ve set. We’ve got to have a civilian national security force that’s just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded.

People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.

We, the People, recognize that we have responsibilities as well as rights; that our destinies are bound together; that a freedom which only asks what’s in it for me, a freedom without a commitment to others, a freedom without love or charity or duty or patriotism, is unworthy of our founding ideals, and those who died in their defense.

Wars are caused by undefended wealth.

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

If you can’t beat them, arrange to have them beaten.

If we desire to avoid insult, we must be able to repel it; if we desire to secure peace, one of the most powerful instruments of our rising prosperity, it must be known, that we are at all times ready for War.