War does not determine who is right – only who is left.

War contributes greatly to global warming, which shouldn’t surprise us. All those bombs going off, all those rockets, all those planes and helicopters. All that fuel of various kinds being used. It pollutes the air and water of this very fragile and interconnected planet.

Necessity is not an established fact, but an interpretation.

People who make history know nothing about history. You can see that in the sort of history they make.

I have written too much history to have faith in it; and if anyone thinks I’m wrong, I am inclined to agree with him.

The world is like a grand staircase, some are going up and some are going down.

The trouble with having an open mind, of course, is that people will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it.

Sometimes I just sit still and enjoy God’s presence.

This is an important book, the critic assumes, because it deals with war. This is an insignificant book because it deals with the feelings of women in a drawing-room.

We see the world not as it is, but as we are.

All things are subject to interpretation whichever interpretation prevails at a given time is a function of power and not truth.

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

I’m seeing the world partially through the eyes of a kid. Not all the time. There’s no black and white to it. But sometimes I’m seeing it like I’m 4.

Intervention only works when the people concerned seem to be keen for peace.

I am a strong believer that without justice, there is no peace. No lasting peace, anyway.

The most interesting thing about a postage stamp is the persistence with which it sticks to its job.

We’re all going to die, all of us; what a circus! That alone should make us love each other, but it doesn’t. We are terrorized and flattened by trivialities. We are eaten up by nothing.

We will stand up for our friends in the world. And one of the most important friends is the State of Israel. My administration will be steadfast in support Israel against terrorism and violence, and in seeking the peace for which all Israelis pray.

The higher a man stands, the more the word vulgar becomes unintelligible to him.

Peace is a daily, a weekly, a monthly process, gradually changing opinions, slowly eroding old barriers, quietly building new structures.

If all misfortunes were laid in one common heap whence everyone must take an equal portion, most people would be contented to take their own and depart.

In this big ball of people, I’m just one grain of sand on this beach.

I have nothing to ask but that you would remove to the other side, that you may not, by intercepting the sunshine, take from me what you cannot give.

I love it when Muslims go to war with each other, as I do when the Christians do, because it shows there’s no such thing as the Christian world and the Islamic world. That’s all crap.

How do you know what it’s like to be stupid if you’ve never been smart?

When you reach the end of your rope, tie a knot in it and hang on.

Martyrs do not underrate the body, they allow it to be elevated on the cross. In this they are at one with their antagonists.

It is not how much we have, but how much we enjoy, that makes happiness.

Who is richer? The man who is seen, but cannot see? Or the man who is not being seen, but can see?

If everyone is thinking alike, then somebody isn’t thinking.

I have seen enough of one war never to wish to see another.

Don’t tell your problems to people: eighty percent don’t care; and the other twenty percent are glad you have them.

War is a way of shattering to pieces… materials which might otherwise be used to make the masses too comfortable and… too intelligent.

If people think nature is their friend, then they sure don’t need an enemy.

History is more or less bunk.

We can’t afford to be killing one another.

Well, Art is Art, isn’t it? Still, on the other hand, water is water. And east is east and west is west and if you take cranberries and stew them like applesauce they taste much more like prunes than rhubarb does. Now you tell me what you know.

The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently.

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

The soldier above all others prays for peace, for it is the soldier who must suffer and bear the deepest wounds and scars of war.

A lot has happened over the years. And while this nation has been tested by war, and it’s been tested by recession and all manner of challenges – I stand before you again tonight, after almost two terms as your president, to tell you I am more optimistic about the future of America than ever before.

When someone is impatient and says, ‚I haven’t got all day,‘ I always wonder, How can that be? How can you not have all day?

In the business world, the rearview mirror is always clearer than the windshield.

There can be no better grounding for a lifetime as an author than to see humanity in all its various guises through the lens of the reporter for the town.

It’s not catastrophes, murders, deaths, diseases, that age and kill us; it’s the way people look and laugh, and run up the steps of omnibuses.

As a musician and a songwriter, it is an act of the ego to believe that other people might be interested in your point of view. But it is usually an empathetic nature that gets you going in the first place.

I like gaps; all my stories have gaps. It seems this is the way people’s lives present themselves.

My age is very insignificant to me. I don’t think about it, but the world does. The world likes young people in general.

The undiscovered country from whose bourn no traveler returns.

You’re going to die. You’re going to be dead. It could be 20 years, it could be tomorrow, anytime. So am I. I mean, we’re just going to be gone. The world’s going to go on without us. All right now. You do your job in the face of that, and how seriously you take yourself you decide for yourself.

War is a quarrel between two thieves too cowardly to fight their own battle.

Applause is a receipt, not a bill.

Who are we? We find that we live on an insignificant planet of a humdrum star lost in a galaxy tucked away in some forgotten corner of a universe in which there are far more galaxies than people.

Of all the enemies of public liberty, war is perhaps the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other.

Is everything funny? For me, yes. There’s a positive to every negative. Even my divorce? For me, yes. If you go back and look at it, why it happened or how it happened, there’s something in there that’ll make you laugh.

You have to see and smell and feel the circumstances of people to really understand them.

We identify in our experience a differentiation between what we do and what happens to us.

See how many are better off than you are, but consider how many are worse.

Christmas is joy, religious joy, an inner joy of light and peace.

I don’t have much positive to say about motor neurone disease. But it taught me not to pity myself because others were worse off, and to get on with what I could still do.

Not what we have But what we enjoy, constitutes our abundance.