External Threats Quotes

In vain do they worship peace at home, who cannot defend themselves against foreigners.

We often give our enemies the means of our own destruction

We need to defend against weaknesses within and enemies without, using the tools of civil society and hard power. We don't have to pick one over the other.

A thousand enemies outside the house are better than one within. Arab proverb

Against the insidious wiles of foreign influence . . . the jealousy of a free people ought to be constantly awake.

We are the most powerful nation on earth. No external power, no terrorist organization, can defeat us. But we can defeat ourselves by getting caught in a quagmire.

I wish for an America no less alert in guarding against dangers from within than it is watchful against enemies from without.

The Soviet Union has indeed been our greatest menace — not so much because of what it has done, but because of the excuses it has provided us for our own failures.

nations decay from within more often than they surrender to outward assault.

Upon the whole, if we allow two thirds of the people to have been with us in the revolution, is not the allowance ample? Are not two thirds of the nation now with the administration? Divided we have ever been, and ever must be. Two thirds always had and will have more difficulty to struggle with the one third than with all our foreign enemies.

If you look at great human civilizations, from the Roman Empire to the Soviet Union, you will see that most do not fail simply due to external threats but because of internal weakness, corruption, or a failure to manifest the values and ideals they espouse.

Safety from external danger is the most powerful director of national conduct.

The first duty of any government is to protect its citizens, whether the threat is a domestic one or from abroad.

Dictators must have enemies. They must have internal enemies to justify their secret police and external enemies to justify their military forces.

All governments need enemies. How else to justify their existence?

Foreign influence is truly the Grecian horse to a republic. We cannot be too careful to exclude its influence.

Many people opposed the very institution of the militia. Temperance proponents objected to the excessive drinking that accompanied musters; peace advocates hated the militarism, no matter how pathetic; merchants and farmers resented the lost time and taxes; labor groups resented the expense of buying guns, flints, and ammunition; others found no utility in the institution now that the United States was not threatened by any external foe. Even in the absence of foreign enemies, some opponents feared that the existence of the militia could encourage a democratic government to declare an unnecessary war.

We will not stand idly by while any entity - be it a foreign power or corporation - seeks to criminally or unfairly undermine our country's place in the world.

Perhaps it is a fault of the species who thrive in peace, mutual help, aspirations for more of the same -- to forget that outside these borders dwell very different types of mind, feeding on different fuel.

If we remain one people, under an efficient government, the period is not far off when we may defy material injury from external annoyance; when we may take such an attitude as will cause the neutrality we may at any time resolve upon to be scrupulously respected; when belligerent nations, under the impossibility of making acquisitions upon us, will not lightly hazard the giving us provocation; when we may choose peace or war, as our interest, guided by justice, shall counsel.

Looking back upon the memories of the last 50 years. I perceive how calamities from within and aggression from without have come upon us in relentless succession, and that my life had never engaged a moment's respite from anxiety.

The whole world is nothing but a noise, as hot as the inside of a tiger's mouth. They call it civilization - that is a lie! But some day you may have to go out, someone will try to take you out, and you will not understand them or what they are saying, unless you understand nothing, absolutely nothing, then you will manage.

This always confuses liberals, that conservatives like the military and don't like the bureaucracy. That's because the military has their guns pointed out and the bureaucracy has them pointed in.

We are surrounded by numerous Indian nations, each more powerful than ourselves.

I now understand that foreigners who interfere in our internal affairs will bring us nothing but harm