Arthur Henderson Quotes

... the notion that the greater the preparation for war the smaller the probability of its occurrence might well appear a reductio ad absurdum of militarism, implying, as it does, that the only way to secure an eternal world peace is to concentrate the entire energy of all nations upon the art of war ...

As long as there are sovereign nations possessing great power, war is inevitable.

In times of peace, the war party insists on making preparation for war. As soon as prepared for, it insists on making war.

Our modern states are preparing for war without even knowing the future enemy.

You could tell that America was gearing up for war.

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.

If this phrase of “the balance of power” is to be always an argument for war, the pretext for war will never be wanting …

War is not, in itself, a condition so much as the symptom of a condition - that of international anarchy.

War and preparations for war have acquired a kind of legitimacy.

To secure peace is to prepare for war.

The White House isn't the place to learn how to deal with international crisis, the balance of power, war and peace, and the economic future of the next generation.

Every move we make in fear of the next war in fact hastens it.

The popular, and one may say naive, idea is that peace can be secured by disarmament and that disarmament must therefore precede the attainment of absolute security and lasting peace.

So long as peace is not attained by law (so argue the advocates of armaments) the military protection of a country must not be undermined, and until such is the case disarmament is impossible.

It is an unfortunate fact that we can secure peace only by preparing for war.

I know that military alliances and armament have been the reliance for peace for centuries, but they do not produce peace; and when war comes, as it inevitably does under such conditions, these armaments and alliances but intensify and broaden the conflict.

Today the predatory state, or the predatory group of states, with power of total destruction, is no more to be tolerated than the predatory individual.

Competition in armament, both land and naval, is not only a terrible burden upon the people, but I believe it to be one of the greatest menaces to the peace of the world.

Moreover, if the territorial state is to continue as the last word in the development of society, then war is inevitable.

What a country calls its vital... interests are not things that help its people live, but things that help it make war.

Whenever there is talk of peace, there is anger in the military- industrial- political complex.

As long as we can outproduce the world, can control the sea and can strike inland with the atomic bomb, we can assume certain risks otherwise unacceptable in an effort to restore world trade, to restore the balance of power —military power—and to eliminate some of the conditions which breed war.

Though the object of being a Great Power is to be able to fight a Great War, the only way of remaining a Great Power is not to fight one.

Politics is the womb in which war develops.”

He [Norman Angell] wrote these words in 1910. One politician after another lined up to praise the book. Four years later, the same men started World War I.