Chen Shui-bian Quotes

The great lesson to be learned in the battered towns of England and the ruined cities of Germany is that the best way to win a war is to prevent it from occurring.

To discover a system for the avoidance of war is a vital need of our civilisation.

The biggest difference would be made if we don't have wars to begin with.

I consider even a victorious war as an evil, from which statesmanship must endeavor to spare nations.

Southerners, whose ancestors a hundred years ago knew the horrors of a homeland devastated by war, are particularly determined that war shall never come to us again. All Americans understand the basic lessons of history: that we need to be resolute and able to protect ourselves, to prevent threats and domination by others.

Today the real test of America's power and wisdom is not our capacity to make war but our capacity to prevent it. Prevention must be our overriding objective. It can be done. Surrendering to the inevitability of combat only paves the way for its occurring.

Preventing a war is tantamount to winning a war.

All our rulers have said that war is unthinkable, and then we think about it almost all the time. We've got to make it unthinkable.

The way to prevent war is to bend every energy toward preventing it, not to proceed by the dubious indirection of preparing for it.

So let us persevere. Peace need not be impracticable, and war need not be inevitable. By defining our goal more clearly, by making it seem more manageable and less remote, we can help all peoples to see it, to draw hope from it, and to move irresistibly toward it.

The United States is not looking for a way to launch war.

Unless we establish some form of world government, it will not be possible for us to avert a World War III in the future.

India wants to avoid a war at all costs but it is not a one-sided affair, you cannot shake hands with a clenched fist.

In short, Roberto privately concluded, if you would avoid wars, never make treaties of peace.

It is important also to consider, that the surest means of avoiding war is to be prepared for it in peace.

War represents the supreme failure of nations to resolve their differences. From a strictly pragmatic standpoint, it is the most inefficient waste of lives and resources ever conceived.

Some people say, therefore, that violence and war are inevitable. I say rubbish: Our brains are fully capable of controlling instinctive behavior.

If a war be undertaken...before the resources of peace have been tried and proved vain to secure it, that war has no defense, it is a national crime.

We best avoid wars by taking even physical action to stop small ones.

The Führer confirms my impressions of yesterday. He would like an understanding with Great Britain. He knows that war with the British will be hard and bloody, and knows also that people everywhere today are averse to bloodshed.

Nothing will end war unless the peoples themselves refuse to go to war.

While other [military] alliances have been formed to win wars, our fundamental purpose is to prevent war while preserving and extending the frontiers of freedom.

The fact that war belongs to the past, does not mean it has to be part of the future.

Rosalynn said, "Jimmy, if we could only get Prime Minister Begin and President Sadat up here on this mountain for a few days, I believe they might consider how they could prevent another war between their countries." That gave me the idea, and a few weeks later, I invited both men to join me for a series of private talks. In September 1978, they both came to Camp David.

War is an absolute failure of imagination, scientific and political. That a war can be represented as helping a people to 'feel good' about themselves, or their country, is a measure of that failure.