Will Rogers Quotes

From 1836, down to last year, there is no proof of the Government having any confidence in the duration of peace, or possessing increased security against war.

We should lay up in peace what we shall need in war.

You think defending this nation [americans] is expensive, try not defending it. That's a lot more expensive.

There is nothing so likely to produce peace as to be well prepared to meet the enemy.

Let him who desires peace prepare for war.

That is the best Government, which best provides for war.

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.

Any idea that you can have a league for security is nuts, and all people who favor it are potential murderers… as long as man is man, there will be war and the only way to avoid trouble is to have the best army and navy, which we now have.

Military capability, viewed in terms of the history of its own development, has constantly been found wanting. Renewal and regeneration of military capability seems to be an indispensable part of the military doctrine, conceived to address what turns out inevitably to be the insatiable need of fear. For every level of fear addressed through a military strategy or state of readiness, a further threat comes to be conceived for which further military capability is sought.

Like as a wise man in time of peace prepares for war.

Now that their long war was over, they could get on with the proper concern of all civilised nations, which is to prepare for the next one.

There's no telling what might have happened to our defense budget if Saddam Hussein hadn't invaded Kuwait that August and set everyone gearing up for World War II. Can we count on Saddam Hussein to come along every year and resolve our defense-policy debates? Given the history of the Middle East, it's possible.

Can it be that a generation of school children is growing up heedless of the simple truth that the Pentagon's centrla role for many years has been to buy weapons that don't work, against threats that don't exist?

The way to secure peace is to be prepared for war. They that are on their guard, and appear ready to receive their adversaries, are in much less danger of being attacked, than the supine, secure, and negligent.

In a world of danger and trial, peace is our deepest aspiration, and when peace comes we will gladly convert not our swords into plowshares, but our bombs into peaceful reactors, and our planes into space vessels. "Pursue peace," the Bible tells us, and we shall pursue it with every effort and every energy that we possess. But it is an unfortunate fact that we can secure peace only by preparing for war.

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 came to Iraq to liberate them and to make our world a safer place.

The more you sweat in peace, the less you bleed in war.

We pacifists have not ceased to point to the grave danger of armaments and to insist on their curtailment.

Yes, we love peace, but we are not willing to take wounds for it, as we are for war.

The great armies, accumulated to provide security and preserve the peace, carried the nations to war by their own weight.

We ought to disarm Germany completely.

What we need is Star Peace and not Star Wars.

Some pacifists have carried the sound idea of the prime importance of security too far, to the point of declaring that any consideration of disarmament is superfluous and pointless as long as eternal peace has not been attained.

Without peace, all other dreams vanish and are reduced to ashes.