Francois Mitterrand Quotes

A certain degree of preparation for war ... affords also the best security for the continuance of peace.

The Mutual Security Act was intended not to fight a war but to prevent a war.

Deterrence is a strategy for combining two competing goals: Countering an enemy and avoiding war.

For ultimately, the only way to win wars, is to prevent them occurring in the first place.

Our strategy is one of preventing war by making it self-evident to our enemies that they're going to get their clocks cleaned if they start one.

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

Keep us out of war. Be neutral.

The duty of defense is maintain peace and avoid war.

One of the great advances of our time is the recognition that one of the ways to prevent war is to deter it by having the will and the capacity to use force to punish the aggressor.

Wars are most often won by those who have made the greatest effort to prevent them.

To insist on strength ... is not war-mongering. It is peace-mongering.

I am convinced there is no more effective method of preventing a war than a decisive stance illustrating that we are ready at any moment to repel possible attack.

The most fundamental paradox is that if we're never to use force, we must be prepared to use it and to use it successfully. We Americans don't want war and we don't start fights. We don't maintain a strong military force to conquer or coerce others. The purpose of our military is simple and straightforward: we want to prevent war.

Every government has as much of a duty to avoid war as a ship's captain has to avoid a shipwreck.

I thought this must be obvious to everyone else, as it seemed obvious to me; and that, if once it became apparent that we were on the edge, all the Great Powers would call a halt and recoil from the abyss.

To secure peace is to prepare for war.

To be prepared for war is one of the most effective means of preserving peace.

I can predict with absolute certainty that within another generation there will be another world war if the nations of the world do not concert the method by which to prevent it.

The best war is the one that doesn’t have to be fought, and the best military is the one capable and versatile enough to deter the next war in the first place.

War, which remains an anomaly in a civilized world, has taken on so devastating and universal a character...that every thought and every effort should be aimed, above all, at making it impossible.

There is a widespread understanding among the people of this nation, and probably among the people of the world, that there is no safety except through the prevention of war.

If we had less statesmanship, we would get along with fewer battleships.

Instead of planning to deter would-be [nuclear] proliferators, U. S. policy makers have developed a preference for preventative war, They now seem to feel that deterrence is too weak to deal with radical regimes, forgetting that the precise purpose of deterrence is to counter dangerous enemies, not cautious ones.

The European NATO Counties are not interested in being liberated after 6 months of fighting on their territory. They are only interested in preventing the initial attack.

When you talk about peace through strength, what you're talking about is the concept of deterrence.