John Quincy Adams Quotes

For ultimately, the only way to win wars, is to prevent them occurring in the first place.

Preventing a war is tantamount to winning a war.

A strong neutral is the trustee for civilization in a shell-shocked world.

We have to develop preventive diplomacy.

The only foreign policy advice I heard from China was when they said to Sudan, 'Don't go back to war.' That's all they said. They didn't push anything else.

We should seek by all means in our power to avoid war, by analysing possible causes, by trying to remove them, by discussion in a spirit of collaboration and good will.

There has not been a war in South America for fifty years, and I have every confidence that the countries of Central and South America are deeply in earnest in the maintenance of peace.

If we examine the Hague Convention carefully, we see that it considers the offer of good offices a duty of every nation. In other words, such offers should be made whenever a dispute becomes critical and threatens to explode into war.

It is to be observed that every case of war averted is a gain in general, for it helps to form a habit of peace, and community habits long continued become standards of conduct.

Let us return, however, to the League of Nations. To create an organization which is in a position to protect peace in this world of conflicting interests and egotistic wills is a frighteningly difficult task.

It is our duty to persuade the nations of the world, in whatever way that we can, to settle their differences in some other way. (Other than war)

We must devise what could be described as a new containment … of the various forms of violence and chaos that a world no longer dominated by the Cold War will entail.

In human societies there will always be differences of views and interests. But the reality today is that we are all interdependent and have to coexist on this small planet. Therefore, the only sensible and intelligent way of resolving differences and clashes of interests, whether between individuals or nations, is through dialogue. The promotion of a culture of dialogue and nonviolence for the future of humankind is thus an important task of the international community. It is not enough for governments to endorse the principle of nonviolence or hold it high without any appropriate action to promote it.

Among the many defects that have been pointed out in the Federal Constitution ... is an office for promoting and preserving perpetual peace in our country.... Let a Secretary of Peace be established.

Wars are most often won by those who have made the greatest effort to prevent them.

The UN is ultimately going to be judged on its ability in conflict resolution and conflict prevention.

A certain degree of preparation for war ... affords also the best security for the continuance of peace.

Peacemaking and peacekeeping should run in parallel.

Deterrence is to prevent war, not to win a war.

Security and peace are not cheap.

The Mutual Security Act was intended not to fight a war but to prevent a war.

Although war cannot be ended, wars can.

Your power, which is already very great, you can increase more by peace than by war. For the outcome of war is uncertain. More often you see adversity rather than prosperity accompany it.

Deterrence is a strategy for combining two competing goals: Countering an enemy and avoiding war.

it's a disgrace for the international community that we have allowed so many conflicts to become frozen, and we are not making a serious effort to solve them.