Don DeLillo Quotes

It is fatal to enter any war without the will to win it.

All of the promises of politicians, generals, madmen, and crusaders that war can create peace have yet to be borne out.

The Chinese general Sun Tzu said that all war was based on deception. Oscar Wilde said the same thing of romance.

I shall give a propagandist reason for starting the war, no matter whether it is plausible or not. The victor will not be asked afterwards whether he told the truth or not. When starting and waging war it is not right that matters, but victory.

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

Winston Churchill said 'In war time, truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies'. Any book called The Truth should therefore have one.

In modern warfare there are no victors; there are only survivors.

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.

In time of war steamships and improved arms are the most important things.

Every war when it comes, or before it comes, is represented not as a war but as an act of self-defense against a homicidal maniac.

It is well known that in war, the first casualty is truth - that during any war truth is forsaken for propaganda.

How is the world ruled and led to war? Diplomats lie to journalists and believe these lies when they see them in print.

When they are preparing for war, those who rule by force speak most copiously about peace until they have completed the mobilization process.

Food is as important to armies as ammunition—but more important than either is an unfailing supply of lies. You simply cannot murder your enemy in the most efficient manner if you know he is in every essential the same kind of a man as yourself.

In time of war, truth is always replaced by propaganda.

War is utter damn nonsense, a vast cancer fed by lies and self seeking malignity on the part of those who don't do the fighting.

War is a lot of things and it's useless to pretend that exciting isn't one of them. (pg. 144)

War is sweet to them that know it not.

It's obvious that things aren't going well over there. This is a war based on lies.

In war, practice dissimulation and you will succeed.

In a war, you do whatever you have to do.

War is not courtesy but the most horrible thing in life; and we ought to understand that, and not play at war. We ought to accept this terrible necessity sternly and seriously. It all lies in that: get rid of falsehood and let war be war and not a game.

And finally, and most importantly, the next time we go to war, don't give a specific reason for the war that the left can seize upon and later flog us with it ad nauseam, just do it. Remember, the first rule of Fight Club is that you don't talk about Fight Club.

For the US, the Kosovo War was a success because it encouraged the development of the Pentagon's 'Revolution in Military Affairs' (RMA). The war provided a test site for experimentation, and paved the way for emergence of what I call in Strategie de la deception 'the second deterrence'.

If wars can be started by lies, they can be stopped by truth.