Victor Davis Hanson Quotes

The idea that democracies never make war on each other rests on very thin historical ice.

All efforts to render politics aesthetic culminate in one thing: war.

There are two things that will always be difficult for a democratic people to do: to start a war and to finish it

Our country is being bled daily in an effort to create a democracy in a place where it never existed.

To the people belongs the power of approving or rejecting laws and, which is still of greater importance, peace and war are likewise fixed by their deliberations. When any alliance is concluded, any war ended, or treaty made; to them the conditions are referred, and by them either annulled or ratified. And thus again, from a view of all these circumstances, it might with reason be imagined, that the people had engrossed the largest portion of the government, and that the state was plainly a democracy.

Democracies are prone to war, and war consumes them.

I'll take the American empire any day over the empire of … "Islamic fascism." I'm not against fighting this enemy — it is an enemy and I'm not a pacifist.

Iraq and Afghanistan are now democracies and they are allies in the cause of freedom and peace.

This war is being played in the realm of public opinion and has dire consequences for our soldiers in Iraq, the future of our country, and freedom around the world.

I think things changed as a result of a certain perception of our politics. When we went through our zealous, self-righteous period it didn't exactly win us any friends.

War on terrorism defines the central preoccupation of the United States in the world today, and it does reflect in my view a rather narrow and extremist vision of foreign policy of the world's first superpower, of a great democracy, with genuinely idealistic traditions.

I may be wrong in that, but not I think in putting the questions. In our modern democracy the government needs not a unanimous but a general support for war before it orders our forces to fight.

Being 'at the mercy of legislative majorities' is merely another way of describing the basic American plan: representative democracy.

There are two things which a democratic people will always find very difficult - to begin a war and to end it.

It is not uncommon in modern times to see governments straining every nerve to keep the peace, and the people whom they represent, with patriotic enthusiasm and resentment over real or fancied wrongs, urging them forward to war.

It's true that the war in Iraq opened a distance in relations between part of Europe and the U.S. government, but our basic ties are stronger than that. We share democracy, free markets and a commitment to Western security. We differ on how to guarantee that security.

The West will have to choose: either to come to terms with Russians, or to receive a retaliatory blow. This retaliatory blow will not be by means of war. We will resort to the same weapon: nationalism.

I believe that democracies do not go to war; that's the lesson of history, and I think that a democratic Pakistan is the world community's best guarantee of stability in Asia.

There was a feeling during the years of George W. Bush's presidency that his gracelessness as well as his appetite for war were linked to his impatience with complexity. He acted 'from the gut,' and was economical with the truth until it disappeared.

People who start wars never know exactly how they will turn out.

Our national aims can be realized only by military means. The matter needs no further elaboration or interpretation.

We must reflect more on what democracy in the exercise of authority would mean. Is truth determined by a majority vote, only for a new 'truth' to be 'discovered' by a new majority tomorrow?

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!

Terrorism springs from sources other than the form of government of a state. There is no reason to believe that a more democratic Arab world will, simply by virtue of being more democratic, generate fewer terrorists.

There is nothing democratic about war. It’s a straight dictatorship. The use of force to attain an end desired. We the armed forces of the USA have put a government in the position to dictate the peace. We did not come over here to acquire jurisdiction over either the people or their countries. We came to give them back the right to govern themselves.