August Bebel Quotes

I give you my word that there will be no great armaments

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 …

The notion that our only strategic choice is MAD (mutually assured destruction)—which means nothing less than an unstable pact to commit instant and total mutual suicide in the event of war—is irrational, immoral and unnecessary.

We were reconciled to the fact that we would have war with Russia…. If the war had not come now, we would have had it in two years time under worse conditions…. No one could have foreseen that militarily not everything would work out as one had believed.

Let us not be deceived we are today in the midst of a cold war.

A war regarded as inevitable or even probable, and therefore much prepared for, has a good chance of eventually being fought.

The cause of war is preparation for war.

The Cold War was like two heavily armed men feeling their way around a room, each believing himself in mortal peril from the other, whom he assumes to have perfect vision. Each tends to ascribe to the other a consistency, foresight, and coherence that his own experience belies.

We have never practiced the policy of competitive armaments.

Every nation must have some degree of military organization, even among the most peaceful peoples. The possession of armament however, no matter how necessary, breeds suspicion, fear, counter-armament and hate.

If the [present] deterrent is the mutual annihilation of each other ..., what else do we need and why?

The moral high ground in taking the first hit before attacking has been made obsolete by weapons of mass destruction….You cannot wait for a catastrophic event.

For decades, we and the Soviets have lived under the threat of mutual assured destruction; if either resorted to the use of nuclear weapons, the other could retaliate and destroy the one who had started it. Is there either logic or morality in believing that if one side threatens to kill tens of millions of our people, our only recourse is to threaten killing tens of millions of theirs?

The lesson of history is when a war starts every nation will ultimately use whatever weapon it has available. ... Therefore, we must expect that if another war — a serious war — breaks out, we will use nuclear energy in some form.

The atomic clock ticks faster and faster. We may anticipate a state of affairs in which the Great Powers will each be in a position to put an end to the civilization and life of the other, though not without risking its own. We may be likened to two scorpions in a bottle, each capable of killing the other but only at risk of his own life.

In almost every country there are elements of opinion which would welcome such a conclusion because they wish to return to the politics of the balance of power, unrestricted and unregulated armaments, international anarchy, and preparation for war.

It is not in the interest of the German people or in the interest of world peace that Germany should become a pawn or a partner in a military struggle for power between the East and the West.

Nobody should have any illusion about the possibility of gaining military superiority over Russia. We will never allow this to happen.

In times of peace, the war party insists on making preparation for war. As soon as prepared for, it insists on making war.

During the cold war, it was easy for the Pentagon to justify its budget, as the Soviets essentially sized our forces for us. We simply counted up their stuff and either bought more of the same or upgraded our technology.

You could tell that America was gearing up for war.

As history since Hiroshima shows, the best, perhaps the only, way to curb war is to deter it with such overwhelming force as to turn it from a struggle into suicide.

Where is the indignation about the fact that the US and USSR have thirty thousand pounds of destructive force for every human being in the world?

The Pentagon talks about our power to 'overkill' Russia ten times, twenty times, perhaps forty-eight times. For my tax money, it is sufficient to overkill them once.

This is an era of violent peace.