Hubert Humphrey Quotes

In the 1930s, there were so many different conflicts going on between the British, the French, the Russians, the Germans, the Spaniards, the Romanians and so on.

World War I broke out largely because of an arms race, and World War II because of the lack of an arms race.

The First World War not only destroyed European civilisation and the empires at its heart; its aftermath led to a second conflagration, the Second World War, which divided the continent until the end of the century.

Germany was beaten after World War I, but it didn't take long for it to rise again as a much more malignant threat. The end of World War II was not to be a compromise; it was to come about from the total annihilation of the enemies' ability and will to make war.

The war against terror is every bit as important as our fight against fascism in World War II. Or our struggle against the spread of Communism during the Cold War.

The more the history of the World War and what led up to it is studied, the more clearly those tragic years become revealed as a vast collapse of civilization.

I have a friend that is a WWII buff, and we sat and talked a lot about stuff like the war and the reasons behind it, and you now it's all in the uniform. Once you're in it, it usually does all the work for you.

Fascism means war.

No soldier starts a war—they only give their lives to it. Wars are started by you and me, by bankers and politicians, excitable women, newspaper editors, clergymen who are ex-pacifists, and Congressmen with vertebrae of putty.

Defeat [in World War II] was better for the nation than if we had become extremely militaristic as a result of victory.

Appeasement is just as bad in 1983 as it was in 1938.

The same contending powers behind the First and Second World Wars are now preparing the Third World War. This we should know, and we as the sons and daughters of an oppressed country are part of the loot.

Think of the prelude to World War Two. Think of all the countries that said, well, we don’t have enough evidence. I mean, Mein Kampf had been written. Hitler had indicated what he intended to do. The people who argued for waiting for more evidence have to ask themselves how they are going to feel at that point where another event occurs.

Hitler is a very great man, like an inspired religious leader—and as such rather fanatical—but not scheming, not selfish, not greedy for power, but a mystic, a visionary who really wants the best for his country …

In some states militant nationalism has gone to the lengths of dictatorship, the cult of the absolute or totalitarian state and the glorification of war.

We first fought... in the name of religion, then Communism, and now in the name of drugs and terrorism. Our excuses for global domination always change.

In the 1930s one was aware of two great evils - mass unemployment and the threat of war.

Under the ominous shadow which the second World War and its attendant circumstances have cast on the world, peace has become as essential to civilized existence as the air we breathe is to life itself.

Then, after the war it was impossible to travel, after so many years of Hitler and Stalin.

We can have a World War, I see absolutely no reason why we shouldn't have a World Party.

In the First World War, there was the sudden passion of nationalism, and the killing took place because of these emotions. But the Soviet case is different, because you had systematic murder, like the Holocaust.

World War II, the atomic bomb, the Cold War, made it hard for Americans to continue their optimism.

Wars can be prevented just as surely as they can be provoked, and we who fail to prevent them, must share the guilt for the dead.

Experience has shown how deeply the seeds of war are planted by economic rivalry and social injustice.

I was brought in touch with developing post World War I ideas in Europe.