Forces Forces War Quotes & Sayings

It would have been easier to fight alone with inadequate forces than to have to accept ... responsibility for our ally's lack of fighting qualities and dubious loyalty. — Albert Kesselring

The M-1 is the best tank in the world, if you can get it to the war in time, if you have a Saddam Hussein who'll give you seven months to move your forces in. — Ralph Peters

America has joined forces with the Allied Powers, and what we have of blood and treasure are yours. Therefore it is that with loving pride we drape the colors in tribute of respect to this citizen of your great republic. And here and now, in the presence of the illustrious dead, we pledge our hearts and our honor in carrying this war to a successful issue. Lafayette, we are here. — Charles E. Stanton

The 2.4 million bright, brave, incredibly fit and remarkably talented young Americans who have served in our armed forces since we were attacked on 9-11-01 are all volunteers. As General Petraeus put it during a conversation we had in Afghanistan, 'They all came or stayed, knowing they were going to war.' For more than a decade, these patriots and their loved ones have made extraordinary sacrifices for this country. They embody the classical definition of heroes: those who put themselves at risk for the benefit of others. — Oliver North

The gigantic catastrophes that threaten us today are not elemental happenings of a physical or biological order, but psychic events. To a quite terrifying degree we are threatened by wars and revolutions which are nothing other than psychic epidemics. At any moment several million human beings may be smitten with a new madness, and then we shall have another world war or devastating revolution. Instead of being at the mercy of wild beasts, earthquakes, landslides, and inundations, modern man is battered by the elemental forces of his own psyche. — Carl Jung

Historically, and notably in the 1905 Russo-Japanese war, the Japanese army's conduct towards defeated enemies had been characterised by mercy. The ruling Tokyo "control group" changed all that, instilling a culture of ruthlessness indistinguishable from barbarism into its armed forces; in 1934 the Ministry of War published a pamphlet which ennobled conflict as "the father of creation and mother of culture. Rivalry for supremacy does for the state what struggle against adversity does for the individual." The Allies now began to discover the significance of this merciless vision for those who fell into enemy hands. Before — Max Hastings

There,to survive,they will no doubt readapt,drawing upon the resilence and courage they displayed during the Vietnam War to perserve harmony with nature and cosmic forces. There they will live with unflagging dignity,working unceasingly from day to day to salvalge the remaining pieces of their shattered world. — Gerald Hickey

There's a kind of theology at work here. The bombs are a kind of god. As his power grows, our fear naturally increases. I get as apprehensive as anyone else, maybe more so. We have too many bombs. They have too many bombs. There's a kind of theology of fear that comes out of this. We begin to capitulate to the overwhelming presence. It's so powerful. It dwarfs us so much. We say let the god have his way. He's so much more powerful than we are. Let it happen, whatever he ordains. It used to be that the gods punished men by using the forces of nature against them or by arousing them to take up their weapons and destroy each other. Now god is the force of nature itself, the fusion of tritium and deuterium. Now he's the weapon. So maybe this time we went too far in creating a being of omnipotent power. All this hardware. Fantastic stockpiles of hardware. The big danger is that we'll surrender to the sense of inevitability and start flinging mud all over the planet. — Don DeLillo

Security Division of NASA: Headed by Werner von Braun. Nazi headquarters were moved to the Caribbean after World War II. The National Security Council, patterned after Hitler's intelligence apparat, provided the framework inside the White House for political assassinations, Watergate "Plumbers" and election manipulations. Agents from military intelligence and the armed forces were concealed inside defense projects. The Syndicate worked with the Defense Industrial Security Command. Robert Sheridan, appointed by George McGovern to "investigate Watergate for the Democrats," was the direct liaison to departments involved in the Kennedy assassination. The Watergate parallels are too great to not suspect a continuous working of this operation.28 — Mae Brussell

female soldiers n.
males with female features

During the war in the Persian Gulf, the Saudi government rejected the idea of female soldiers coming to their defense (women make up one-tenth of the U.S. forces), so it designated the women soldiers "males with female features. — William D. Lutz

It was as if God had decreed this characterless engagement of brainless forces as his answer to the human presumption. — E.L. Doctorow

The destruction of the enemy's armed forces is but a means
and not necessarily an inevitable or infallible one
to the attainment of the real objective. The object of war is not to destroy the enemy's tanks but to destroy his will. — Liddell Hart

War, I have always said, forces men to change their standards, regardless of whether their country has won or lost. Poetics and philosophies disintegrate "when the trees fall and the walls collapse ". At the point when continuity was interrupted by the first nuclear explosion, it would have been too easy to recover the formal sediment which linked us with an age of poetic decorum, of a preoccupation with poetic sounds. After the turbulence of death, moral principles and even religious proofs are called into question. Men of letters who cling to the private successes of their petty aesthetics shut themselves off from poetry's restless presence. From the night, his solitude, the poet finds day and starts a diary that is lethal to the inert. The dark landscape yields a dialogue. The politician and the mediocre poets with their armour of symbols and mystic purities pretend to ignore the real poet. It is a story which repeats itself like the cock's crow; indeed, like the cock's third crow. — Salvatore Quasimodo

War is a grim, cruel business, a business justified only as a means of sustaining the forces of good against those of evil. — Dwight D. Eisenhower

We are in the process of trying to liberate that country. And at the moment where the war ends and the coalition forces occupy the areas where those capabilities - chemical and biological weapons - are likely to be, to the extent they haven't been moved out of the country, it obviously is important to find them. — Donald Rumsfeld

The bloody solution of the crisis, the effort for the destruction of the enemy's forces, is the first-born son of war. — Carl Von Clausewitz

Long before 9/11 and the war in Iraq, a lot of people hated the United States and the West. But what the Iraqi war seems to have done, at least in ... I mean, I'm just reporting what I see from the people on the ground, is that it has silenced many pro-American forces in the Muslim world. — Yaroslav Trofimov

Desert Storm was a war which involved the massive use of air power and a victory achieved by the U.S. and multinational air force units. It was also the first war in history in which air power was used to defeat ground forces. — Merrill McPeak

We have faith that future generations will know that here, in the middle of the twentieth century, there came a time when men of good will found a way to unite, and produce, and fight to destroy the forces of ignorance, and intolerance, and slavery, and war. — Franklin D. Roosevelt

Why should we, the brains of the military, have so much anxiety about our contribution to the war that we feel we have to ape Special Forces guys?
To Fitzgerald commandos were just glorified jocks - pitchers and quarterbacks from suburban high schools who traded baseballs for bullets. There's no doubt they had skills. They could slither right up to the enemy on their stomachs survive on worms for days and plunk a target with a piece of lead from a mile away. All very impressive. But they couldn't speak Arabic or juggle a million intelligence requirements and 703 follow-up questions from the community while sitting three feet away from some Islamic firebrand who has no reason to talk.
"Do you think those Special Forces guys are wracked with Interrogator envy?" Fitzgerald would say. "You think they're over there in their special sunglasses polishing their special weapons saying 'man if only I could do some hot-shit interrogations and write some hot-shit reports? — Chris Mackey

In November 2004, U.S. occupation forces launched their second major attack on the city of Falluja. The press reported major war crimes instantly, with approval. — Noam Chomsky

Here's a little thought experiment. Imagine that, on September 11, 2001, when the Twin Towers came down, the President of the United States was not George W. Bush, but Ann Coulter. What would have happened then? On September 12, President Coulter would have ordered the US military forces to drop 35 nuclear bombs throughout the Middle East, killing all of our actual and potential enemy combatants, and their wives and children. On September 13, the war would have been over and won, without a single American life lost. — Satoshi Kanazawa

War is party-blind. It doesn't care who is in the Oval Office. The forces that drive us to war don't care whether it's Republican, Democrat, or other. The fact is, these parties are prey to special interests. That is something Eisenhower was afraid of. — Eugene Jarecki

The NATO forces will, to the extent that they have capacity, assist the war crimes tribunal. — Warren Christopher

I was brought up in a very naval, military, and conservative background. My father and his friends had very typical opinions of the British middle class - lower-middle class actually - after the war. My father broke into the middle class by joining the navy. I was the first member of my family ever to go to private school or even to university. So, the armed forces had been upward mobility for him. — Christopher Hitchens

The metaphor of Moral Strength sees the world in terms of a war of good against the forces of evil, which must be fought ruthlessly. Ruthless behavior in the name of the good fight is thus seen as justified. Moreover, the metaphor entails that one cannot respect the views of one's adversary: evil does not deserve respect, it deserves to be attacked! The — George Lakoff

Providence The will of God acting together with human will. But he respects our will absolutely. He does not force. Love never forces. It only invites ... There is a war between good and — Michael O'Brien

The United States initially poured money and arms into Pakistan in the hope of building a major fighting force that could assist in defending Asia against communism. Pakistan repeatedly failed to live up to its promises to provide troops for any of the wars the United States fought against communist forces, instead using American weapons in its wars with India. — Husain Haqqani

I see on a immense scale, and as clearly as in a demonstration in a laboratory, that good comes out of evil; that the impartiality of the Nature Providence is best; that we are made strong by what we overcome; that man is man because he is as free to do evil as to do good; that life is as free to develop hostile forms as to develop friendly; that power waits upon him who earns it; that disease, wars, the unloosened, devastating elemental forces have each and all played their part in developing and hardening man and giving him the heroic fiber. — John Burroughs

As he grew older, which was mostly in my absence, my firstborn son, Alexander, became ever more humorous and courageous. There came a time, as the confrontation with the enemies of our civilization became more acute, when he sent off various applications to enlist in the armed forces. I didn't want to be involved in this decision either way, especially since I was being regularly taunted for not having 'sent' any of my children to fight in the wars of resistance that I supported. (As if I could 'send' anybody, let alone a grown-up and tough and smart young man: what moral imbeciles the 'anti-war' people have become.) — Christopher Hitchens

But the Viet-Minh had had about ten months in which to establish their administration, train their forces with Japanese and American weapons (and Japanese and Chinese instructors), and kill or terrorize into submission the genuine Vietnamese nationalists who wanted a Viet-Nam independent from France but equally free of Communist rule. The first round of the war for Indochina already had been lost for the West before it had even begun. — Bernard B. Fall

A natural order is a stable order. There is no chance that gravity will cease to function tomorrow, even if people stop believing in it. In contrast, an imagined order is always in danger of collapse, because it depends upon myths, and myths vanish once people stop believing in them. In order to safeguard an imagined order, continuous and strenuous efforts are imperative. Some of these efforts take the shape of violence and coercion. Armies, police forces, courts and prisons are ceaselessly at work forcing people to act in accordance with the imagined order. If an ancient Babylonian blinded his neighbour, some violence was usually necessary in order to enforce the law of 'an eye for an eye'. When, in 1860, a majority of American citizens concluded that African slaves are human beings and must therefore enjoy the right of liberty, it took a bloody civil war to make the southern states acquiesce. However, — Yuval Noah Harari

It was apparent that both the Wazirs and the Mahsuds were building up a large lashkar (a gathering of hostile forces); the numbers were reported as about 1,000 armed men. This was the first occasion that I heard the word 'Jihud' mentioned; there are a number of interpretations given to it; in its simplest form it could be a holy war declared by Muslims on the unbelievers of Islam. — Michael Lowry

The savants will write excellent volumes. There will be laureates. But wars will continue just the same until the forces of the circumstances render them impossible. — Alfred Nobel

Look at the two of us, barely out of childhood and already we're too old-fashioned for this changing world. Is it possible to be born old? Because I certainly feel it sometimes. How can we hope to stand against unstoppable progress; how can we possibly win a war against the forces of science?"
Oskan snorted.
"Which question do you want me to answer first? Born old? Yes, right now I feel ninety. And as for the rest, we're not fighting progress or science, they're both ideas that belong to people. Ideas that should help us to understand the beauty of our world and improve the lives of everything that lives in it. But the Empire has kidnapped them, and progress of its sort means sweeping aside everything that isn't new, whether good or bad. And to the Empire science is just a means of creating more efficient ways of killing people. — Stuart Hill

Part of this myth related to assertions about the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) - assertions promoted by liberal Zionists in both the US and Israel and shared with the rest of the political forces in Israel. The allegation is that the PLO - inside and outside of Palestine - was conducting a war of terror for the sake of terror. Unfortunately, this demonization is still very prevalent in the West and has been accentuated after 2001 by the attempt to equate Islam, terrorism, and Palestine. — Noam Chomsky

It's hard to conceive that it would take more forces to provide stability in post-Saddam Iraq than it would take to conduct the war itself and secure the surrender of Saddam's security forces and his army. Hard to imagine. — Paul Wolfowitz

It is no coincidence that when the thugs tried to wrest control over Grenada, there were 30 Soviet advisors and hundreds of Cuban military and paramilitary forces on the island. — Ronald Reagan

Not only does the Charter Organization not prevent future wars, but it makes it practically certain that we shall have future wars, and as to such wars it takes from us the power to declare them, to choose the side on which we shall fight, to determine what forces and military equipment we shall use in the war, and to control and command our sons who do the fighting. — J. Reuben Clark

Likewise, Humanities Computing is the creative result of failure on the part of the manufacturers of early computers to produce operational machines in time to be used during the Second World War (or, one can argue, of failure on the part of the allied forces to make the war last longer). — Melissa Terras

We salute our veterans of Pearl Harbor and World War II, whose sacrifices saved democracy during a dark hour. In their memory, a new generation of our Armed Forces goes forward against new enemies in a new era. Once again, we pledge to defend freedom, secure our homeland, and advance peace around the world. Americans have been tested before, and our Nation will triumph again. — George W. Bush

So our own actions sometimes have undermined our safety, in our efforts to fight terrorism. The only way this can work is if we are aligned with liberals, with moderate Muslim forces. But if our war on terrorism is seen - as it is seen by many Muslims - as a war on Islam itself, it's very hard for us to have Muslim alliances, because America and the West have become so toxic. — Yaroslav Trofimov

The lesson taught by the war was clear: to be human is to be small, powerless, and subject to the forces of randomness. — David J. Morris

Death is the enemy. But the enemy has superior forces. Eventually, it wins. And in a war that you cannot win, you don't want a general who fights to the point of total annihilation. You don't want Custer. You want Robert E. Lee, someone who knows how to fight for territory that can be won and how to surrender it when it can't, someone who understands that the damage is greatest if all you do is battle to the bitter end. — Atul Gawande

I will stand off the forces of the entire country here ... and die a resplendent death. — Torii Mototada

When a nation becomes obsessed with the guns of war, it loses its social perspective ... There is something about a war like this that makes people insensitive. It dulls the conscience. It strengthens the forces of reaction, and it brings into being bitterness and hatred and violence. — Martin Luther King Jr.

The very same British and American families who had combined to wreck the Indian textile industry in the promotion of the opium trade [ ... ] combined to make the trade, a valuable source of revenue. In 1864 they joined forces to create causes for war and to promote the terrible War Between the States, also known as the American Civil War. — John Coleman

War is no longer made by simply analyzed economic forces if it ever was. War is made or planned now by individual men, demagogues and dictators who play on the patriotism of their people to mislead them into a belief in the great fallacy of war when all their vaunted reforms have failed to satisfy the people they misrule. — Ernest Hemingway,

Our lives are a battlefield on which is fought a continuous war between the forces that are pledged to confirm our humanity and those determined to dismantle it; those who strive to build a protective wall around it, and those who wish to pull it down; those who seek to mould it and those committed to breaking it up; those who aim to open our eyes, to make us see the light and look to tomorrow [ ... ] and those who wish to lull us into closing our eyes — Ngugi Wa Thiong'o

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. — Henry Kissinger

Few people knew the shadowy history of the Special Operations Group that had operated out of Laos, but the numbers said it all: For every American Special Forces soldier that was lost, the North Vietnamese lost between 100 and 150 troops. The Bear had been a part of one of the most effective killing machines on either side of the war. — Craig Johnson

There doesn't have to be any of that business with one third of the seas turning to blood or anything," said Aziraphale happily. When it came, the voice sounded slightly annoyed. "Why not?" it said. Aziraphale felt an icy pit opening under his enthusiasm, and tried to pretend it wasn't happening. He plunged on: "Well, you can simply make sure that - " "We will win, Aziraphale." "Yes, but - " "The forces of darkness must be beaten. You seem to be under a misapprehension. The point is not to avoid the war, it is to win it. We have been waiting a long time, Aziraphale. — Neil Gaiman

With Thy blessing, we shall prevail over the unholy forces of our enemy. Help us to conquer the apostles of greed and racial arrogances. Lead us to the saving of our country, and with our sister nations into a world unity that will spell a sure peace
a peace invulnerable to the schemings of unworthy men. And a peace that will let all of men live in freedom, reaping the just rewards of their honest toil. — Franklin D. Roosevelt

Sniper is a movie whose politics are so ludicrous and idiotic that under normal circumstances it would be beneath criticism. The only thing that forces us to take it seriously is the extraordinary fact that an almost exactly similar worldview consumed the walnut-sized mind of the president who got us into the war in question. — Matt Taibbi

Talk of imminent threat to our national security through the application of external force is pure nonsense. Our threat is from the insidious forces working from within which have already so drastically altered the character of our free institutions - those institutions we proudly called the American way of life. — Douglas MacArthur

Yesterday, December seventh, 1941, a date which will live in infamy, the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan. We will gain the inevitable triumph, so help us God. — Franklin D. Roosevelt

We are supposed to believe [capitalist ideology] was the champion of freedom and prosperity in the epic struggle called the Cold War. If there was such a champion, might it not have been freedom itself, as realized in the institutional forms of democracy? This is not how the story has been told. We are t believe it was an economic system, capitalism, that arrayed its forces against its opposite, communism, and rescued all we hold dear. Yet in the new era ... [capitalism] has shown itself very ready to devour what we hold dear, if the list can be taken to include culture, education, the environment, and the sciences, as well as the peace and well-being of our fellow citizens. — Marilynne Robinson

Our brave men and women have made many sacrifices in just wars to defeat the forces of evil. We have exported our greatest values: freedom and opportunity, which have lifted millions out of poverty. At home, these values allow Americans to use their God-given potential and make their dreams reality. — Marco Rubio

In the end, no amount of American forces can solve the political differences that lie at the heart of somebody else's civil war. — Barack Obama

A warrior of light respects the main teaching of the I Ching: 'To persevere is favourable.'
He knows that perseverance is not the same thing as insistence. There are
times when battles go on longer than necessary, draining him of strength and
enthusiasm.
At such moments, the warrior thinks: 'A prolonged war finally destroys the
victors too.'
Then he withdraws his forces from the battlefield and allows himself a
respite. He perseveres in his desire, but knows he must wait for the best moment to attack.
A warrior always returns to the fray. He never does so out of stubbornness,
but because he has noticed a change in the weather. — Paulo Coelho

Paradoxically, the timid rumors circulating in Washington in favor of arming Ukraine are creating an incentive for Moscow to escalate the war now, to attain the desired territorial gains before it becomes too costly. Once Ukrainian forces possess, for instance, anti-armor weapons, Russia's advantages decrease and the costs of its intervention increase dramatically. — Anonymous

He concluded that governments were like wars: the reasons and the forces might change, but it was still the same dying over the same soil. — Nick Harkaway

The old leftism had primarily a negative approach - that is, the orientation was towards negating what currently existed. Capitalism was a thing that could be fought more or less on its own terms, you could win terrain (geographical or otherwise), defend it, and take more. The strategic and tactical focus was on what would do most to lead to a defeat of capitalist forces, in whatever form they took - whether a colonial government or a greedy factory owner. This model of conflict is at its most literal in, say, a guerilla war, but it applies to all possible terrains of class struggle. Concessions by capital and established strongholds of working class power, even if reformist or imperfect, were to be leveraged as much as they could towards a further defeat of capitalism. — Anonymous

The Goldschmidts had joined forces with other Rothschild cousins, the Bischoffsheims, to form a banking partnership which financed the North in the American Civil War. — David Icke

And we remember the end of our combat mission and the emergence of a new dawn
the precision of our efforts against al Qaeda in Iraq, the professionalism of the training of Iraqi security forces, and the steady drawdown of our forces. In handing over responsibility to the Iraqis, you preserved the gains of the last four years and made this day possible. — Barack Obama

In the event of any action which clearly threatened Polish independence and which the Polish Government accordingly considered it vital to resist with their national forces, His Majesty's Government would feel themselves bound at once to lend the Polish Government all support in their power. They have given the Polish Government an assurance to this effect. I may add that the French Government have authorized me to make it plain that they stand in the same position in this matter. — Neville Chamberlain

None of the people's wars of the sixties did very well, including the one in Vietnam. Vo Nguyen Giap himself has admitted a loss of 600,000 men between 1965 and 1968 ... Moreover, by about 1970 at least 80% of the day-to-day combat in South Vietnam was being carried on by regular NVA troops ... Genuine black-pajama southern guerrillas had been decimated and amounted to no more than 20% of the communist fighting forces. — Chalmers Johnson

We don't know when the war will end, so we can't continue our journey," he said. "The battles may last for a long time, perhaps even years. There are powerful forces on both sides, and the war is important to both armies. It's not a battle of good against evil. It's a war between forces that are fighting for the balance of power, and, when that type of battle begins, it lasts longer than others - because Allah is on both sides. — Paulo Coelho

When Saddam Hussein's Iraqi forces invaded Kuwait in 1990, I felt America's post-Cold War commitment to national principles and international leadership was on the line. I was dismayed by the wide opposition among my fellow Democrats. To me, their position was wrong. — Joe Lieberman

There are almost no characters in this story, and almost no dramatic confrontations, because most of the people in it are so sick and so much the listless playthings of enormous forces. One of the main effects of war, after all, is that people are discouraged from being characters. — Kurt Vonnegut

Our only president who has died as U.S. commander in chief in war is Franklin Delano Roosevelt - who died of a cerebral hemorrhage or massive stroke on April 12, 1945, only three weeks before the unconditional surrender of the German armed forces he had laid down as implacable Allied policy two years before. — Nigel Hamilton

Successions are explained by historical narratives that indicate the significance of the events and the forces-human and otherwise-which influenced them. While some causal forces operate continuously, others influence the sequence of events only at particular points in time. For example, it makes no sense to say that Peter the Great caused the cold war; he had been dead for centuries before it started, and any direct causal influence would be impossible. However, Peter the Great took actions that set into motion historical events that promoted the unification and modernization of Russia. Without Peter, it is possible that Russia would have developed differently and that the cold war would not have occurred. Peter's actions exerted an influence in this case, but it is not the type of direct, continuous causal influence that most variable-based social science theories rely on. — Marshall Scott Poole

The President is to be commander-in-chief of the army and navy of the United States. In this respect his authority would be nominally the same with that of the king of Great Britain, but in substance much inferior to it. It would amount to nothing more than the supreme command and direction of the land and naval forces, as first general and admiral ... while that of the British king extends to the declaring of war and to the raising and regulating of fleets and armies - all which, by the Constitution under consideration, would appertain to the legislature. — Alexander Hamilton

Their words flitted past, like short sentences typed out on a keyboard, typing away Yosop's past and future. They all said "American troops," but Yosop knew for a fact that the troops had simply been passing through. They were never stationed in Sinchon; they were in a rush to get further north. Both Yosop and his brother Yohan knew for a fact that during those forty-five days, before the arrival of the U.S. troops and after their departure, most of the military strength in the area had consisted of the security forces and the Youth Corps - all Korean. (2007: 99) — Hwang Sok-yong

The US is often the first to call for transparency and integrity in the reporting of other governments. It has never provided transparency or integrity in its reporting on the war in Iraq. It has downplayed the growth of the insurgency and other civil conflicts. It exaggerated progress in the development of Iraqi forces, and has reported meaningless macroecomic figures claiming 'progress' in the face of steadily deteriorating economic conditions for most Iraqis outside the Kurdish security zone, and does so in the face of almost incredible incompetence by USAID and the Corps of Engineers. — Anthony H. Cordesman

We secured peace for our country for one and a half years, as well as an opportunity of preparing our forces for defense if fascist Germany risked attacking our country in defiance of the pact. This was a definite gain to our country and a loss for fascist Germany. — Joseph Stalin

The mother's battle for her child with sickness, with poverty, with war, with all the forces of exploitation and callousness that cheapen human life needs to become a common human battle, waged in love and in the passion for survival. — Adrienne Rich

General George C. Marshall's words, making "sacrifices today in order that we may enjoy security and peace tomorrow" (qtd. in Neumann 1953, 549).9 The claim was either a mistake or a lie, however, because the U.S. government did not need to go to war, not even in the world wars, to preserve its people's essential liberties and their way of life. Neither Kaiser Wilhelm's forces nor Hitler's - and certainly not Japan's - had the capacity to deprive Americans of their liberties, to "take over the country," to "destroy our way of life," or to do anything of the sort. This country has always contained persecuted minorities, and it still does, but since 1789 the only government on earth that has had the power to crush the American people's liberties across the board has been the government of the United States. U.S. participation in World War I was — Robert Higgs

In 1946, Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin had sought to seize Iran's northern provinces by refusing to withdraw Soviet forces that were deployed there during the war. Truman objected, insisting on maintaining Iran's territorial integrity even if it meant rupturing the already frayed U.S. alliance with the Soviets; Stalin backed off. — Anonymous

Saudi Arabia has said that if the US-led coalition against Daesh is prepared to engage in ground operations, we will be prepared to participate with special forces. The Russians say their objective is to defeat Daesh, too. If the deployment of ground troops helps in the fight against Daesh, why is that World War III? — Adel Al-Jubeir

The wars of today, the terrorism of today, are the result of injustice, and that injustice is the Outcome of our greedy, selfish, competitive way of working through commercialization and market forces. — Benjamin Creme

The simple view is that medicine exists to fight death and disease, and that is, of course, its most basic task. Death is the enemy. But the enemy has superior forces. Eventually, it wins. And, in a war that you cannot win, you don't want a general who fights to the point of total annihilation. You don't want Custer. You want Robert E. Lee, someone who knew how to fight for territory when he could and how to surrender when he couldn't, someone who understood that the damage is greatest if all you do is fight to the bitter end. — Atul Gawande

We had to struggle with the old enemies of peace - business and financial monopoly, speculation, reckless banking, class antagonism, sectionalism, war profiteering.
They had begun to consider the Government of the United States as a mere appendage to their own affairs. We know now that Government by organized money is just as dangerous as Government by organized mob.
Never before in all our history have these forces been so united against one candidate as they stand today. They are unanimous in their hate for me - and I welcome their hatred. — Franklin D. Roosevelt

No matter how fast weapons and technology evolve in the 21st century, one thing remains constant is that war is a human endeavor, a grueling contest between two learning and adaptive forces. Victory, therefore rests on how smart, how tough, and how dedicated our boots on the ground. — Agus Harimurti Yudhoyono

Everywhere people are at work to build a better world in which we - and some of the beauty of this world - will be guaranteed to survive. Everywhere they are at war with the forces threatening us and the planet. — Rebecca Solnit

Future generations would be convinced that nothing good could ever have existed in a country that produced such evil. They would think only of these evils. It would be as if these unleashed dark forces had grotesquely marched like devils on dead horses, backward through the gash in the present, and had destroyed the German past too. — Eric Metaxas

If your enemy is secure at all points, be prepared for him. If he is in superior strength, evade him. If your opponent is temperamental, seek to irritate him. Pretend to be weak, that he may grow arrogant. If he is taking his ease, give him no rest. If his forces are united, separate them. If sovereign and subject are in accord, put division between them. Attack him where he is unprepared, appear where you are not expected . — Sun Tzu

We were really helped when President Ronald Reagan came in. I remember non-commissioned officers who were going to retire and they re-enlisted because they believed in President Reagan. That's the kind of President Ronald Reagan was. He helped our country win the Cold War. He put it behind us in a way no one ever believed would be possible. He was truly a great American leader. And those of us in the Armed Forces loved him, respected him, and tremendously admired him for his great leadership. — Wesley Clark

Have you noticed how the Holocaust deniers only ever quibble over the number of Jewish deaths? Now why is that? The answer is very simple: Because they are anti-Semitic. It really is that simple. Anti-Semitism is one of the most aggressive forces on the planet, and has been since Biblical times. Had the Holocaust been a purge of any other race or group of people, everyone would most likely accept the facts. Who, for example, disputes that at least 800,000 Rwandans died in the genocide that occurred during the Rwandan civil war? Or that around 1.7 million Cambodians died in the Cambodian killing fields? — James Morcan

Forces of good and evil are massed and armed and opposed as rarely before in history. Freedom is pitted against slavery; lightness against the dark ... In the final choice, a soldier's pack is not so heavy a burden as a prisoner's chains. — Dwight D. Eisenhower

In the last days before the attack a strange feeling, not so much of confidence as of fatalism, pervaded the German tank forces- if this strength, this enormous agglomeration that surrounded them on every side, could not break the Russians, then nothing would. — Alan Clark

Guerrilla wars, and even more so terrorist assaults, are conducted only by forces with insufficient strength to carry out a real war. — Conrad Black

If we wish to understand the role of China in today's global society, we would do well to remind ourselves of the tragic, titanic struggle which that country waged in the 1930s and 1940s not just for its own national dignity and survival, but for the victory of all the Allies, west and east, against some of the darkest forces that history has ever produced. — Rana Mitter

J. R. R. Tolkien, the near-universally-hailed father of modern epic fantasy, crafted his magnum opus The Lord of the Rings to explore the forces of creation as he saw them: God and country, race and class, journeying to war and returning home. I've heard it said that he was trying to create some kind of original British mythology using the structure of other cultures' myths, and maybe that was true. I don't know. What I see, when I read his work, is a man trying desperately to dream.
Dreaming is impossible without myths. If we don't have enough myths of our own, we'll latch onto those of others - even if those myths make us believe terrible or false things about ourselves. Tolkien understood this, I think because it's human nature. Call it the superego, call it common sense, call it pragmatism, call it learned helplessness, but the mind craves boundaries. Depending on the myths we believe in, those boundaries can be magnificently vast, or crushingly tight. — N.K. Jemisin

Our vision of war is probably too influenced by the biggest one of all, World War II, where the forces of evil were so unambiguous and so relentless that there was no choice but to commit to total war and to demand unconditional surrender. Seldom, though, is it quite that clear cut. — David Horsey

While I was not consulted prior to the President's decision to intervene in support of the Republic of Korea, that decision from a military standpoint, proved a sound one, as we hurled back the invader and decimated his forces. Our victory was complete, and our objectives within reach, when Red China intervened with numerically superior ground forces. — Douglas MacArthur

What Stieg Larsson was up to - it was the Swedish guilt over World War II. All of our neighbors had the most terrible experiences with the bad forces, but Sweden didn't. I think we use the thrillers in a different way. We never write a thriller like 'Who is the murderer?' The big question in most of our thrillers is ... 'Why?' — Michael Nyqvist

outbreak of the 1967 Arab-Israeli war was not a result of some global strategy, but of a set of specific, regional calculations and miscalculations; on one hand, Israel's long-standing wish to strike at the growing military power of Egypt and, on the other, the tactical mistakes of Nasser in May of that year, through which he requested the withdrawal of UN buffer forces and so left himself open to the Israeli attack. — Fred Halliday

The uncritically admiring supporters and friends of the prime minister [Benjamin Netanyahu], in whose ranks I certainly don't include David [Brooks], but include Charles Krauthammer, the columnist, and Mike Huckabee, the former governor of Arkansas, insist on comparing him to the incomparable leader of the British forces in country in part of - during World War II. — Mark Shields

If we need women in our defense forces, we must not need much defense. — Joseph Sobran