Thomas Pynchon Quotes

Wars breed unfairness, just as they breed collateral damage.

Then as now, whatever disagreements over policies existed among Americans - and there were many such bitter policy disputes - the purposes and goals for which Americans fought were clearly understood.

Politics is irrational. Politics is about human beings with their frailties and perversions and distortions or perception, who prioritise things according to their conviction.

Everything, everything in war is barbaric…But the worst barbarity of war is that it forces men collectively to commit acts against which individually they would revolt with their whole being.

What regrets I have about being a party to killing and maiming thousands of Japanese civilians this morning are tempered with the hope that the terrible weapon we have created may bring the countries of the world together and prevent further wars.

Adversity in politics does not encourage cohesiveness, it seems. Deprived of the fruits of power, a national political party seems to break down into regional or other factions. Unity can only be regained by victory—yet victory is forestalled by disunity.

World politics is not a kindergarten.

Power politics is another name for the law of the jungle.

That's what wars are: Poor people killing other poor people.

In the end, civil wars are about the distribution of power.

The art of foreign policy is to help guide the inevitable.

Shall we open the door to what may become the foulest proscription: state against state?

The Iraq War is an incredibly strategic blunder of enormous proportions …. There was not an exit strategy because the people planning this war didn’t intend to leave.

The Western Powers have shown themselves unable to understand that our vital interests must be satisfied; the Press of those countries has played its part, together with irresponsible and mischievous elements, and the Czechoslovak crisis arose.

The ostensible causes of war among the Indians were like many of those of civilized nations; controversies about limits, violations of the rights of embassy, individual or national wrongs: And the real and latent reasons were generally the same; the enlargement of territory, the extension of dominion, the gratification of cupidity, and the acquisition of glory.

The House Of Commons has never been a tea-party. It consists of strong-minded, often very idealistic people, who are trying to accomplish something for our country. We are inheritors of an adversarial system and that, in itself, fosters conflict.

At least eighty thousand of our sons are dead or mangled. A million more will die of poverty and disease. Every issue could have been settled and better settled without the loss of a drop of blood

Washington believes in Zero-Sum politics.

On whatever side we regard the history of Europe, we shall perceive it to be a tissue of crimes, follies, and misfortunes, of politics without design, and wars without consequence.

Haven’t we learned that when you go to war, the outcome is unpredictable.

In politics, reality is that which is unseen. Politics is the art of combining a nation’s diverse or opposing factors to the benefit of its domestic well-being, and of saving the country from the open enmity or covetous friendship of other nations.

The world’s gravest conflicts are not over ethical principles or disputed values but over disputed facts.

Part of why civil wars are so difficult to explain is that so many different reasons are at work in different places.

Germany has an interest in détente—for general European and national reasons. Here we are in accord not only with our allies … but with almost everyone. Here we join with the nations and governments of the uncommitted world. Here interests we have in common with the Communist-governed states also come to light in spite of some polemics.

The problem with foreign policy constraints is that once they are accepted they are seldom questioned again. In the maelstrom of politics, as one limps from crisis to crisis, it is always comforting to have a set of apparently immutable parameters. They remove the need for much agonizing indecision.