Ron Paul Quotes

Every war when it comes, or before it comes, is represented not as a war but as an act of self-defense against a homicidal maniac.

What I've learned, and will try to remember from now on, is that defending your country's credibility is never sufficient reason to fight a war.

I don't believe America will justifiably make an unprovoked attack on another nation. It would not be consistent with what we have been as a nation or what we should be as a nation.

What is the 'noble cause' for which you sent our country to war?

Do we really want a world in which every country feels entitled to attack any other that might someday threaten it?

War itself is justifiable only on principles of self-preservation:

As an Englishman, particularly as an Englishman standing upon foreign soil, I am, of course, prepared to argue that every war we have ever fought was a purely defensive war. But I am obliged to take cognizance of the quite simple historical fact that for about one thousand years, since the time indeed when Norwegians ravaged our coasts and a certain Scandinavian landed at Hastings in 1066, every war we have fought happens to have been fought in other people's countries. Now if defense means merely keeping burglars out of the house, what were we doing on all those occasions in other people's houses?

I don't reject the concept of preemptive war. I'm a mother of five. I have five grandchildren. And I always say: Think of a lioness. Think of a mother bear. You come anywhere near our cubs, you're dead. And so, in terms of any threat to our country, people have to know we'll be there to preemptively strike. But what the president [Bush] did was, on the basis of no real intelligence for an imminent threat to our country, chose to go into a war for reasons that are still unknown to us.

Note the three most important Cabinet positions. Rice said that it was better to find the weapons of mass destruction than to see a mushroom cloud.

I feel like war should occur only for the most vital and necessary reasons, and only then.

Some in my party threaten to send a message that they don't know a just war when they see it, and more broadly that they're not prepared to use our military strength to protect our security and the cause of freedom.

The argument that someone is a bad man is an inadequate argument for war and certainly an inadequate and unacceptable argument for regime change.

It was essentially for self defence that we went to war in Afghanistan and would go to war in Iraq.

War, except in self-defense, is a failure of moral imagination.

It is the habit of every aggressor nation to claim that it is acting on the defensive.

The doctrine of preemption has a long and distinguished history in the history of American foreign policy.

Allow the president to invade a neighboring nation whenever he shall deem it necessary to repel an invasion, and you allow him to do so whenever he may choose to say he deems it necessary for such purpose - and you allow him to make war at pleasure.

Are there really good wars and bad wars? We thought so during World War II, and in retrospect, we were right. But in Vietnam, and Iraq we were wrong.

War of aggression, war which does not imply defense of one's country, is a collective crime.

War, in some instances, especially defensive, has been authorized by Heaven.

The only defensible war is a war of defense.

We did not go to war in Afghanistan or in Iraq to, quote, 'impose democracy.' We went to war in both places because we saw those regimes as a threat to the United States.

Allow the President to invade a neighboring nation, whenever he shall deem it necessary to repel an invasion … and you allow him to make war at pleasure. … If today he thinks it necessary to invade Canada to prevent the British from invading us, how could you stop him? You may see no probability he would say to you, “Be silent!, I see if you don’t.”

A rational fear of an imminent danger is said to be a justifiable cause of war.

In order to have defense here at home, we have to have offense in Iraq and Iran.