Paul Keating Quotes

Britain and America won the last world war. We will win the next world war.

The American Civil War produced carnage that has often been thought reserved for the combination of technological proficiency and inhumanity characteristic of a later time.

In old days nations could collect only portions of their men and resources at a time and dribble them out by degrees. Under modern conditions whole nations could be mobilized at once and their whole life-blood and resources poured out in a torrent. Instead of a few hundreds of thousands of men meeting each other in war, millions would now meet, and modern weapons would multiply manifold the power of destruction. The financial strain and the expenditure of wealth would be incredible. I thought this must be obvious to everyone else, as it seemed obvious to me ; and that, if once it became apparent that we were on the edge, all the Great Powers would call a halt and recoil from the abyss.

The wars of peoples will be more terrible than those of kings.

At a period like the present, when momentous changes are occurring and every hour is preparing new and great events in the political world, when a spirit of war is prevalent in almost every nation with whose affairs the interests of the United States have any connection, unsafe and precarious would be our situation were we to neglect the means of maintaining our just rights.

… a war of the world

I can only tell you this and I used to speak about it all the time, we have a Navy that hasn't been in this position since World War I.

The Second World War claimed tens of millions of victims.

Four years of world war, at a cost in human suffering which our minds are mercifully too limited to imagine, led to the very clear realization that international anarchy must be abandoned if civilization was to survive.

War is the supreme drama of a completely mechanized society.

If we just let our vision of the world go forth, and we embrace it entirely, and we don't try to piece together clever diplomacy but just wage a total war, our children will sing great songs about us years from now.

I vividly remember the stories my grandfather told me about the carnage of the First World War, which people tend to forget was one of the worst massacres in human history.

Culturally, the First World War is the war that stands in for other wars.

World War III was the Cold War between the US and the Soviet Union. Like the Cold War, this "world war" against militant Islam is, in fact, global;... will involve a mixture of violent and nonviolent efforts;... will require mobilization of skill, expertise and resources, if not of vast numbers of soldiers;... may go on for a long time; and... has ideological roots. Afghanistan is just one front in World War IV.

Let us first render ourselves popular by mighty deeds, and afterwards we will speak of peace and clemency. In the disputes of others let us always put ourselves on the side of the stronger. If we would become rich in men and cattle, we cannot help making enemies; but they will not roar for ever.

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

I do not know how the Third World War will be fought, but I can tell you what they will use in the Fourth—rocks!

The duration and severity of war has always increased with an increase in state power. Larger states, far from providing peace, merely provide larger wars, having more human and material resources to pour into them.

Do not play with fire in Indonesia … let not the lack of understanding by America lead to a third world war.

[Describing World War I:] A short cleansing thunderstorm.

No nation can go to war now against another nation without going to war against all humanity. The world has become a family

Throughout history, the chief arbiter of the influence of nations and cultures has been war.

I’m not starting World War III for you.

Though the object of being a Great Power is to be able to fight a Great War, the only way of remaining a Great Power is not to fight one.

Every nation is a band of robbers, who prey without restraint, or remorse, on their neighbors.