We did not raise armies for glory or for conquest.

Every war when it comes, or before it comes, is represented not as a war but as an act of self-defense against a homicidal maniac.

War is war. The only good human being is a dead one.

War is regarded as nothing but the continuation of state policy with other means.

The Corps is in good hands, and it’s been a privilege to serve with the Leathernecks. Now it’s time to go.

There is no glory in battle worth the blood it costs.

The executive has no right, in any case, to decide the question, whether there is or is not cause for declaring war.

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

Everybody has a job to do. There are people in Iraq on both sides of this war who do what they do for religious reasons, and they feel with God on their side. Some people are good at annihilating people. Maybe that’s their gift.

Truth is mysterious, elusive, always to be conquered. Liberty is dangerous, as hard to live with as it is elating. We must march toward these two goals, painfully but resolutely, certain in advance of our failings on so long a road.

The world knows that America will never start a war. This generation of Americans has had enough of war and hate… we want to build a world of peace where the weak are secure and the strong are just.

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

Violence can succeed, as Americans know well from the conquest of the national territory. But at terrible cost. It can also provoke violence in response, and often does.

The argument that resistance to the war should remain strictly nonviolent seems to me overwhelming.

It is our duty still to endeavor to avoid war; but if it shall actually take place, no matter by whom brought on, we must defend ourselves. If our house be on fire, without inquiring whether it was fired from within or without, we must try to extinguish it.

The United States tyrannizes and pillages the globalized world with its political, economic, technological, and military might.

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 the rich wage war, it’s the poor who die.

Military intelligence is a contradiction in terms.

I was born during the war and grew up in a time of rationing. We didn’t have anything. It’s influenced the way I look at the world.

No war is over until the enemy says it’s over.

In war the heroes always outnumber the soldiers ten to one.

To secure peace is to prepare for war.

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

A private soldier has as much right to justice as a major-general.

The republican is the only form of government which is not eternally at open or secret war with the rights of mankind.

One of the problems of organizing in the North, in the rich countries, is that people tend to think – even the activists – that instant gratification is required. You constantly hear: ‚Look I went to a demonstration, and we didn’t stop the war so what’s the use of doing it again?‘

The connection between dress and war is not far to seek; your finest clothes are those you wear as soldiers.

Once we have a war there is only one thing to do. It must be won. For defeat brings worse things than any that can ever happen in war.

You will kill 10 of our men, and we will kill 1 of yours, and in the end it will be you who tire of it.

Who does not desire such a victory by which we shall join places in our Kingdom, so far divided by nature, and for which we shall set up trophies in another conquered world?

You can always tell an old soldier by the inside of his holsters and cartridge boxes. The young ones carry pistols and cartridges; the old ones, grub.

An army marches on its stomach.

Allow the president to invade a neighboring nation whenever he shall deem it necessary to repel an invasion,and you allow him to do so whenever he may choose to say he deems it necessary for such purpose – and you allow him to make war at pleasure.

I believe that each of us comes from the Creator trailing wisps of glory.

Tonight, we gather to affirm the greatness of our nation – not because of the height of our skyscrapers, or the power of our military, or the size of our economy. Our pride is based on a very simple premise, summed up in a declaration made over two hundred years ago.

Can anything be stupider than that a man has the right to kill me because he lives on the other side of a river and his ruler has a quarrel with mine, though I have not quarrelled with him?

I think a lot of people, including me, clammed up when a civilian asked about battle, about war. It was fashionable. One of the most impressive ways to tell your war story is to refuse to tell it, you know. Civilians would then have to imagine all kinds of deeds of derring-do.

There is always inequality in life. Some men are killed in a war and some men are wounded and some men never leave the country. Life is unfair.

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.

But does that mean that war and violence are inevitable? I would argue not because we have also evolved this amazingly sophisticated intellect, and we are capable of controlling our innate behavior a lot of the time.

I think with the Romans, that the general of today should be a soldier tomorrow if necessary.

Policy makers who have never served in the military continue to use the military to lead social change in this country.

The U.S. military is not war weary. Our military draws strength from confronting our enemies when clear policy objectives are set and we are fully resourced for the fight.

To be perfectly just is an attribute of the divine nature; to be so to the utmost of our abilities, is the glory of man.

War is the continuation of politics by other means.

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

In war there is no substitute for victory.

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.

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

You can’t make war in the Middle East without Egypt and you can’t make peace without Syria.

I have just returned from visiting the Marines at the front, and there is not a finer fighting organization in the world!

The noblest spirit is most strongly attracted by the love of glory.

One cannot wage war under present conditions without the support of public opinion, which is tremendously molded by the press and other forms of propaganda.

Nothing can be more hurtful to the service, than the neglect of discipline; for that discipline, more than numbers, gives one army the superiority over another.

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 saw what happened when a dictator was allowed to take over a piece of a country and the country went down the tubes. And I saw the opposite during the war when America joined the fight.

We are not about to send American boys 9 or 10 thousand miles away from home to do what Asian boys ought to be doing for themselves.

I do not believe that civilization will be wiped out in a war fought with the atomic bomb. Perhaps two-thirds of the people of the earth will be killed.

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.

The most shocking fact about war is that its victims and its instruments are individual human beings, and that these individual beings are condemned by the monstrous conventions of politics to murder or be murdered in quarrels not their own.