Dick Gephardt Quotes

One loves to possess arms, though they hope never to have occasion for them.

Definitely, I am not advocating an arms race.

There is nothing so likely to produce peace as to be well prepared to meet the enemy.

Wars are, of course, as a rule to be avoided; but they are far better than certain kinds of peace.

Be careful: they have arms, and no alternatives.

Freedom is not empowerment. Empowerment is what the Serbs have in Bosnia. Anybody can grab a gun and be empowered.

There was never a good war, or a bad peace.

We cannot be both the world's leading champion of peace and the world's leading supplier of the weapons of war.

The more bombers, the less room for doves of peace.

The only way human beings can win a war is to prevent it.

The United States is not a nation to which peace is a necessity.

This is an era of violent peace.

We have lived a long time.... without war... We have had peace when all the world has been in arms... It is … a thing most horrible that we should engage ourself in war with another.... With our own venom... we will destroy ourself.

The normal state of mankind is war and peace is an aberration.

It would win for us a proud title—we would become the first aggressors for peace.

Armament firms have been active in fomenting war scares and in persuading their own countries to increase their armaments.

It is not important what the other side says or means. What is important are the military capabilities of the other side.

It is quite probable that Germany will rearm and I do not believe this will be stopped by intervention of other powers within the next years. Therefore it is likely in a few years to have two heavily armed antagonistic groups in Europe, and the consequence is that we shall get war …

I don't like wars. Any wars.

Now that their long war was over, they could get on with the proper concern of all civilised nations, which is to prepare for the next one.

Those men that are so remissly governed that they dare take up arms to defend or introduce an opinion, are still in war, and their condition not peace, but only a cessation of arms for fear of one another, and they live as it were in the precincts of battle continually.

There are some who've forgotten why we have a military. It's not to promote war. It's to be prepared for peace. There's a sign over the entrance to the Fairchild Air Force Base in Washington state, and that sign says it all: 'Peace is our profession'.

Peace is impossible, war is improbable.

I don't believe in war, I believe in the principle of deterrence.

Those good at war aren't good at peace, and those good at peace aren't good at war.