Richard Nixon Quotes

What a country calls its vital... interests are not things that help its people live, but things that help it make war.

History teaches that wars begin when governments believe the price of aggression is cheap. To keep the peace, we and our allies must be strong enough to convince any potential aggressor that war could bring no benefit, only disaster.

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.

If we must fight, then by God we will fight. And I hope they [the Croats and Bosnians] will not be so crazy as to fight against us. Because if we don’t know how to work well or to do business, at least we know how to fight well.

Any idea that you can have a league for security is nuts, and all people who favor it are potential murderers… as long as man is man, there will be war and the only way to avoid trouble is to have the best army and navy, which we now have.

We always prefer war on our own terms to peace on someone else's.

We hear warmongering every day, every day we hear threats and attempts to scare us. [...] We don't want war and never wanted, but at that time [i.e. during Nagorno-Karabakh war] we had to defend our Motherland. If the time comes again, this time our blow will be final and deadly.

Giving peace a chance only gives Saddam Hussein more time to prepare for war on his terms, at a time of his choosing, in pursuit of ambitions that will only grow as his power to achieve them grows.

The thing constantly overlooked by those hopefuls who talk about abolishing war is that it is by no means an evidence of decay but rather a proof of health and vigor.

Peace is purchased from strength. It's not purchased from weakness or unilateral retreats.

Whoever wants peace among nations must seek to limit the state and its influence most strictly.

War can only be abolished through war, and in order to get rid of the gun it is necessary to take up the gun.

Either war is obsolete, or men are.

There are no warlike people - just warlike leaders.

The great questions of the day will not be settled by means of speeches and majority decisions but by iron and blood.

A self-respecting nation is ready for anything, including war, except for a renunciation of its option to make war.

Our country has never started a war. Our sole objective is deterrence, the strength and capability it takes to prevent war.

Russia has been too weak, and the weak get beaten.

You help us pay for the war we’ll fight; we’ll launch it while you’re asleep at night. We don’t need friends all around the world; We’ll buy our friends with our flag unfurled, And spread our arms on a global scale To show the world that we still prevail. Oh, we’re not leaders inspiring peace, But we’re in power as the world’s police. So pay your tax for our little war, And we’ll not ask for any more. This year!

We have gone forth from our shores repeatedly over the last hundred years … and put wonderful young men and women at risk, many of whom have lost their lives, and we have asked for nothing except enough ground to bury them in, and otherwise we have returned home … to live our own lives in peace. But there comes a time when soft power or talking with evil will not work where, unfortunately, hard power is the only thing that works.

As long as there are sovereign nations possessing great power, war is inevitable.

Let the natural process of war among nations smother the weak.

No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.

Politics is the womb in which war develops.”

Anyone who clings to the historically untrue and thoroughly immoral doctrine that violence never solves anything, I would advise to conjure up the ghosts of Napoleon Bonaparte and the Duke of Wellington and let them debate it. The Ghost of Hitler could referee, and the jury might well be the Dodo, the Great Auk, and the Passenger Pigeon. Violence, naked force, has settled more disputes in history than has any other factor, and the contrary opinion is wishful thinking at its worst. Breeds that forget this basic truth have always paid for it with their lives and freedoms.