Gerard Araud Quotes

The unknown is the governing condition of war.

Nowhere are our calculations more frequently upset than in war.

The war is not planned. I don't believe that any responsible person plans it. But it's thought as possible.

I do not like wars. They have uncertain outcomes.

War is the realm of uncertainty; three quarters of the factors on which action is based are wrapped in a fog of greater or lesser uncertainty.

We are muddled into war.

There is nothing so subject to the inconstancy of fortune as war.

Wars: You know how you start, but you never know how you end.

Haven’t we learned that when you go to war, the outcome is unpredictable.

War is the realm of uncertainty; three-quarters of the factors on which action in war is based are wrapped in a fog of greater or lesser uncertainty. ... war is the realm of chance. No other human activity gives it greater scope; no other has such incessant and varied dealings with this intruder. Chance makes everything more uncertain and interferes with the whole course of events.

We wanted this war and now we've got it, and I'm not sure that we know what to do with it.

Whoever lights the torch of war in Europe can wish for nothing but chaos.

Going to war against Iran - whether one calls such a move 'surgical' or 'total' - would be an extremely serious undertaking; with worldwide economic, military, diplomatic and human ramifications in both the short- and the long-term.

War is the province of danger.

It will no longer be war that is the continuation of politics by other means, it will be what I have dubbed 'the integral accident' that is the continuation of politics by other means.

But I'm the sort of person who, if certain structures topple, it could all go horribly wrong.

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

The events of war are subject to great uncertainty.

We're not going to spread democracy at the business end of a M16 held by a 23 year old Marine.

What the hell is going on? I thought we were winning the war.

History will show that perhaps we did not think through the aftermath of the fall of Baghdad. But here we are.

No man could know whether war might not at any moment break out.

There is no area where experience matters more than in war and diplomacy.

Predicting the number of casualties is an impossibility.

My home policy? I wage war. My foreign policy? I wage war. Always, everywhere, I wage war.