On War...

""
Patton

"May God have mercy upon my enemies, because I won't." - Gen. George S. Patton Jr.
""My argument is that War makes rattling good history; but Peace is poor reading." - Thomas Hardy (1840–1928), The
Dynasts. Spirit sinister.

"Sixty years ago this week Hitler invaded Poland. This led to the creation of The History Channel." - Jay Leno

"To sum it all up, I must say that I regret nothing." - Adolf Eichmann, while awaiting trial in Israel for death of 6 million
Jews during World War II, Life 5 Dec 60

"It has never happened in history that a nation that has won a war has been held accountable for atrocities committed in
preparing for and waging that war. We intend to make this one different. What took place was the use of technological
material to destroy a defenseless country. From 125,000 to 300,000 people were killed... We recognize our role in
history is to bring the transgressors to justice." - Ramsey Clark, demanding that US leaders be held accountable for the
deaths of Iraqi citizens.

"During the late war [the American Revolution] I had an infallible rule for deciding what [Great Britain] would do on
every occasion. It was, to consider what they ought to do, and to take the reverse of that as what they would assuredly
do, and I can say with truth that I was never deceived." - Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826), U.S. president. Letter, June 22,
1785, to William Stephens Smith. The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, vol. 8, p. 249, ed. Julian P. Boyd, et al. (1950).

"War is a continuation of policy by other means" - Clausewitz

"Success is the sole earthly judge of right or wrong." - Adolf Hitler

"The wrong war, at the wrong place, at the wrong time, and with the wrong enemy. ... Red China is not the powerful
nation seeking to dominate the world." - Omar Bradley (1893-1981), U.S. general. Speech, May 15, 1951, to Senate
Committees on Armed Services and Foreign Relations. Bradley was arguing against General MacArthur's proposal to
carry the Korean conflict into China.

"China has no income tax, no unemployment and not a single soldier outside its borders." - Chou En Lai

"I’m not a pacifist. I was very much for the war against Hitler and I also supported the intervention in Korea, but in this
war we went in there to steal Vietnam." - After indictment on charges of aiding and abetting resistance to Selective
Service laws, news summaries 5 Jan 68

"The founders [of the United Nations] sought to replace a world at war with a world of civilized order. They hoped that
a world of relentless conflict would give way to a new era, one where freedom from violence prevailed…. But the awful
truth is that the use of violence for political gain has become more, not less, widespread in the last decade." - Ronald
Reagan, To General Assembly following Soviet downing of a Korean passenger plane, 26 Sep 83

"I recently discussed with an intelligent and well-disposed man the threat of another war, which in my opinion would
seriously endanger the existence of mankind, and I remarked that only a supranational organization would offer
protection from that danger. Thereupon my visitor, very calmly and coolly, said to me: "Why are you so deeply opposed
to the disappearance of the human race?"" - Quote from "WHY SOCIALISM?", By Albert Einstein, Monthly Review,
New York, May, 1949.

"I detest war; it ruins conversation" - Bernard Fontenelle

"We have women in the military, but they don't put us in the front lines. They don't know if we can fight or if we can

file:///C/Users/Q/Desktop/UPLOAD/Political%20Quotes%20-%20On%20War.txt[6/27/2020 5:13:06 PM]

 kill. I think we can. All the general has to do is walk over to the women and say, "You see the enemy over there? They
say you look fat in those uniforms."" - Elayne Boosler

"Serious sport has nothing to do with fair play. It is bound up with hatred, jealousy, boastfulness, disregard of all rules
and sadistic pleasure in witnessing violence: in other words it is war minus the shooting." - George Orwell (1903-1950),
British author. Shooting an Elephant, "I Write As I Please," (1950)

"America should have minded her own business and stayed out of the [first] World War. If you hadn't entered the war
the Allies would have made peace with Germany in the Spring of 1917. Had we made peace then there would have been
no collapse in Russia followed by Communism, and Germany would not have signed the Versailles Treaty, which has
enthroned Nazism in Germany. If America had stayed out of the war, all these "isms" wouldn't today be sweeping the
continent in Europe and breaking down parliamentary government, and if England had made peace early in 1917, it
would have saved over one million British, French, American, and other lives." - Winston Churchill, 1937, speaking
with an American reporter

"This ain't a war... It's a goddam whorehouse." - John Dos Passos (1896-1970), U.S. novelist, describing of the
European theater in the First World War.

"Why of course the people don't want war. Why should some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the
best he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece? Naturally the common people don't want war; neither
in Russia, nor in England, nor in America, nor in Germany. That is understood. But after all, it is the leaders of the
country who determine policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a
fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice the people can always be brought to
the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the
pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country. " - Hermann
Wilhelm Göring, during his trial in Nuremberg

"All [of the American's] foreign wars have been fought with foes either too weak to resist them or too heavily engaged
elsewhere to make more than a half-hearted attempt. The combats with Mexico and Spain were not wars; they were
simply lynchings." - Henry Louis Mencken

"Power-worship blurs political judgment because it leads, almost unavoidably, to the belief that present trends will
continue. Whoever is winning at the moment will always seem to be invincible." - George Orwell, Second Thoughts on
James Burnham, "Shooting an Elephant" (1950)

"History shows that there are no invincible armies" - Josef Stalin (1879-1953), Soviet leader. Radio broadcast, July 3,
1941, declaring war on Germany. (Three weeks after Hitler invaded Russia)

"They couldn't hit an elephant at this dist..." - Last words of Union commander General John Sedgwick, spoken as he
was watching enemy troops at the Battle of Spotsylvania Court House.

"The Gulf War was like teenage sex. We got in too soon and out too soon." - Tom Harkin (b. 1939), U.S.
Senator(Democrat). Quoted in 'Independent on Sunday' (London, Sept. 29, 1991).

"Pick battles important enough to fight and small enough to win." - Johnathan Kozol

"The quickest way to end a war is to lose it." - George Orwell

"To be prepared for war is one of the most effectual means of preserving peace." - George Washington, Speech to both
Houses of Congress, Jan. 8, 1790.

"Qui desiderat pacem præparet bellum (Who would desire peace should be prepared for war)." - Vegetius: "Rei Militari
3, Prolog."

file:///C/Users/Q/Desktop/UPLOAD/Political%20Quotes%20-%20On%20War.txt[6/27/2020 5:13:06 PM]

 "To insist on strength … is not war-mongering. It is peace-mongering." - Barry M Goldwater, US Senator, NY Times
11 Aug 64

"The Russians feared Ike. They didn’t fear me." - Lyndon B Johnson, 36th US President, On Korean War in contrast to
Vietnam War, quoted by Richard M Nixon Time 29 Jul 85

"One insult pocketed soon produces another." - Thomas Jefferson to George Washington, 1790. ME 3:80

"My fellow Americans: I’m pleased to tell you today that I’ve signed legislation that will outlaw Russia forever. We
begin bombing in five minutes." - Ronald Reagan, 40th US President - A joke made while testing a microphone before a
broadcast 11 Aug 84

"Our strategy is one of preventing war by making it self-evident to our enemies that they’re going to get their clocks
cleaned if they start one." - Gen John W Vessey Jr, US Army, Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff, To soldiers at Schofield
Barracks in Hawaii

"All warfare is based on deception." - Art of War, Sun-Tzu, Chapter 1, Paragraph 18.

"If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but
not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you
will succumb in every battle. " - Art of War, Sun-Tzu, Chapter 3, Paragraph 18.

"There is no instance of a country having benefited from prolonged warfare. " - Art of War, Sun-Tzu, Chapter 2,
Paragraph 6.

"To fight and conquer in all your battles is not supreme excellence; supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy's
resistance without fighting. " - Art of War, Sun-Tzu, Chapter 2, Paragraph 2

"[It is] my disposition to maintain peace until its condition shall be made less tolerable than that of war itself." - Thomas
Jefferson to Noah Worcester, 1817. ME 18:298

"War is the hope that one will be better off; next, the expectation that the other fellow will be worse off; then, the
satisfaction that he isn't any better off; and, finally, the surprise at everyone's being worse off." - Karl Kraus (1874-
1936), Austrian writer. "Beim Wort genommen" (1955).

"If we let people see that kind of thing, there would never again be any war." - Senior Pentagon official, explaining why
the U.S. military censored footage showing Iraqi soldiers sliced in two by U.S. helicopter fire.

"When we say "War is over if you want it," we mean that if everyone demanded peace instead of another TV set, we'd
have peace. " - John Lennon (1940-1980)

"Politicians hide themselves away. They only started the war. Why should they go out into a fight? They leave that all to
the poor." - Black Sabbath, War Pigs, From the album 'Paranoid', 1970

"Mankind has grown strong in eternal struggles and it will only perish through eternal peace." - Adolf Hitler (1889-
1945), German dictator. Mein Kampf, vol. 1, ch. 4 (1925)

"War will never cease until babies begin to come into the world with larger cerebrums and smaller adrenal glands." -
H.L. (Henry Lewis) Mencken (1880-1956), U.S. journalist. Minority Report: H.L. Mencken's Notebooks, no. 164
(1956).

"There never was a good war or a bad peace." - Benjamin Franklin (1706–1790), "Letter to Josiah Quincy, Sept. 11,
1773."

file:///C/Users/Q/Desktop/UPLOAD/Political%20Quotes%20-%20On%20War.txt[6/27/2020 5:13:06 PM]

 "The purpose of all war is peace." - Saint Augustine (354-430)

"The catch-all phrase "the war on terrorism", in all honesty, has no more meaning than if one wants to wage a war
against "criminal gangsterism". Terrorism is a tactic. You can't have a war against a tactic. It's deliberately vague and
non-definable in order to justify and permit perpetual war anywhere and under any circumstance." - Congressman Ron
Paul, Republican, 14th district Texas, from a speech given on the house floor, 2007

"The enlightened ruler lays his plans well ahead; the good general cultivates his resources. Move not unless you see an
advantage; use not your troops unless there is something to be gained; fight not unless the position is critical. No ruler
should put troops into the field merely to gratify his own spleen; no general should fight a battle simply out of pique. If
it is to your advantage, make a forward move; if not, stay where you are. Anger may in time change to gladness;
vexation may be succeeded by content. But a kingdom that has once been destroyed can never come again into being;
nor can the dead ever be brought back to life." - Art of War, Sun-Tzu, Chapter 12, Paragraphs 16-21.

"Dear Madam,
I have been shown in the files of the War Department a statement of the Adjutant General of Massachusetts that you are
the mother of five sons who have died gloriously on the field of battle. I feel how weak and fruitless must be any word
of mine which should attempt to beguile you from the grief of a loss so overwhelming. But I cannot refrain from
tendering you the consolation that may be found in the thanks of the republic they died to save. I pray that our Heavenly
Father may assuage the anguish of your bereavement, and leave you only the cherished memory of the loved and lost,
and the solemn pride that must be yours to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of freedom.
Yours very sincerely and respectfully,
A. Lincoln
" - Letter to Mrs. Bixby of Boston, who lost five sons killed in battle. Nov. 21, 1864 (This letter gained notoriety thanks
to the movie 'Saving Private Ryan'. In the movie, all of Ryan's brothers had died during the D-day invasion of France,
which is why the Generals decided that Ryan (the only living sibling) should be saved.)"

file:///C/Users/Q/Desktop/UPLOAD/Political%20Quotes%20-%20On%20War.txt[6/27/2020 5:13:06 PM]