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.

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

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.

The Oklahoma City bombing was simple technology, horribly used. The problem is not technology. The problem is the person or persons using it.

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

The very existence of flame-throwers proves that some time, somewhere, someone said to themselves, You know, I want to set those people over there on fire, but I’m just not close enough to get the job done.

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

War – An act of violence whose object is to constrain the enemy, to accomplish our will.

I’ve told Billy if I ever caught him cheating, I wouldn’t kill him because I love his children and they need a dad. But I would beat him up. I know where all of his sports injuries are.

As a tactic, violence is absurd. No one can compete with the Government in violence, and the resort to violence, which will surely fail, will simply frighten and alienate some who can be reached, and will further encourage the ideologists and administrators of forceful repression.

Probably the battle of Waterloo was won on the playing-fields of Eton, but the opening battles of all subsequent wars have been lost there.

There is but one way for a president to deal with Congress, and that is continuously, incessantly, and without interruption. If it is really going to work, the relationship has got to be almost incestuous.

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.

An eye for an eye only leads to more blindness.

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.

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.

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

Politics is like football; if you see daylight, go through the hole.

War is so complex; human nature is so complex. There’s no filmmaker who has ever figured it out perfectly.

Fascism is not defined by the number of its victims, but by the way it kills them.

I hate violence, yes I do. It’s kind of a dilemma, huh?.

It is my conviction that killing under the cloak of war is nothing but an act of murder.

Morality is contraband in war.

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

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

For many of the world’s conflicts, it is difficult even to conjure up a feasible settlement.

I cannot conceive of Israel withdrawing if Arab states do not recognize Israel, within secure borders.

Terrorists are not following Islam. Killing people and blowing up people and dropping bombs in places and all this is not the way to spread the word of Islam. So people realize now that all Muslims are not terrorists.

You can fool some of the people all the time, and those are the ones you want to concentrate on.

I believe that many of my young guys lived because I didn’t waste their lives because I didn’t have the vision in my mind of how to destroy the enemy at least cost to our guys and to the innocents on the battlefields.

No battle plan survives contact with the enemy.

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?‘

We have always said that in our war with the Arabs we had a secret weapon – no alternative.

You must not fight too often with one enemy, or you will teach him all your art of war.

There are good examples of companies – Coca-Cola is one – that invested before there was a huge market in countries, and I think that ended up playing out to their benefit for decades to come.

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.

Even today we raise our hand against our brother… We have perfected our weapons, our conscience has fallen asleep, and we have sharpened our ideas to justify ourselves as if it were normal we continue to sow destruction, pain, death. Violence and war lead only to death.

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

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.

There’s no doubt that usually a president’s public image is enhanced by going to war. That never did appeal to me.

If we could just find out who’s in charge, we could kill him.

Never hold discussions with the monkey when the organ grinder is in the room.

Diplomacy: the art of restraining power.

You never need an argument against the use of violence, you need an argument for it.

It takes a smart man to play dumb.

In war there is no prize for runner-up.

‚Bombing Afghanistan back into the Stone Age‘ was quite a favourite headline for some wobbly liberals. The slogan does all the work. But an instant’s thought shows that Afghanistan is being, if anything, bombed out of the Stone Age.

Seek first to understand, then to be understood.

I’m just hoping that people understand that Islam is peace and not violence.

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 know that war is very cruel and that life is harder when you aren’t able to live in the place you called home.

War has always been the grand sagacity of every spirit which has grown too inward and too profound; its curative power lies even in the wounds one receives.

Violence as a way of achieving racial justice is both impractical and immoral. I am not unmindful of the fact that violence often brings about momentary results. Nations have frequently won their independence in battle. But in spite of temporary victories, violence never brings permanent peace.

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.

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 like to talk about war.

Almost half of the population of the world lives in rural regions and mostly in a state of poverty. Such inequalities in human development have been one of the primary reasons for unrest and, in some parts of the world, even violence.

We were told our campaign wasn’t sufficiently slick. We regard that as a compliment.

This is not Johnson’s war. This is America’s war. If I drop dead tomorrow, this war will still be with you.

War is the domain of physical exertion and suffering.

I began playing Monopoly for real when I was 26 years old. Today, my wife and I have approximately 1,400 little green houses – each paying us monthly. You do not have to be a rocket scientist or have a Harvard degree to play Monopoly for real.