David Starr Jordan Quotes

The United States is not a nation to which peace is a necessity.

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

No doubt it requires two to fight. But both of them need not necessarily be fighters. It is, all the same, a fight, even if one goes on beating and the other gets beaten. There is no guarantee that others would behave properly with us even if we remain peaceful and cordial with them.

The United States will never take part in an aggressive war.

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.

If a nation wants to live in peace with its neighbors, it doesn't keep rattling the saber at them.

Let us recollect that peace or war will not always be left to our option; that however moderate or unambitious we may be, we cannot count upon the moderation, or hope to extinguish the ambition of others.

The only excuse for war is that we may live in peace unharmed.

We have nothing in our history or position to invite aggression; we have everything to beckon us to the cultivation of relations of peace and amity with all nations.

War is never a solution; it is an aggravation.

War may sometimes be a necessary evil. But no matter how necessary, it is always an evil, never a good. We will not learn how to live together in peace by killing each other's children.

We want no wars of conquest; we must avoid the temptation of territorial aggression.

Whenever peace—conceived as the avoidance of war—has been the primary objective of a power or group of powers, the international system has been at the mercy of the most ruthless member of the international community.

If you seek peace, we do not want War. But if you want War, we will accept it unhesitatingly.

So long as war exists on earth there will be some danger that even the Nation which most ardently desires peace may be drawn into war.

The United States of America never goes to war because we want to, we only go to war because we have to.

I think all of us are agreed that war is probably man's greatest stupidity and I think peace is the dream that lives in the heart of everyone wherever he may be in the world, but unfortunately, unlike a family quarrel, it doesn't take two to make a war. It only takes one, unless the other one is prepared to surrender at the first hint of force.

Preparation for war is a constant stimulus to suspicion and ill will.

When human beings live together, conflict is inevitable. War is not.

Unless a nation's life faces peril, war is murder.

Peace is purchased from strength. It's not purchased from weakness or unilateral retreats.

I have never advocated war except as a means of peace.

To my mind, what we ought to have maintained from the beginning was the strictest neutrality. If we had done this, I do not believe we would have been on the verge of war at the present time.

Every nation sincerely desires peace; and all nations pursue courses which if persisted in, must make peace impossible.