David Petraeus Quotes

It is idle to say that nations can struggle to outdo each other in building armaments and never use them. History demonstrates the contrary, and we have but to go back to the last war to see the appalling effect of nations competing in great armaments.

I was interested in implements of mass destruction - from an academic point of view.

if we did possess a chemical bomb, we wouldn’t hesitate one second to use it.

The terror created by weaponry has never stopped men from employing them.

We oppose the use of chemical weapons no matter who uses them and against whom they are used.

Remember, weapons of mass destruction don't mean missiles.

Well, first of all, I have to say that Iraq has already used weapons of mass destruction against her own people and against Iranians during their long war, so we know that weapons of mass destruction are existent with the Iraqis.

We have been travelling through a cloud. The sky has been dark ever since the war began.

We have known for many years that Saddam Hussein is seeking and developing weapons of mass destruction.

Only the dead have seen the end of war.

As someone who has seen war first hand, and as a father of three young adults, it was my hope that we could have resolved this conflict and disarmed Saddam Hussein without war. However, this was not the case.

The real trouble with war (modern war) is that it gives no one a chance to kill the right people.

I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its futility, its stupidity.

Nuclear arms kill many people all at once, but other weapons kill many people, little by little, every day, everywhere in the world.

Nowhere are our calculations more frequently upset than in war.

War remains the decisive human failure.

The guns and the bombs, the rockets and the warships, are all symbols of human failure.

May the same Almighty Goodness banish the accursed monster, war, from all lands, with her hated associates, rapine and insatiable ambition!

We know now that in modern warfare, fought on any considerable scale, there can be no possible economic gain for any side. Win or lose, there is nothing but waste and destruction.

If we don't end war, war will end us.

In old days nations could collect only portions of their men and resources at a time and dribble them out by degrees. Under modern conditions whole nations could be mobilized at once and their whole life-blood and resources poured out in a torrent. Instead of a few hundreds of thousands of men meeting each other in war, millions would now meet, and modern weapons would multiply manifold the power of destruction. The financial strain and the expenditure of wealth would be incredible. 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.

Every nation prepares, through its government, to equip itself with the power to hurl death upon its fellow-nations. No people seeks that power; it is governments that seek it.

One looks ahead to a war and imagines it as a single, final, absolute event. It is nothing of the kind. War is a condition, like peace, with good days and bad days, moods of optimism and despair.

North Korea has enough chemical weapons to kill everyone in South Korea.

Once again the hopes of people of two nations are being smashed by weapons in the name of eliminating weapons. Let us abolish weapons of mass destruction at home. Joblessness is a weapon of mass destruction. Poverty is a weapon of mass destruction. Hunger is a weapon of mass destruction. Homelessness is a weapon of mass destruction. Poor health care is a weapon of mass destruction. Discrimination is a weapon of mass destruction.