Alexis de Tocqueville Quotes

There are two things that will always be difficult for a democratic people to do: to start a war and to finish it

Wars the United States starts do not necessarily end when and how it wants them to.

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

I may be wrong in that, but not I think in putting the questions. In our modern democracy the government needs not a unanimous but a general support for war before it orders our forces to fight.

I do not believe, given her past decisions and comments on the reasons to go to war in Iraq, that Dr. Rice will be able to represent the United States without a predetermined bias from the 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.

I believe the military should be wary of diplomacy until war is declared; then the State Department should keep its nose out and let the military do whatever is necessary to win.

It is easy to get into war, not so easy to get out.

We don't declare war any more, we declare national defense.

The United States, as the world knows, will never start a war.

By invading Iraq, the President has undermined the War on Terrorism.

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.

War is much too serious a thing to be left to military men.

I said it was my feeling that the American people would struggle for peace, and that has since been underscored by the President of these United States.

War should be the politics of last resort. And when we go to war, we should have a purpose that our people understand and support.

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

The executive has no right, in any case, to decide the question, whether there is or is not cause for declaring war.

War on terrorism defines the central preoccupation of the United States in the world today, and it does reflect in my view a rather narrow and extremist vision of foreign policy of the world's first superpower, of a great democracy, with genuinely idealistic traditions.

Either a war has to be fought, or it doesn't.

While war is never anyone first choice, sometimes it is a necessary choice.

War is not an independent phenomenon, but the continuation of politics by different means.

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

Americans assume that we never go to war to sustain our wealth, because war must be understood as a moral enterprise commensurate with our being a democracy.

As a Korean War Veteran, I know too well the troubling nature of war. This is why I will always support a diplomatic answer before military intervention.

War is the continuation of politics by other means.