Robert M. La Follette Quotes

War kills men, and men deplore the loss; but war also crushes bad principles and tyrants, and so saves societies.

I'd been to a number of war zones before in my life, but I had never been in one as terrifying as Chechnya.

A peace that depends on fear is nothing but a suppressed war.

Beware lest in your anxiety to avoid war you obtain a master.

What right have the rulers of nations to unsheath the sword of destruction, and to let loose the demons of desolation upon mankind, whenever caprice or pride, ambition or avarice, shall prescribe?

War and democracy have never been happy bedfellows…. War has always threatened democracy.

Anyone who clings to the historically untrue and thoroughly immoral doctrine that violence never solves anything, I would advise to conjure up the ghosts of Napoleon Bonaparte and the Duke of Wellington and let them debate it. The Ghost of Hitler could referee, and the jury might well be the Dodo, the Great Auk, and the Passenger Pigeon. Violence, naked force, has settled more disputes in history than has any other factor, and the contrary opinion is wishful thinking at its worst. Breeds that forget this basic truth have always paid for it with their lives and freedoms.

I hated the bangs in the war: I always felt a silent war would be more tolerable.

There was nothing there but black water and American fire power.

We all want peace. Unfortunately, there are times when peace must be defended by fighting terror and tyranny.

We know that dictators are quick to choose aggression, while free nations strive to resolve differences in peace.

It is heroic to prepare for war with a tyrant power. Patriots will always win the admiration of mankind for daring to meet the bloodshed of battle for their country's liberty. But the patriot who is willing to go to that sacrifice will be the first to condemn the aimless and secret shedding of blood in time of peace.

It is not power that corrupts but fear. Fear of losing power corrupts those who wield it and fear of the scourge of power corrupts those who are subject to it.

The course of this conflict is not known, yet its outcome is certain. Freedom and fear, justice and cruelty, have always been at war, and we know that God is not neutral between them.

I think that many people in history who had power were bumped off because they had power.

War - the ordinary man's most convenient means of escaping from the ordinary.

The world is ruled by violence, or at least the imminent threat of violence. It always has been.

Remember that politics, colonialism, imperialism and war also originate in the human brain.

I hate war... for the dictatorships it puts in the place of democracies, and for the starvation that stalks after it.

The war begins to make itself felt very near to us.

The terrorists are fighting freedom with all their cunning and cruelty because freedom is their greatest fear - and they should be afraid, because freedom is on the march.

Nothing like war reveals man in the same strength—their courage, their stupidity, their fears, their hopes, their ugliness ….

War is the second worst activity of mankind, the worst being acquiescence in slavery.

War is an act of force to compel our enemy to do our will.

Suspect power more than vice.