Sallust Quotes

Wars almost never end the way starters had in mind.

War is just like bush-clearing-the moment you stop, the jungle comes back even thicker, but for a little while you can plant and grow a crop in the ground you have won at such a terrible cost.

To stop war by the perfection of engines of destruction alone, might consume centuries and centuries. Other means must be employed to hasten the end.

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

Wars do not end wars any more than an extraordinarily large conflagration does away with the fire hazard.

You can't beat your enemy anymore through wars; instead you create an entire generation of people revenge-seeking. [...] Our opponents are going to resort to car bombs and suicide attacks because they have no other way to win. I believe (Rumsfeld) thinks this is a war that can be won, but there is no such thing anymore. We can't beat anyone anymore.

No triumph of peace is quite so great as the supreme triumphs of war.

Reconciliation with our enemies is simply a desire to better our condition, a weariness of war, or the fear of some unlucky thing from occurring.

The war-function has grasped us so far; but the constructive interests may some day seem no less imperative, and impose on the individual a hardly lighter burden.

Even in waging war, cherish the spirit of peace-maker; that, by conquering those whom you attack, you may lead them back to the advantages of peace.

We have contingency plans for war, but none for peace.

I consider even a victorious war as an evil, from which statesmanship must endeavor to spare nations.

You measure peace with guns, progress in megatons. Who's left when the war is won?

It is always easy to begin a war, but very difficult to stop one.

There's no war that will end all wars.

The present war is the saturation point in violence. It spells, to my mind, also its doom.

Wars are poor chisels for carving out peaceful tomorrows.

We in the West think of peace as society's default position. War is a temporary state of affairs that happens when peace fails. For us, war is something that has a beginning, a middle, and an end. When it is over, win or lose, the warring factions lay down their arms and resume their normal lives.

All the aftermath that so frequently follows in the wake of war still confront the nation, and we now, as ever before, must hold fast to the ancient landmarks and see to it that all of these plagues that threaten so mightily shall be rendered harmless.

A war is only as good as the peace that follows.

War is not won by victory.

Battles are never the end of war; for the dead must be buried and the cost of the conflict must be paid.

Our conflict is not likely to cease so soon as every good man would wish. The measure of iniquity is not yet filled; and unless we can return a little more to first principles, and act a little more upon patriotic ground, I do not know when it will-or-what may be the issue of the contest. Speculation-peculation-engrossing-forestalling-with all their concomitants, afford too many melancholy proofs of the decay of public virtue; and too glaring instances of its being the interest and desire of too many, who would wish to be thought friends, to continue the war.

He that makes a good war makes a good peace.

I see this as the central issue of our time: how to find a substitute for war in human ingenuity, imagination, courage, sacrifice, patience... War is not inevitable, however persistent it is, however long a history it has in human affairs. It does not come out of some instinctive human need. It is manufactured by political leaders, who then must make a tremendous effort--by enticement, by propaganda, by coercion--to mobilize a normally reluctant population to go to war.