Wars begin when you will, but they do not end when you please.
The lesson of history is when a war starts every nation will ultimately use whatever weapon it has available. ... Therefore, we must expect that if another war — a serious war — breaks out, we will use nuclear energy in some form.
War is an instrument entirely inefficient toward redressing wrong; and multiplies, instead of indemnifying losses.
The most disadvantageous peace is better than the most just war.
Wars generally do not resolve the problems for which they are fought and therefore... prove ultimately futile.
Wars almost never end the way starters had in mind.
Wars are seldom won as quickly as everyone expects, and almost always create far more problems than they solve
When the political and military levels … want to initiate operational war they want to gain as much public support as possible. So whether they do it deliberately or not, they tend to promise that it will be much better than the way that it really could be. Now when the reality comes true and suddenly the results … are different from the expectations and the promises, then the frustration comes to be a very important factor.
We have known the bitterness of defeat and the exultation of triumph, and from both we have learned there can be no turning back. We must go forward to preserve in peace what we won in war.
The history of England, who has always dealt most harshly with her vanquished foe in the few European wars in which she has taken part in modern times, gives us Germans an idea of the fate in store for us if defeated.
The important thing to remember is war does not progress linearly. The future course of events is going to be very difficult to predict with a high degree of precision.
Since 1945, no one in the U.S. military has liked the end result of the military conflicts we've been in: Vietnam, Korea, certainly Iraq, and probably Afghanistan. But in a democracy, you salute.
If wars were won by superior technology alone, the United States would not have been vanquished in Vietnam or waylaid in Afghanistan.
It's not right to say that our loss in Vietnam turned out to be a gain. But lessons were learned. And they were the right lessons.
There's not an emperor or artist out there I won't read a medical history of, even if - or especially if - the author uses that medical history to spin out wild counterfactuals about how wars or masterpieces might have turned out differently. They're like delicious philosophical mints to roll around inside your mouth, just to see how they taste.
The sustaining populace, on whose behalf wars are prosecuted, must be sufficiently convinced that its cause is just, that its wars are winnable and that the costs are not disproportionate.
They told me if I voted for Goldwater, he would get us into a war in Vietnam. Well, I voted for Goldwater and that's what happened.
[Nuclear war]... may not be desirable.
Consequences of linear thinking in Afghanistan and Iraq included overestimating indigenous forces' capabilities, underestimating the enemy, and the associated expectation that the coalition could soon reduce force levels and shift to an exclusively advisory effort.
Wars the United States starts do not necessarily end when and how it wants them to.
That’s the attractive thing about war,” said Rosewater. “Absolutely everybody gets a little something.
War is, at first, the hope that one will be better off; next, the expectation that the other fellow will be worse off; then, the satisfaction that he isn't any better off; and, finally, the surprise at everyone's being worse off.
It is hard as an American to support the failure of American military operations in Iraq. Such failure will bring with it the death and wounding of many American service members, and many more Iraqis.
For America, 1812 became the war in which it had finally gained its independence. For Britain, 1812 became the skirmish it had contained, while winning the real war against its greatest nemesis, Napoleon.
The most expensive thing in the world is a second-best military establishment, good but not good enough to win.
