Michael Mullen Quotes

We call upon all sides to stop hostilities and restart peace talks.

GENERAL:–Your note of yesterday is received. I have no authority to treat on the subject of peace; the meeting proposed for ten A.M. to-day could lead to no good. I will state, however, general, that I am equally anxious for peace with yourself, and the whole North entertains the same feeling. The terms upon which peace can be had are well understood. By the South laying down their arms they will hasten that most desirable event, save thousands of human lives, and hundreds of millions of property not yet destroyed. Seriously hoping that all our difficulties may be settled without the loss of another life,

There is not going to be a peace process unless there is talks involving Israel, Hezbollah and Hamas, and I think everyone knows that.

Major General Thomas Jesup has committed an unprecedented violation of that sacred rule which has ever been recognized by every nation, civilized and uncivilized, of treating with all due respect those who had ever presented themselves under a flag of truce before the enemy, for the purpose of proposing the termination of warfare.

There is no better way to make peace than to talk in each other's home. Avoiding such talks is a denial of the purpose of the negotiations.

Our problem with Israel is that its leaders always talk about war and security but never about peace.

If we don't manage to find not just a compromise but a lasting peace agreement, we know perfectly well what the scenario will be. It has a name, it's called war.

It is not a process of bargaining or give-and-take. The peace process is not about giving concessions. We will not allow any step which would hurt the memories of our martyrs.

There are times for making war and times for making peace.

It is easier to make war than to make peace.

Now do you see why war irritates me? It's always the same. A lot of people get killed, but in the end, the whole thing is settled at the conference table. The notion of having the conference first doesn't seem to occur to people.

Whatever efforts for peace President Gorbachev had in mind, they were pretty substantially undercut very swiftly by Saddam Hussein.

I'm optimistic because I'm pragmatic: Neither of the two sides, the military government nor the Islamic front, is capable of winning. If they continue to fight, they will both bleed to death.

If you want to make peace, you don't talk to your friends. You talk to your enemies.

The time is right for a political solution and the way is negotiations.

If you want peace, you don't talk to your friends. You talk to your enemies.

It is the hope of the European Union that Ariel Sharon will keep the peace process alive and continue the dialogue according to the wishes of all the parties involved.

I have traveled a long road from the battlefield to the peace table.

I hope that France - and all of Europe - we would take an initiative for the year 2012 to be the year of peace between Israel and the Palestinians.

In the first six to twelve months of a war with the United States and Great Britain I will run wild and win victory upon victory. But then, if the war continues after that, I have no expectation of success.

The military alone cannot end the conflict in Afghanistan. On that much nearly everyone can agree, offering a rare island of consensus among sides otherwise divided on the question of how and when America's longest-ever war should wind down.

War is failure of diplomacy.

My colleagues and I have gone in the footsteps of our predecessors since the very first day we were called by our people to care for their future. We went any place, we looked for any avenue, we made any effort to bring about negotiations between Israel and its neighbors, negotiations without which peace remains an abstract desire.

Ending wars is very simple if you surrender.

With that prudence and delicacy, therefore, of which I know you possessed, represent to Congress the indispensable necessity of rescinding the hasty and ill-advised declaration of independency. Recommend, and you have an undoubted right to recommend, an immediate cessation of hostilities. Let the controversy be taken up where that declaration left it, and where Lord Howe certainly expected to find it left. Let men of clear and impartial characters, in or out of Congress, liberal in their sentiments, heretofore independent in their fortunes,--and some such may be found in America,--be appointed to confer with his Majesty's Commissioners. Let them, if they please, propose some well-digested constitutional plan, to lay before them at the commencement of the negotiation. When they have gone thus far, I am confident the usual happy consequences will ensue; unanimity will immediately take place through the different provinces; thousands who are now ardently wishing and praying for such a measure, will step forth, and declare themselves the zealous advocates for constitutional liberty; and millions will bless the hero that left the field of war, to decide this most important; contest with the weapons of wisdom and humanity.