Thomas Paine Quotes

What remains unchanged is the principle, which is that we do not launch wars without overwelming reasons, and overwhelming alliances, and without overwhelming force.

You may be obliged to wage war, but not to use poisoned arrows.

One cannot be arraigned for declaring a war, which every ruler has to do once in a while, but only for running a war badly.

What is not conservative about saying, 'Don't go to war unless we go to war properly with a full declaration of war and no other way?'

The Congress decides when to make war and the President decides how to make war.

The only difficulty I had in declaring war arose from the incompetency of the men to whom the principle management of it was to be given.

Those who are to conduct a war cannot in the nature of things, be proper and safe judges of whether a war ought to be commenced, continued or concluded.

The question really is what action we take which lessens the chances of a nuclear exchange, which obviously is the final failure…. You have:, A blockade without any declaration of war A blockade with a declaration of war Strikes One, Two and Three We’ve got invasion

Mobilization is not aggression.… The aggressor is the one who renders inevitable the first shot, in other words the nation who first declares war.

You have to make sure you know why you are going to war and then use decisive force to end it as soon as possible.

The military people don't like it; the government probably doesn't like it, but the people should know what they're sending their young people into when they permit their governments to declare war and engage in war.

No war by any nation in any age has ever been declared by the people.

With no notice to the American people...this country entered the war...Stranger than the fact was the passive acceptance of it.

Jihad should be waged in places where there is war. Bombings in places where there is no war is not a good thing.

In other words, United States, our values, the way that we occupy ourselves in terms of saying here's the way we stand in this country when we go to war, it's not that we go in and we kill off anybody, including families. We don't take the riches. We don't claim the women. My God, that's not America.

Defense is the first act of war.

War is a grim, cruel business, a business justified only as a means of sustaining the forces of good against those of evil.

The conduct of war was so much more interesting than its prevention.

There is no bigger judgment for a president of the United States than how you take a nation to war.

Wars, therefore, are to be undertaken for this end, that we may live in peace, without being injured; but when we obtain the victory, we must preserve those enemies who behaved without cruelty or inhumanity during the war.

When the President decides to go to war, he no longer needs a declaration of war from congress.

The Executive should be able to repel and not to commence war.

Most US presidents since World War II have led military actions without a declaration of war by Congress, though most, if not all, have properly consulted and sought support from Congress. That is the wise thing to do.

It boils down to this: we should have done with humbug, and let war be war, and not a game ... If there were none of this magnanimity business in warfare, we should never go to war, except for something worth facing certain death for.

An aggressive war is the great crime against everything good in the world. A defensive war, which must necessarily turn to aggressive at the earliest moment, is the necessary great counter-crime. But never think that war, no matter how necessary, nor how justified, is not a crime. Ask the infantry and ask the dead.