Roger Sherman Quotes

We've never declared war on anybody. We [Iran] defended ourselves against wars that were imposed on us. We have no desire to engage in confrontation with anybody.

Our country has never started a war. Our sole objective is deterrence, the strength and capability it takes to prevent war.

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

We can achieve much more in peace than we can ever achieve in these needless, unconstitutional, undeclared wars.

Politics and war are remarkably similar situations.

Preventing a war is tantamount to winning a war.

We should seek by all means in our power to avoid war, by analysing possible causes, by trying to remove them, by discussion in a spirit of collaboration and good will.

... the greatest moral victory in the history of civilization if it actually keeps out of a war.

Deterrence is to prevent war, not to win a war.

As Commander-in-Chief of the army and navy, in time of war, I suppose I have a right to take any measure which may best subdue the enemy.

Any idea that you can have a league for security is nuts, and all people who favor it are potential murderers… as long as man is man, there will be war and the only way to avoid trouble is to have the best army and navy, which we now have.

All States do not have the same interests, but are there any interests which cannot be infinitely better reconciled before than after a war?

… in a tense situation, if time could be given for everyone to discuss what was going on before they actually went to war, we might come to our senses. Most of us are taught as children to count to 30 before we open our mouths when we were angry, and that same lesson should apply to nations.

Deterrence is a strategy for combining two competing goals: Countering an enemy and avoiding war.

The great lesson to be learned in the battered towns of England and the ruined cities of Germany is that the best way to win a war is to prevent it from occurring.

You have to decide in advance whether you're ready go to war. If you guys are ready to send a million troops into Ukraine and fight World War III, you're going to do it without my support because I think that's a really foolish notion.

The way to prevent war is to bend every energy toward preventing it, not to proceed by the dubious indirection of preparing for it.

I think the President ought to bring everybody that's in American uniform back because we're headed for war.

History teaches that wars begin when governments believe the price of aggression is cheap. To keep the peace, we and our allies must be strong enough to convince any potential aggressor that war could bring no benefit, only disaster.

I considered the prevention of war as the test of our security policy; in addition to being able to rapidly and forcefully end any war forced upon us.

The biggest difference would be made if we don't have wars to begin with.

I can't possibly put myself in his [Tony Blair's] shoes and be inside his head but what I can say is that the security of the nation is the first duty of any government but at the same time for me going to war would always be the last resort. I would exhaust all other opportunities first.

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

It may be that for a long time some nations will continue to fight each other, but the example of those nations who prefer arbitration to war, law courts to the battlefield, must sooner or later influence the belligerent powers and make war as unpopular as pugilism is now.

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