Margaret MacMillan Quotes

At the Imperial Conference on December 1, it was decided to make war against England and the United States.

The stark and inescapable fact is that today we cannot defend our society by war since total war is total destruction, and if war is used as an instrument of policy, eventually we will have total war.

We should have known better after the first war.

A great country cannot half-make war. From the moment it [Great Britain] decided to do so at sea, it was inescapably fated to do so also on land.

Now that their long war was over, they could get on with the proper concern of all civilised nations, which is to prepare for the next one.

Domestic policy can only defeat us; foreign policy can kill us.

War, we are told, shapes character; it resolves the major questions of international politics, consolidates nations, and indeed, constitutes the principal factor in the progress of civilization through its successive stages.

When we analyze this war in a materialistic way and ask when is it going to end and who will be the winner and the loser, it means that we do not see the endgame.

War should be the only study of a prince. He should consider peace only as a breathing-time, which gives him leisure to contrive, and furnishes as ability to execute, military plans.

Let him who desires peace prepare for war.

The great wars of the 20th Century made it into the worst Century ever.

Politics are very much like war. We may even have to use poison gas at times.

War is the trade of Kings.

In all history there is no war which was not hatched by the governments, the governments alone, independent of the interests of the people, to whom war is always pernicious even when successful.

The history of our civilization has been one of intermittent war.

The World War broke out with such elemental violence, and with such resort to all means for leading or misleading public opinion, that no time was available for reflection and consideration.

The main force used in the evolving world of humanity has hitherto been applied in the form of war.

Why four great powers should fight over Serbia no fellow can understand.

Well, I asked him who would start the war first.

What a country calls its vital... interests are not things that help its people live, but things that help it make war.

People who start wars never know exactly how they will turn out.

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

Our country has never started a war. Our sole objective is deterrence, the strength and capability it takes to prevent war.

Word War III is about to start and we cannot change the position on Vietnam.

I was not a conscientious objector. I was a political objector. I believed that finance and commercial rivalry had led to war.