Pitirim A. Sorokin Quotes

Wars happen because the ones who start them think they can win.

You cannot talk about winning the war as long as there's killing and destruction on daily basis.

I predict you will sink step by step into a bottomless quagmire, however much you spend in men and money." (On Vietnam War)

If you wish for peace, understand war.

It seems to me, that if statesmen had a little more arithmetic, or were accustomed to calculation, wars would be much less frequent.

We've been at peace about as long as e were at war.

Only a fool or a fraud talks tough or romantically about war.

The [Vietnam] war's gone on for three years. And we'd thought we'd ended it because we'd done exactly what we were told and what we told ourselves we'd had to do. We had a majority. We were against the war and this created a crisis for democracy and a crisis for the antiwar movement.

In every war at some point in time, you do sit down and negotiate.

The important thing is Burma needs to end the civil war and for this to happen both sides must want to end the war.

Americans don't need a metaphor for war. We have war. If anything, we use war as a metaphor for sports.

We are the only people on Earth asked to guarantee the security of our occupier...while Israel is the only country that calls for defense from its victims.

Reducing military presence has never in history won a war.

From the earliest wars of men to our last heart-breaking worldwide effort, all we could do was kill ourselves. Now we are able to kill the future.

[Alexander Haig and Ariel Sharon ] casualties in this war were more than in all the previous Arab - Israeli confrontations. If you remember, it is the only war [in 1982] which hasn't a hero among the Israeli generals.

Turkish-American relations are based on very strong foundations. Currently, we have a war in the region, which could not be prevented, unfortunately. We hope it is a short war ... with minimum casualties.

War must never be a condition but, rather, a temporary scourge which we suffer as a child does a fever, knowing that health follows the long night of pain and that peace is health.

All wars would end immediately if the various chiefs of state dropped a little LSD.

War...seems a mere madness, a collective insanity.

Peace, which costs nothing, is attended with infinitely more advantage than any victory with all its expence.

Perhaps wars weren't won anymore. Maybe they went on forever. Maybe it was another Hundred Years' War.

In any war between the civilized man and the savage, support the civilized man. Support Israel. Defeat Jihad

For WAR, consisteth not in Battle only, or the act of fighting; but in a tract of time, wherein the Will to content by Battle is sufficiently known.... So the nature of War, consisteth not in actual fighting; but in the known disposition thereto, during all the time there is no assurance to the contrary. All other time is PEACE.

War is a series of disasters which result in a winner.