Oscar Arias Quotes

Costa Rica was the first country in history to abolish its army and declare peace with the world. It’s children have never known military service. They have never seen the shadow of an armored helicopter or the tracks of a tank. And since the abolition of its armed forces 62 years ago, Costa Rica has never suffered a Coup.

We cannot cut and run. If we are to ensure freedom and democracy, it is essential that we follow through on our obligation to bring about stability in Iraq.

Liberty is security. Freedom is security.

We must remain steadfast in our commitment to our troops, and to those fighting for a free and democratic Iraq because freedom makes our country and the world a safer place.

The Government of Iraq also owes a debt to the American and coalition forces who are fighting the insurgency and helping put that country back together after decades of repression.

What our men and women in uniform are doing is providing for the Iraqi people and other surrounding nations the opportunity to see, to taste and to experience the democracy that equals freedom and ultimately justice.

We remain in Iraq because we know that sometimes liberty needs some nursing before it can grow on its own.

The strength of democratic societies relies on their capacity to know how to stand firm against extremism while respecting justice in the means used to fight terrorism.

Peace along with freedom and justice are the pillars for attaining both security and stability and will pave the way towards the eradication of oppression, extremism, and terrorism in our world.

We must plan for freedom, and not only for security, if for no other reason than that only freedom can make security secure.

You can't separate peace from freedom because no one can be at peace unless he has his freedom.

Only freedom can make security secure.

The draft is the corollary of militarism and militarism spells death to democracy.

The time has come to recognize that the U.S. will continue to exercise unprecedented power in a world where international rules are still unreliable and where security and advancing of the free democratic order still depend significantly on the possession and use of military might.

I believe that it must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures. I believe that we must assist free peoples to work out their own destinies in their own way.

Our votes must go together with our guns. After all, any vote we shall have, shall have been the product of the gun. The gun which produces the vote should remain its security officer – its guarantor. The people's votes and the people's guns are always inseparable twins.

Very great riches in private men are always dangerous to states, because they create greater dependence than can be consistent with the security of any sort of government whatsoever; they place subjects upon too near a level with their sovereigns; make the nobility stand upon too great an inequality in respect of one another; destroy amongst the Commons, that balance of property and power, which is necessary to democracy, or the democratic part of any government, overthrow the poise of it, and indeed alter its nature, though not its name.

If I were an American, as I am an Englishman, while a foreign troop was landed in my country I never would lay down my arms,--never! never! never!

I renew my call for the occupier [the United States] to leave our land. The departure of the occupier will mean stability for Iraq, victory for Islam and peace and defeat for terrorism and infidels.

So long as war exists on earth there will be some danger that even the Nation which most ardently desires peace may be drawn into war.

Whoso taketh in hand to govern a multitude, either by way of liberty or principality, and cannot assure himself of those persons that are enemies to that enterprise, doth frame a state of short perseverance.

Peace and democracy go hand in hand..

We still give the nation state the monopoly on the legal use of violence in our own defense.

America must get off a permanent war footing.

The American War must immediately appear to you a subject of historical curiosity. By the event of that war, an independent empire has arisen, boundless in extent, and removed from the reach of the arms---secure at least from the invasions of Europe; beginning its career with such ad-vantages as our communities in the old world never possessed; beginning almost from the point to which they have but arrived in the progress of nearly two thousand years.