Donald Kagan Quotes

Wars produce warlike societies, which in turn make the world more dangerous for other societies, which are thus recruited into being war-prone themselves.

Today, the world is so small and so interdependent that the concept of war has become anachronistic, an outmoded approach. As a rule, we always talk about reform and changes. Among the old traditions, there are many aspects that are either ill-suited to our present reality or are counterproductive due to their shortsightedness. These, we have consigned to the dustbin of history. War too should be relegated to the dustbin of history.

the issue of war or peace is an issue that concerns not only experts on Foreign Affairs but every citizen of the United States.

If men do not now succeed in abolishing war, civilization and mankind are doomed.

the insight that peace is the end of war, and that therefore a war is the preparation for peace, is at least as old as Aristotle, and the pretense that the aim of an armament race is to guard the peace is even older, namely as old as the discovery of propaganda lies.

To discover a system for the avoidance of war is a vital need of our civilisation.

The best missile defense system of all would be a just and lasting peace.

Isn't it strange how the leaders of nations can talk so eloquently about peace while they prepare for war? ... There is no way to make peace while preparing for war.

I wonder what I can do about war. Is it the destiny of human kind to eventually wipe ourselves out with these weapons of mass destruction? Are we stupid to think that we can control them?

Discussions without end have been devoted to the subject of peace, and the efforts to obtain a general and lasting peace have been frequent through many years of world history.

Wars--and what is war except crime on a mass scale?--destroy rather than produce. The vandal that destroys a window causes not only the owner to bear the costs of replacing it, but costs those whom he planned on using that money to buy from. The same goes for wars. The warlords--of war and peace--destroyed so much, not only what existed, but all those new things that could have existed, if only individuals were left in peace.

War is a curtain of dense black fabric across all the hopes and kindliness of mankind. Yet always it has let through some gleams of light, and not--I am not dreaming--it grows threadbare, and here and there and at a thousand points the light is breaking through.

The end of the Cold War removed the immediate causes of whole destruction but not the threat contained in our knowledge. We must tame this knowledge with the ideals of justice, caring, and compassion summoned from our common human spiritual and moral heritage, if we are to live in peace and serenity in the twenty-first century.

Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants. We know more about war that we know about peace, more about killing that we know about living.

The choice, however, is as clear now for nations as it was once for the individual: peace or extinction.

We have to acknowledge peace is in danger and mankind still has not realised the priority to be given to world dialogue versus armed contradiction and bloodshed.

We are here to make a choice between the quick and the dead.... We must elect World Peace or World Destruction.

If Western civilization is to be saved from another relapse into the Dark Ages, it must be saved at the peace table.

Suppose another war on a huge scale is threatened, how can it be averted by recognizing and patching up treaties with a Power which makes not the least secret--and the frankness of the actual Soviet leaders we must admit--of its desire and intention to smash our whole system of civilization, including Christianity.

For a long time, perhaps too long, we believed that the world around us would become more and more peaceful, and the order more stable.

Warned by the disaster of the last great war, the statesmen of all nations have been taking measures to prevent the return of another such calamity.

We seek peace, knowing that peace is the climate of freedom. And now, as in no other age, we seek it because we have been warned, by the power of modern weapons, that peace may be the only climate possible for human life itself.

Wars do not end wars any more than an extraordinarily large conflagration does away with the fire hazard.

If civilization has an opposite, it is war.

The threat of a world war is no more.