Les Aspin Quotes

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

Among pacifists it was above all the English who always insisted on the importance of disarmament. They said that the man in the street would not understand the kind of pacifism that neglected to demand immediate restriction of armaments.

I came here as a practical man, to talk, not simply on the question of peace and war, but to treat another question which is of hardly less importance - the enormous and burdensome standing armaments which it is the practice of modern Governments to sustain in time of peace.

We want a rocket-free country. That’s what we want.

Take your guns, your knives, and your pangas, and throw them into the sea. Close down the death factories. End this war now.

We don't need military weapons in our society. We're not supposed to be at war with one another.

Moreover, war has become a thing potentially so terrible and destructive that it should have been the common aim of statesmen to put an end to it forever.

Let us assume that the ideal were reached; let us imagine a state of international life in which the danger of war no longer exists. Then no one would dare to demand a penny for obviously completely superfluous armaments.

We should wage war not to win war, but to win peace.

War can only be abolished through war, and in order to get rid of the gun it is necessary to take up the gun.

We ought to disarm Germany completely.

I think war should be illegal.

My first wish is to see this plague of mankind, war, banished from the earth.

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

Peace: A period of cheating between two periods of fighting.

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.

Disarmament has become the urgent imperative of our time. I do not say this because I equate the absence of arms to peace, or because I believe that bringing an end to the nuclear arms race automatically guarantees the peace, or because the elimination of nuclear warheads from the arsenals of the world will bring in its wake that change in attitude requisite to the peaceful settlement of disputes between nations. Disarmament is vital today, quite simply, because of the immense destructive capacity of which men dispose.

We want no war. We’ll have no war.

Will we forever live by our sword? We definitely will live with our sword. I don't think our children or grandchildren won't be soldiers. We must make efforts to try and not live only by our sword, but we will always be with a sword.

If you use weapons of war to bring about peace, you're going to have more war and destruction.

War as Napoleon knew it just not possible any more. However, we're very unlikely to accept or recognize 'world peace' even when we get it.

I am, on principle, opposed to war and in favor of peace because I regard peace as a positive good and war as a positive evil.

We can do without butter, but, despite all our love of peace, not without arms. One cannot shoot with butter, but with guns.

Although a soldier by profession, I have never felt any sort of fondness for war, and I have never advocated it, except as a means of peace.

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