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.

Nonviolence is a good policy when the conditions permit.

Diplomacy is the art of saying ‚Nice doggie‘ until you can find a rock.

We make war that we may live in peace.

Keep people off-balance and in the dark by never revealing the purpose behind your actions. If they have no clue what you are up to, they cannot prepare a defense.

There are different ways to do innovation. You can plant a lot of seeds, not be committed to any particular one of them, but just see what grows. And this really isn’t how we’ve approached this. We go mission-first, then focus on the pieces we need and go deep on them and be committed to them.

The most successful war seldom pays for its losses.

You must show the world that you abhor fighting.

Arguments are to be avoided: they are always vulgar and often convincing.

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

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?

We have practiced diplomacy since the very beginning of the nation. Sometimes it has not worked, and we’ve had to go to war. I always believe you should try to find peace and reconciliation before conflict. That has been the approach I’ve taken.

It is important to emphasize that guerrilla warfare is a war of the masses, a war of the people. The guerrilla band is an armed nucleus, the fighting vanguard of the people. It draws its great force from the mass of the people themselves.

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.

No enterprise is more likely to succeed than one concealed from the enemy until it is ripe for execution.

The first rule is not to lose. The second rule is not to forget the first rule.

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

Let us move from the era of confrontation to the era of negotiation.

We can best help you to prevent war not by repeating your words and following your methods but by finding new words and creating new methods.

Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake.

In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable.

Peace cannot be kept by force; it can only be achieved by understanding.

If you want to make peace with your enemy, you have to work with your enemy. Then he becomes your partner.

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

Notifying the enemy in advance of our withdrawal dates or reassuring the enemy that we will not use certain capabilities like our ground forces should be avoided.

If you can’t convince them, confuse them.

We can’t afford to be killing one another.

When you have no basis for an argument, abuse the plaintiff.

Because I know about the Holy Land, I’ve taught lessons about the Holy Land all my life, and – but you can’t bring peace to Israel without giving the Palestinian also peace. And Lebanon and Jordan and Syria as well.

God’s love is too great to be confined to any one side of a conflict or to any one religion.

War is not an independent phenomenon, but the continuation of politics by different means.

Peace is not only better than war, but infinitely more arduous.

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

The peasant must always be helped technically, economically, morally and culturally. The guerrilla fighter will be a sort of guiding angel who has fallen into the zone, helping the poor always and bothering the rich as little as possible in the first phases of the war.

Diplomacy is listening to what the other guy needs. Preserving your own position, but listening to the other guy. You have to develop relationships with other people so when the tough times come, you can work together.

In war there is no substitute for victory.

No foreign policy – no matter how ingenious – has any chance of success if it is born in the minds of a few and carried in the hearts of none.

When I was elected President nobody asked me to negotiate between Israel and Egypt. It was not even a question raised in my campaign. But I felt that one of the reasons that I was elected President was to try to bring peace to the Holy Land.

When you have a conflict, that means that there are truths that have to be addressed on each side of the conflict. And when you have a conflict, then it’s an educational process to try to resolve the conflict. And to resolve that, you have to get people on both sides of the conflict involved so that they can dialogue.

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

One must change one’s tactics every ten years if one wishes to maintain one’s superiority.

It’s not called quitting if you quit while you ahead. It’s about being aware and being strategic enough to know that you got to get out the pool at some point. You got to put your clothes back on and dry off.

War is an instrument entirely inefficient toward redressing wrong; and multiplies, instead of indemnifying losses.

Sometimes if you want to get rid of the gun, you have to pick the gun up.

Insults are the arguments employed by those who are in the wrong.

It’s plain hokum. If you can’t convince ‚em, confuse ‚em. It’s an old political trick. But this time it won’t work.

When we have the ball, the other team has to run. The most important thing is for the players to be prepared to be a little bit wild.

I can’t tell you the number of times I looked down at what was going on on the ground, or I was engaged in a fight somewhere, and I knew within a couple of minutes how I was going to screw up the enemy. And I knew it because I’d done so much reading.

Concentrate your energies, your thoughts and your capital. The wise man puts all his eggs in one basket and watches the basket.

It is true that the king has made a truce with the duke of Burgundy for fifteen days and that the duke is to turn over the city of Paris at the end of fifteen days. Yet you should not marvel if I do not enter that city so quickly.

From a young age, I learned to focus on the things I was good at and delegate to others what I was not good at. That’s how Virgin is run. Fantastic people throughout the Virgin Group run our businesses, allowing me to think creatively and strategically.

I think the running game is very important to every offense. Being balanced is extremely important. There’s times where you have to throw the ball. You could be down late in the game, you need to come back; you have to be able to pass it when they know you’re passing it.

How you go about testing is just very different to just being in the situation of qualifying, having to go out, having to nail the lap.

Debates, I hate.

I just want you to know that, when we talk about war, we’re really talking about peace.

There are horrible people who, instead of solving a problem, tangle it up and make it harder to solve for anyone who wants to deal with it. Whoever does not know how to hit the nail on the head should be asked not to hit it at all.

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

I abhor war and view it as the greatest scourge of mankind.

Marriage is like a game of chess except the board is flowing water, the pieces are made of smoke and no move you make will have any effect on the outcome.

War is never a lasting solution for any problem.

If you do not understand a man you cannot crush him. And if you do understand him, very probably you will not.