Famous Quotes & Sayings

H. L. Mencken

There is no record in the history of a nation that ever gained anything valuable by being unable to defend itself.

Richard Perle

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

Woodrow Wilson

Americanism consists in utterly believing in the principles of America.

Werner Herzog

I do not recall to [Kim Jong-un], but it was complex. "Dear young leader of the people and chairman of the joint military commission" or something like that.

W. G. Sebald

As far as I know, the question of whether and how it could be strategically or morally justified was never the subject of open debate in Germany after 1945, no doubt mainly because a nation which had murdered and worked to death millions of people in its camps could hardly call on the victorious powers to explain the military and political logic that dictated the destruction of the German cities.

William Cobbett

The truth is that the fall of Napoleon is the hardest blow that our taxing system ever felt. It is now impossible to make people believe that immense fleets and armies are necessary.

William Faulkner

We cannot choose freedom established on a hierarchy of degrees of freedom, on a caste system of equality like military rank. We must be free not because we claim freedom, but because we practice it.

Ronald Reagan

If we get the federal government out of the classroom, maybe we'll get God back in.

Wole Soyinka

After the death of the sadistic dictator Gen. Sanni Abacha in 1998, Nigeria underwent a one-year transitional military administration headed by Gen. Abdulsalami Abubakar, who uncharacteristically bowed out precisely on the promised date for military disengagement. Did the military truly disengage, however? No.

Winston Churchill

it so often happens that, when men are convinced that they have to die, a desire to bear themselves well and to leave life's stage with dignity conquers all other sensations.

Winston Churchill

In Critical and baffling situations, it is always best to return to first principle and simple action

Winston Churchill

Air power is the most difficult of military force to measure or even express in precise terms.

Will Rogers

Diplomats are just as essential to starting a war as soldiers are for finishing it... You take diplomacy out of war, and the thing would fall flat in a week.

Warren Farrell

In brief, we do more research on men in prison, men in the military, and men in general than we do on women for the same reason we do more research on rats than we do on humans.

W. E. B. Griffin

My own military background is wholly un-distinguished. I was a sergeant.

Zalmay Khalilzad

Nation building is our central task, both in Afghanistan and in Iraq. And states, nations can't just be built with military power. Despite all difficulties, it's very inspiring to see how the Kurds, the Arab Sunnis and the Shiites are coming together here, how they're jointly defining the basis on which their state is to be built, the political course this state will pursue and who is to receive which cabinet positions.

Zainab Salbi

One year of the world’s military spending equals 700 years of the U.N. budget and equals 2,928 years of the U.N. budget allocated for women.

Zbigniew Brzezinski

Like so many empires before it, the Soviet Union eventually imploded and fragmented, falling victim not so much to a direct military defeat as to disintegration accelerated by economic and social strains.

Zbigniew Brzezinski

According to the official version of history, CIA aid to the Mujahideen began during 1980, that is to say, after the Soviet army invaded Afghanistan, 24 Dec 1979. But the reality, secretly guarded until now, is completely otherwise. Indeed, it was July 3, 1979 that President Carter signed the first directive for secret aid to the opponents of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul. And that very day, I wrote a note to the president in which I explained to him that in my opinion this aid was going to induce a Soviet military intervention.

Vladimir Putin

Nobody should have any illusion about the possibility of gaining military superiority over Russia. We will never allow this to happen.

Walter Lippmann

Nobody has yet found a way of bombing that can prevent foot soldiers from walking.

William Tecumseh Sherman

I will accept no commission that would tend to create a rivalry with Grant. I want him to hold what he has earned and got. I have all the rank I want.

William Tecumseh Sherman

War is cruel and you cannot refine it.

William Tecumseh Sherman

I think I understand what military fame is; to be killed on the field of battle and have your name misspelled in the newspapers.

Vladimir Putin

In 2009, US President [Barack] Obama said that the missile defense only serves as protection from Iranian nuclear missiles. But now there is an international treaty with Iran that bans Tehran from developing a potential military nuclear project.

Yitzhak Rabin

I, serial number 30743, Major General Yitzhak Rabin, am a soldier in the army of peace.

Yitzhak Rabin

I was a military man for 27 years. I fought so long as there was no chance for peace. I believe that there is now a chance for peace, a great chance. We must take advantage of it for the sake of those standing here, and for those who are not here - and they are many.

Winston Churchill

Air power can either paralyze the enemy's military action or compel him to devote to the defense of his bases and communications a share of his straitened resources far greater that what we need in the attack.

Winston Churchill

It seems to me that the moment has come when the question of bombing of German cities simply for the sake of increasing the terror, though under other pretexts, should be reviewed. Otherwise we shall come into control of an utterly ruined land . . . The destruction of Dresden remains a serious query against the conduct of Allied bombing . . . I feel the need for more precise concentration upon military objectives, such as oil and communications behind the immediate battle-zone, rather than on mere acts of terror and wanton destruction, however impressive.

Winston Churchill

I have not always been wrong. History will bear me out, particularly as I shall write that history myself.

Winston Churchill

In defeat, unbeatable; in victor, unbearable

Winston Churchill

Indomitable in retreat, invincible in advance; insufferable in victory.

Winston Churchill

I'm going to make a long speech because I've not had the time to prepare a short one.