Political Warfare Quotes

Thus the jihad may be regarded as Islam’s instrument for carrying out its ultimate objective by turning all people into believers …. The universality of Islam, in its all embracing creed, is imposed on the believers as a continuous process of warfare, psychological and political if not strictly military.

A coalition of groups is waging a massive propaganda campaign against the president of the United States. an all-out attack. Their aim is total victory for themselves and total defeat for him.

We fought a military war; our opponents fought a political one. We sought physical attrition; our opponents aimed for our psychological exhaustion. In the process we lost sight of one of the cardinal maxims of guerrilla war: the guerrilla wins if he does not lose. The conventional army loses if it does not win. The North Vietnamese used their armed forces the way a bull-fighter uses his cape to keep us lunging in areas of marginal political importance.

It's true, too, that I'm tired of using books as political bullets and grenades. Books are too precious and wonderful to be used for long in such a fashion.

In war you can only be killed once, but in politics many times.

When, today, you get into an argument about whether "we" ought to raise the minimum wage, you're executing adaptations for an ancestral environment where being on the wrong side of the argument could get you killed... Politics is an extension of war by other means. Arguments are soldiers. Once you know which side you're on, you must support all arguments of that side, and attack all arguments that appear to favor the enemy side; otherwise it's like stabbing your soldiers in the back — providing aid and comfort to the enemy.

Running for president is a contact sport.

Sometimes in politics one must duel with skunks, but no one should be fool enough to let the skunks choose the weapons.

Being in permanent campaign mode allows you to never stop the process of destroying your opponents.

Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.

William R. Polk discusses the Spanish guerrilla war against Napoleon [ Bonaparte] and other cases where the conflict turns into a political war, and the invader, who usually has overwhelming power, loses because they can't fight the political war.

Politicians wage broad wars on medicine to claim thin strips of ideological terrain. This would be good political theater if there weren't so many human victims.

The Sangh Parivar, against which I had been waging a war, misled the people. My opponents used the Election Commission and the bureaucracy to win a political battle.

We fought a military war; our opponents fought a political one… The North Vietnamese used their armed forces the way a bull-fighter uses his cape — to keep us lunging in areas of marginal political importance.

American politics’ many military metaphors—the standard-bearer rallied the troops, telling the rank-and-file that this was a do-or-die campaign—testified to this intensity of party activity, not just party affiliation.

The universalism of Islam, in its all-embracing creed, is imposed on the believers as a continuous process of warfare, psychological and political, if not strictly military. . . . The Jihad, accordingly, may be stated as a doctrine of a permanent state of war, not continuous fighting.

A political war can be fought from anywhere.

... a secret weapon of a foreign ideology.

In political warfare, you do not fight to prevail in an argument, but to destroy the enemy's fighting ability.

We've gotten into this - this mindset of fighting politically correct wars. There is no such thing as a politically correct war. The left, of course, will say Carson doesn't believe in the Geneva Convention, Carson doesn't believe in fighting stupid wars. And - and what we have to remember is we want to utilize the tremendous intellect that we have in the military to win wars.

We are in a war of a peculiar nature. It is not with an ordinary community, which is hostile or friendly as passion or as interest may veer about: not with a state which makes war through wantonness, and abandons it through lassitude. We are at war with a system, which by its essence, is inimical to all other governments, and which makes peace or war, as peace and war may best contribute to their subversion. It is with an armed doctrine that we are at war. It has, by its essence, a faction of opinion, and of interest, and of enthusiasm, in every country.

True partisans draft legislation that gives themselves everything and their enemies nothing. They love bills that repulse and even disgust the other side. Today's politics have become an all-or-nothing, black-or-white, zero-sum game - it's not a contact sport but a blood sport.

I have said that propaganda, misinformation, and disinformation have always been part of political warfare. Social media and other new platforms have given it a new life and reach through which the fake news phenomenon can reach everywhere.

These [food] surpluses can be made a far more potent means of combating the spread of Communism than the hydrogen bomb.

It's true that if you advise politicians on economic policy in the U.S. today, you spend your time in a cross between inquiry and combat. You are always on the periphery of harsh partisan warfare that has nothing to do with substance.