James Woolsey Quotes

In wars, serious mistakes are made.

War isn't civilized. War is failure. It's the ultimate result of a breakdown in public policy, and soldiers are the machines that handle that breakdown. In warfare, you're taught to do whatever you have to, to stay alive.

Mistakes happen in wars. Wars do not go well…. But we adjust.

Things don’t go well in war. You make mistakes.

When we go to war we always make some wrong assumptions. The most common is that the war will be short.

War is the trade of Kings.

The real peril of war lies not in military defeat. It lies in war itself, whether we win or lose.

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

All wars are mishandled.

Politics and war are remarkably similar situations.

War should be the only study of a prince. He should consider peace only as a breathing-time, which gives him leisure to contrive, and furnishes as ability to execute, military plans.

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.

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 so complex; human nature is so complex. There's no filmmaker who has ever figured it out perfectly.

In war, events of importance are the result of trivial causes.

Army: A body of men assembled to rectify the mistakes of the diplomats.

Once we have a war there is only one thing to do. It must be won. For defeat brings worse things than any that can ever happen in war.

Nowhere are our calculations more frequently upset than in war.

The stark and inescapable fact is that today we cannot defend our society by war since total war is total destruction, and if war is used as an instrument of policy, eventually we will have total war.

Every war has its demons.

President Kennedy was willing to go to war. He was not a coward. The man had been in war and so had Ken O'Donnell. He was ready to protect this nation, but he was not ready for a military solution just because it was being rammed down his throat.

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

What the hell is going on? I thought we were winning the war.

In war everything is uncertain, and calculations have to be made with variable quantities …. all military action is intertwined with psychological forces and effects.

Democracies are prone to war, and war consumes them.