Christian Lous Lange Quotes

Whoever wants peace among nations must seek to limit the state and its influence most strictly.

My point was that the war was intrinsically wrong, and as a result of our participation we haven't improved Australia's security but created a greater danger at home and abroad.

Moreover, if the territorial state is to continue as the last word in the development of society, then war is inevitable.

What a country calls its vital... interests are not things that help its people live, but things that help it make war.

As long as there are sovereign nations possessing great power, war is inevitable.

You have repeatedly asserted that you and the German people have no desire for war. If this is true there need be no war. Nothing can persuade the peoples of the earth that any governing power has any right or need to inflict the consequences of war on its own or any other people save in the cause of self-evident home defense.

I have never met anyone who wasn't against war. Even Hitler and Mussolini were, according to themselves.

Politics is the womb in which war develops.”

Lightly armed nations can move toward war just as easily as those which are armed to the teeth, and they will do so if the usual causes of war are not removed.

What the American people want to do is fight a war without getting hurt. You can't do that any more than you can get into a barroom fight without getting hurt... Unless the American people are willing to send their sons out to fight an aggressor, there just isn't going to be any United States.

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

The most fundamental purpose of government is defense, not empire.

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

What I've learned, and will try to remember from now on, is that defending your country's credibility is never sufficient reason to fight a war.

Presidents do not go into war lightly. It's a tremendous responsibility in making decisions, and I know Bush must deeply believe this is the only course.

Our modern states are preparing for war without even knowing the future enemy.

Violence is for mugs. War is for mugs.

War can only be abolished through war, and in order to get rid of the gun it is necessary to take up the gun.

War is the ultimate tool of politics.

NATO believes it can pick on a small nation and force us to surrender our independence. And that is where NATO miscalculated. You are not willing to sacrifice lives to achieve our surrender. But we are willing to die to defend our rights as an independent sovereign nation.

At every step the vast majority have expressed horror at the idea of an aggressive war.

You could argue that war is always an irrational act, and yet many states enter into military conflict out of rational calculation or national interest or the stability or longevity of their regime.

Once you start a war, you have to win.

The decision to go to war is the most important decision that I can make as a representative in Congress. As a veteran, I see any potential military action first through the eyes of the young men and women who volunteered to wear the uniform and would carry out such a mission.

This president failed so miserably in diplomacy that we are now forced to war.