Vitruvius Quotes

Warfare evolves. It changes as a result of technology. It changes as the culture changes.

World War II had a very important impact on the development of technology, as a whole.

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

Some think that by preparing to deal with crises you make them more likely. I think the wiser judgment is the contrary. In this area at least, if you want peace or stability, it's better to prepare for war or instability.

We live in an age that is driven by information. Technological breakthroughs... are changing the face of war and how we prepare for war.

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.

Going to war against Iran - whether one calls such a move 'surgical' or 'total' - would be an extremely serious undertaking; with worldwide economic, military, diplomatic and human ramifications in both the short- and the long-term.

A nation's ability to fight a modern war is as good as its technological ability.

The nexus between modern science and violence is obvious from the fact that 80 percent of all scientific research is devoted to the war industry and is frankly aimed at large-scale violence.

Today the atomic bomb has altered profoundly the nature of the world as we know it, and the human race consequently finds itself in a new habitat to which it must adapt its thinking... Never before was it possible for one nation to make war on another without sending armies across borders. Now with rockets and atomic bombs no center of population on the earth's surface is secure from surprise destruction in a single attack.... We cannot leave it to generals, senators, and diplomats to work out a solution over a period of generations… There is no defense in science against the weapon which can destroy civilization. Our defense is not in armaments, nor in science, nor in going underground. Our defense is in law and order… Future thinking must prevent wars.

For any rational political leader, war is indeed unthinkable, but two huge military bureaucracies in the two countries [Russia and America] are paid to think about it every day, to plan for it, and to develop scenarios for "winning." The madness of one bureaucracy sustains the other. The technological nightmare into which we have entered is an environment that chokes rational thought.

Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants.

Military technology is like a continuing chess game, with no final move.

As for the "triumphs of science," let us honour, with astonishment and awe, the genius of those who invented them; but let us remember that the things themselves are as a gun or a sword, with which we can kill our enemy, but with which also our enemy can kill us.

Sophisticated modern weapons have not eliminated the uncertainty that puts war and warlike activities "in the province of chance" and makes war an extremely dangerous activity with results that are unpredictable and depend as much on "moral force" as on numbers and technology.

Confined to the use of his own physical power, man is one of the most helpless animals. In proportion to his size and requirements, he is unquestionably very weak and slow. But the superiority of his organism consists precisely in the aptitude of his brain and the fitness of his hands for the contrivance and use of mechanical devices, through which he may take from nature, by artifice, those forces in which he is naturally wanting

In cases of defense, it is best to weigh the enemy more than he seems.

The U.S. public is more likely to sour on a conflict when it sees the military losing blood, not treasure. So to keep up our staying power, our skill in hunting and killing our foes has to be matched by our care in concealing and protecting our troops. Three particularly obvious requirements are body armor, mine-resistant vehicles, and telescopic and night sights for every weapon. But these things are expensive for a military that has historically been enamored of big-ticket items such as fighter planes, ships and missiles.

The simple rule about weapons is that if they can be built, they will be built.

You really can’t blame the military for wanting to go to war [in Iraq]. They’ve got all these new toys and they want to know whether they work or not.

The object of government is the protection of person, property, and reputation from the foes which assail them. Government may do other things: it may carry the mails, run the express, own and operate the railroads; but its fundamental function is to furnish protection from open violence or secret fraud. If it adequately protects person, property, and reputation, it is a just government, though it do nothing else; if it fails to protect these primary rights, if the person is left to defend himself, his property, his reputation by his own strong arm, there is no government.

We were reconciled to the fact that we would have war with Russia…. If the war had not come now, we would have had it in two years time under worse conditions…. No one could have foreseen that militarily not everything would work out as one had believed.

Nations want the United States to fight their wars, until they go bad.

We all are limited in that none of us can fly and none of us can run faster than some animals, but we figure out a way to go to Tokyo if we have to, right? Or we run faster than an animal with a race car.

Diplomacy and defense are not substitutes for one another. Either alone would fail.