Thucydides Quotes

It's very clear that the Bush Administration is out of control. It contains some truly dangerous people.

All new states are invested, more or less, by a class of noisy, second-rate men who are always in favor of rash and extreme measures, but Texas was absolutely overrun by such men.

Mistakes, after all, are endemic to foreign and military policy given the unpredictability of events and the difficulty of securing reliable information in a place like Iraq.

The military destabilised my government on politically motivated charges.

The U.S. spent billions of dollars to build a secular, professional national Iraqi army but failed because, despite all the U.S.-supplied guns, tanks and planes, the Iraqi military fell apart when challenged by a band of terrorists.

Democracy in unequal agrarian societies tends not to last, as it alternates between populist demagogues attempting redistribution and the rich striking back with military coups.

I feel much alarmed at the prospect of seeing General Jackson President. He is one of the most unfit men I know of for such a place. He has had very little respect for laws and constitutions, and is, in fact, an able military chief. His passions are terrible.

The military in all these struggling democracies is an important player. They can take over the leadership or determine the leadership.

The shortest way to ruin a country is to give power to demogogues.

I have no doubt that our military would decisively defeat Iraq’s forces and remove Saddam. But like the proverbial dog chasing the car down the road, we must consider what we would do after we caught it. I am especially worried about the extreme difficulty of occupying Iraq with its history of autocratic rule, its balkanized ethnic tensions, and its isolated economic system. Our regime might be rejected by the Iraqi people, leading to civil unrest and even anarchy.

A transition from party to personal government has preceded every failure of a republic.

The Roman republic was indeed never finished. For the caprice of the multitude was left to operate at random. So that every popular demagogue had it in his power to spirit up the multitude to whatever pitch of madness might suit his ambitious, or interested views

The involvement of the government in military adventures always results in the expansion, at least temporarily, of Presidential power.

What is happening in my constituency is very unfortunate and frightening. People are being killed by terrorists on a daily basis. Churches are being burnt, and if people like me who is also a member of the House Committee on Army, alerted military authorities based on intelligence reports that my village would be under attack and nothing was done to secure the area, then it is unfortunate, because the ordinary people that live in volatile areas are no longer safe and protected by our security outfits.

The idea that democracies could be vulnerable to demagogues is not a new notion.

War triggers unforeseeable military dynamics and sets off massive political shocks, creating new problems as well as new opportunities.

I think when the military ousts a sitting president, even if the sitting president is deeply unpopular, that's the definition of a coup.

I've served in 25 nations. I've seen where people don't trust their government. We're there. In the military, the last option is to send in the SEALs.

Pakistan has done some really terrible things, and yet they also have facilitated our military capabilities in ways that are critical to our country.

We can't discount how scary and shaken not just the Turkish government is, but Turkish society is. Imagine if you had some rump group of military officials here in the United States who started flying off with F-16s or other artillery and were taking shots at government buildings, and people were killed and injured. People would be scared and rightfully so.

Where the Government is weak, military sway prevails.

(President Nixon,) in the face of a vote to impeach he might try, as "commander-in-chief", to use military forces to keep himself in power.

One outcome is almost certain. Extremism stands to benefit enormously from an uncalculated adventure in Iraq.

Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide. It is in vain to say that democracy is less vain, less proud, less selfish, less ambitious, or less avaricious than aristocracy or monarchy. It is not true, in fact, and nowhere appears in history. Those passions are the same in all men, under all forms of simple government, and when unchecked, produce the same effects of fraud, violence, and cruelty.

I reckon that there won't be an intervention in the near future, because Georgia's military adventure revealed the weakness of the Russian army.