Preventive War Quotes

The target of preventive war must have several characteristics. It must be virtually defenceless; it must be important enough to be worth the trouble; it must be possible to portray it as the ultimate evil and an imminent threat to our survival.

A preventive war, to my mind, is an impossibility today. How could you have one if one of its features would be several cities lying in ruins, several cities where many, many thousands of people would be dead and injured and mangled, the transportation systems destroyed, sanitation implements and systems all gone? That isn't preventive war; that is war.

I do not believe there is such a thing as a God.

There is no more dangerous thing for a democracy than a foreign policy based on presidential preventive war.

Preventive war is a crime not easily committed by a country that retains any traces of democracy.

There is only one kind of freedom and that's individual liberty. Our lives come from our creator and our liberty comes from our creator. It has nothing to do with government granting it.

Capitalism should not be condemned, since we haven't had capitalism.

Dollars and guns are no substitutes for brains and will power.

Cliches about supporting the troops are designed to distract from failed policies, policies promoted by powerful special interests that benefit from war, anything to steer the discussion away from the real reasons the war in Iraq will not end anytime soon.

Possibly my hatred of war blinds me so that I cannot comprehend the arguments they adduce. But, in my opinion, there is no such thing as a preventive war. Although this suggestion is repeatedly made, none has yet explained how war prevents war. Worse than this, no one has been able to explain away the fact that war creates the conditions that beget war.

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

You don't lead by hitting people over the head - that's assault, not leadership.

Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.

War is never economically beneficial except for those in position to profit from war expenditures.

Preventive war is like committing suicide out of fear of death.

When people speak to you about a preventive war, you tell them to go and fight it. After my experience, I have come to hate war.

Preventive war was an invention of Hitler. I would not even listen to anyone seriously that came and talked about such a thing.

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.

I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its futility, its stupidity.

There never was a good war or a bad revolution.

I'd like to see a more aggressive attitude on the part of the United States. That doesn't mean launching an immediate preventive war.

Another term for preventive war is aggressive war - starting wars because someday somebody might do something to us. That is not part of the American tradition.

I like to believe that people in the long run are going to do more to promote peace than our governments. Indeed, I think that people want peace so much that one of these days governments had better get out of the way and let them have it.

People in the long run are going to do more to promote peace than governments.