Malcolm Forbes Quotes

I predict you will sink step by step into a bottomless quagmire, however much you spend in men and money." (On Vietnam War)

Yes, yes: Taking out Saddam Hussein means war, and war is bad for children and other living things. I went to grade school in the 1970s, and I recall the poster. But there are times when war is not only a tragic and unavoidable necessity, but also good for children and other living things.

The War Powers Act requires presidents to seek the consent of the American people, through their representatives, before sending our troops into war. It is the responsibility of Congress to deliberate and consult with the executive branch before involving ourselves in a military conflict.

Not only military leaders are sometimes guilty of designing a war as if it were a bridge that only spans half a river, civilian leaders may initiate military campaigns without being troubled by the fact that they have no plan to bring their war to a close.

Americans have learned that it is harder to end wars than it is to begin them

During my years in the Navy and in the White House, I was involved in assessing how a war with Iran would go. In summary: It would be ugly.

Wars almost never end the way starters had in mind.

When a war breaks out, people say: "It's too stupid; it can't last long." But though a war may well be "too stupid," that doesn't prevent its lasting. Stupidity has a knack of getting its way; as we should see if we were not always so much wrapped up in ourselves.

If in the modern world wars have unfortunately to be fought (and they do, it seems) then they must be stopped at the first possible moment, otherwise they corrupt us, they create new problems and make our future even more uncertain. That is more than morality; it's sense.

A war put off is not a war avoided.

To win a war is as disasterous as to lose one.

We wanted this war and now we've got it, and I'm not sure that we know what to do with it.

You need to think, when you get involved in wars, how you're going to get out of them.

As for Vietnam, what matters is that Kennedy successfully resisted pressure to send anything more than military advisers, a stance that was a likely prelude to complete withdrawal from the conflict. There is solid evidence of his eagerness to end America's military role in that country's civil war.

The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are as much every U.S. citizen's wars as they are the veterans' wars. If we don't assume that civilians have just as much ownership and the moral responsibilities that we have as a nation when we embark on something like that, then we're in a very bad situation.

I don't think a wise thing at this moment is for Israel to launch a military attack on Iran.

To me our bombing policy appears to be suicidal. Not because it does not do vast damage to our enemy, it does; but because, simultaneously, it does vast damage to our peace aim, unless that aim is mutual economic and social annihilation.

One of the greatest casualties of the war in Vietnam is the Great Society... shot down on the battlefield of Vietnam.

We may find in the long run that tinned food is a deadlier weapon than the machine-gun.

War is failure of diplomacy.

My point was that the war was intrinsically wrong, and as a result of our participation we haven't improved Australia's security but created a greater danger at home and abroad.

War is too serious a matter to entrust to military men.

I certainly don't like a label that suggests I believe that the military is the solution to most of the world's problems.

Woe to the statesman whose reason for entering a war do not appear so plausible at its end as at its beginning.

In matters of war, we undermine presidential credibility at our nation’s peril.