Stephen Ambrose Quotes

You can’t have peace without a war.

We should wage war not to win war, but to win peace.

I have to believe in the possibility of peace, because the alternative is to accept the inevitability of continual war, and of always living in fear. It doesn't have to be that way. However, there are no simple solutions, and I am not the possessor of a magic formula for peace. All I can say is that for peace to succeed it requires perseverance, patience, humility, compromise, and commitment, from all parties.

Winning the peace is harder than winning the war.

We have won the war. Now we have to win the peace, and it may be more difficult.

At the beginning of this century, people never questioned the effectiveness of war, never thought there could be real peace. Now, people are tired of war and see it as ineffective in solving anything.

War's Legitimate Object Is More Perfect Peace.

Peace need not be impracticable, and war need not be inevitable.

Peace is not passive, it is active. Peace is not appeasement, it is strength. Peace does not 'happen,' it requires work.

I have been apt to think that there has never been, nor ever will be, any such thing as a good war, or a bad peace.

Those who love peace must learn to organize as effectively as those who love war.

War is not its own end, except in some catastrophic slide into absolute damnation. It's peace that's wanted. Some better peace than the one you started with.

There are times for making war and times for making peace.

We have agreed that peace can be achieved with the removal of the occupation and the end of aggression.

Unlike the talent for war, the ability to make peace has always been rare.

When we seek reconciliation with our enemies, it is commonly out of a desire to better our own condition, a being harassed and tired out with a state of war, and a fear of some ill accident which we are willing to prevent.

Peace is not sought in order to provoke war, but war is waged in order to attain peace.

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

From time immemorial, people have talked about peace without achieving it. Do we simply lack enough experience? Though we talk peace, we wage war. Sometimes we even wage war in the name of peace. . . . War may be too much a part of history to be eliminated—ever.

To make peace, it is necessary to know how to make war.

I want that there should be a belief, a faith in the possibility of removing mountains to the side of right. If we believe that war is wrong, as everyone must, then we ought to believe that by proper efforts on our part, it may be done away with.

If peace is equated simply with the absence of war, it can become abject pacifism that turns the world over to the most ruthless.

I am a man of peace. I believe in peace. But I do not want peace at any price.

Peace is impossible, war is improbable.

One of the most persistent ambiguities that we face is that everybody talks about peace as a goal. However, it does not take sharpest-eyed sophistication to discern that while everbody talks about peace, peace has become practically nobody's business among the power-wielders. Many men cry Peace! Peace! but they refuse to do the things that make for peace.