Cormac McCarthy Quotes

War is not for winning, Masha," sighed Koschei, reading the tracks of supply lines, of pincer strategies, over her shoulder. "It is for surviving.

There was never a good war, or a bad peace.

There are consequences if you act militarily, and there's big consequences if you don't act.

You can't make war in the Middle East without Egypt and you can't make peace without Syria.

Projectile: The final arbiter in international disputes …

If you don't want war, then you had better be an advocate for diplomacy with muscle.

If there is one path above all others to war, it is the path of weakness and disunity.

We always prefer war on our own terms to peace on someone else's.

Those good at war aren't good at peace, and those good at peace aren't good at war.

Ceres wanted a united front in the plant war." "The plant war," Percy said. "You're going to arm all the little grapes with tiny assault rifles?

One should never permit a disorder to persist in order to avoid a war, for wars cannot be avoided and can only be deferred to the advantage of others.

We go to war only to make peace. We never went to war with any other design. We carry the national conscience wherever we go.

The same reason that makes us chide and brawl and fall out with any of our neighbors, causeth a war to follow between Princes.

In war, in some sense, lies the very genius of law. It is law creative and active; it is the first principle of the law. What is human warfare but just this, - an effort to make the laws of God and nature take sides with one party. Men make an arbitrary code, and, because it is not right, they try to make it prevail by might. The moral law does not want any champion. Its asserters do not go to war. It was never infringed with impunity. It is inconsistent to decry war and maintain law, for if there were no need of war there would be no need of law.

Arms alone are not enough to keep the peace. It must be kept by men.

We do not need more division. We certainly do not need something as complex and emotional as Vietnam reduced to simple campaign rhetoric.

We will not let the price of peace be greater than the price of war, we will firmly safeguard the achievements of the past 13 years under former President Karzai.

I don't oppose all wars. What I am opposed to is a dumb war. What I am opposed to is a rash war.

Politics and war are remarkably similar situations.

Churchill knew the importance of peace, and he also knew the price of it. Churchill finally got his voice, of course. He stressed strategy, but it was his voice that armed England at last with the old-fashioned moral concepts of honor and duty, justice and mercy.

As I watch what is happening in the Middle East and the carnage that comes over our television screens every evening, I cannot help but ask myself, what is wrong with humankind that we cannot stop the killing?

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

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

I fought for peace in the fifties.

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.