James Madison Quotes

The art of diplomacy is to take your humiliations in private.

There are some who, for varying reasons, would appease Red China. They are blind to history's clear lesson, for history teaches with unmistakable emphasis that appeasement but begets new and bloodier war. It points to no single instance where this end has justified that means, where appeasement has led to more than a sham peace. Like blackmail, it lays the basis for new and successively greater demands until, as in blackmail, violence becomes the only other alternative.

Admittedly, there is a risk in any course we follow other than this, but every lesson in history tells us that the greater risk lies in appeasement, and this is the specter our well-meaning liberal friends refuse to face.

Appeasement is feeding the crocodile, hoping he will eat you last.

A broader reading of history shows that appeasement, no matter how it is labeled, never fulfills the hopes of the appeasers.

One would think that man would run out of wars.

If history teaches us anything, it teaches that simple-minded appeasement or wishful thinking about our adversaries is folly.

Many politicians in the West cling to the notion of a partnership with Russia. They want to include [Vladimir] Putin, make compromises and constantly negotiate new deals with him. But history has taught us that the longer we pursue appeasement and do nothing, the higher the price will be later on. Dictators don't ask "Why?" before they seize even more power. They ask: "Why not?"

If we justify war, it is because all peoples always justify the traits of which they find themselves possessed, not because war will bear an objective examination of its merits.

Wars and conflicts are not inevitable. They are caused by human beings.

The point of departure of the process to which we wish to contribute is the fact that war is the natural reaction of human nature in the savage state, while peace is the result of acquired characteristics.

The direct use of force is such a poor solution to any problem, it is generally employed only by small children and large nations.

In all history there is no war which was not hatched by the governments, the governments alone, independent of the interests of the people, to whom war is always pernicious even when successful.

We did not start a fight with America, and we don't want a war with America. If someone launches an attack, though, we will respond. We will not take rejection or humiliation. We do not want to fight.

Either war is obsolete, or men are.

Appeasement was never a very clever policy, and it should not be our option today.

War is regarded as nothing but the continuation of state policy with other means.

The generous way of putting it is that we were not ready for this. The less generous way is to say: How was it possible to return to the politics of appeasement of the 1930s?

The main force used in the evolving world of humanity has hitherto been applied in the form of war.

Mr. Chamberlain desires to avert the threat to England's peace by making England, in alliance with Germany, stronger than her rivals and so to force them to renounce their hostile intentions against her.

The limitation upon this mode of promoting peace lies in the fact that it consists in an appeal to the civilized side of man, while war is the product of forces proceeding from man's original savage nature.

Poles understand perhaps better than anyone the consequences of making toothless warnings to brutal tyrants and terrorist regimes.

Why did you send that fool with the umbrella to talk to Hitler?. Why didn't you send a man?

History teaches, perhaps, very few clear lessons. But surely one such lesson learned by the world at great cost is that aggression, unopposed, becomes a contagious disease.

War is one of the constants of history, and it has not diminished with civilization or democracy. In the last 3,421 years of recorded history only 268 have seen no war.