Henry Adams Quotes

The military don't start wars. Politicians start wars.

War is regarded as nothing but the continuation of state policy with other means.

We’re not declaring war. We haven’t declared war since the Second World War. We’re going to war.

We shall certainly not drift into war, but go to war if we do, because we intend it and have a purpose we mean to accomplish.

War is one of the constants of history, and it has not diminished with civilization or democracy. In the last 3,421 years of recorded history only 268 have seen no war.

induce me to aid them in their unholy and execrable design of manufacturing a war with Mexico.

We can’t always pick and choose which conflicts were going to get into.

But it cannot follow that because weapons and troops are now being deployed we are bound to go to war.

The object of war is victory; that of victory is conquest; and that of conquest preservation.

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 us recollect that peace or war will not always be left to our option; that however moderate or unambitious we may be, we cannot count upon the moderation, or hope to extinguish the ambition of others.

There have been only 268 of the past 3,421 years free of war.

Great is the guilt of an unnecessary war.

Whatever efforts for peace President Gorbachev had in mind, they were pretty substantially undercut very swiftly by Saddam Hussein.

A war is a horrible thing, but it's also a unifier of countries.

If Japan had been near to either England or France, war would have broken out long ago.

Russia has been entirely proportionate in its military response to Georgia's attack on Russian citizens and peacekeepers.

All war represents a failure of diplomacy.

War is a game that is played with a smile. If you can't smile, grin. If you can't grin, keep out of the way till you can.

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

I don't know whether war is an interlude during peace, or peace an interlude during war.

No war is inevitable until it breaks out.

War implies a lack of comprehension of mutual national interests; it means the undermining and even the end of culture.

You can no more win a war than you can win an earthquake.

Politics is war without bloodshed while war is politics with bloodshed.