Golda Meir Quotes

A leader who doesn’t hesitate before he sends his nation into battle is not fit to be a leader.

Wars may be fought with weapons, but they are won by men.

During a time of war, we ask our troops to give their best even to the point of sacrificing their own lives. When compared against that, how much of a sacrifice is it for a president to engage in a possibly contentious debate with Congress about whether military action is a good idea?

I would never want to see myself viewed as beating the drums of war, ... but I would rather live with that image than look into the mirror and see a member of Congress who failed to do his duty.

War is a serious game in which a man risks his reputation, his troops, and his country. A sensible man will search himself to know whether or not he is fitted for the trade.

I can tell you this: If I'm ever in a position to call the shots, I'm not going to rush to send somebody else's kids into a war.

Politics and war are remarkably similar situations.

Churchill knew the importance of peace, and he also knew the price of it. Churchill finally got his voice, of course. He stressed strategy, but it was his voice that armed England at last with the old-fashioned moral concepts of honor and duty, justice and mercy.

To delight in war is a merit in the soldier, a dangerous quality in the captain, and a positive crime in the statesman.

War is often about making the least-worst decision. The same could be said about politics. But the stakes are higher in war, when the commander-in-chief is called upon to defend the nation.

Well, we've faced very difficult decisions and challenges in our country, every one of us have, as we - since September 11th, as we fought the war on terror, all of those decisions that the President had to make to put young men and women in harm's way.

President Kennedy was willing to go to war. He was not a coward. The man had been in war and so had Ken O'Donnell. He was ready to protect this nation, but he was not ready for a military solution just because it was being rammed down his throat.

The nation that will insist on drawing a broad line of demarcation between the fighting man and the thinking man is liable to have its fighting done by fools and its thinking done by cowards.

If there is going to be a war – and no one can say that there is not – we must keep him fresh to be our war Prime Minister

The President has full responsibility, which cannot be shared, for military decisions in a world in which the difference between safety and cataclysm can be a matter of hours or even minutes.

It’s very hard really to look a soldier in the eye when you fear that you are sending him to his death.

When I was defense minister, I was very popular, and now that I'm president, I'm unpopular because I'm trying to make peace. It's much easier to make war and get trophies.

I'm a war president. I make decisions here in the Oval Office in foreign policy matters with war on my mind.

It's so much easier to throw rocks than it is to govern.

The art of war is of vital importance to the state. It is a matter of life and death, a road either to safety or to ruin. Hence it is a subject of inquiry which can on no account be neglected.

I'm not sure Americans are hesitant to do this again - to fight another war, because it looked to them like a courageous and terrific endeavor.

If I had undertaken the practical direction of military operations, and anything went amiss, I feared that my conscience would torture me, as guilty of the fall of my country, as I had not been familiar with military tactics.

War should be the only study of a prince. He should consider peace only as a breathing-time, which gives him leisure to contrive, and furnishes as ability to execute, military plans.

We are at war, and our security as a nation depends on winning that war.

Councils of war breed timidity and defeatism.