Chuck Hagel Quotes

It’s damn easy to get into a war, but damned harder to extricate yourself once you get in.

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

War is failure of diplomacy.

The purpose of all wars, is peace.

Wars are, of course, as a rule to be avoided; but they are far better than certain kinds of peace.

We cannot be both the world's leading champion of peace and the world's leading supplier of the weapons of war.

Wars are to be undertaken in order that it may be possible to live in peace without molestation. Bella suscipienda sunt ob eam causam, ut sine injuria in pace vivatur.

Could we have avoided this terrible, bloody war! … Is it ever to end!

Let us face squarely the paradox that the world which goes to war is a world, usually, genuinely desiring peace.

Nothing can justify war.

We cannot have peace if we are only concerned with peace. War is not an accident. It is the logical outcome of a certain way of life. If we want to attack war, we have to attack that way of life.

Either a war has to be fought, or it doesn't.

There was never a good war, or a bad peace.

Don't worry about the war. It's all over but the shooting.

A sane person doesn't think war is a good idea.

People who start wars never know exactly how they will turn out.

It makes no difference who says that our objective is peace, even if he be the President of the United States. Our actions speak louder than words, and our actions in Asia today are the actions of warmaking.

We sit there because there is a war going on. But once we have peace we don’t want to be sitting on your Suez Canal.

When you go to war it is highly unlikely that it will end with a neat, tidy conclusion.

The truth is that one cannot choose the form of war one wants.

Right now, the choice isn't between war and peace. It is between war and endless war.

War is always an option. Peace is not.

War as Napoleon knew it just not possible any more. However, we're very unlikely to accept or recognize 'world peace' even when we get it.

I am, on principle, opposed to war and in favor of peace because I regard peace as a positive good and war as a positive evil.

I think when war becomes your life, I think it's very difficult to have the proper perspective to be able to create a fully balanced policy.