Curtis LeMay Quotes

I could have ended the war in a month. I could have made North Vietnam look like a mud puddle.

I could have been very popular if I had launched a military attack on Iran but I chose patience.

It is not every cause of war that should lead to war.

War is the admission of defeat in the face of conflicting interests.

My solution to the problem would be to tell the North Vietnamese Communists frankly that they've got to drawn in their horns and stop their aggression or we're going to bomb them into the stone age.

As a Korean War Veteran, I know too well the troubling nature of war. This is why I will always support a diplomatic answer before military intervention.

Politicians do not enter into wars lightly. It is usually the military themselves who are keener to become involved.

Naturally our Government would not consent to such terms, and so the war had to proceed.

Bomb Vietnam back into the stone age.

The president refuses to say… refuses to say that the objective over there is victory.

War is the father of all.

Wherever there's injustice, oppression, and suffering, America will show up six months late and bomb the country next to where it's happening.

Are we going to start a war, the end of which we cannot see?

We're not trying to start a war; we're trying to send a political message.

I don't recall anyone who was strongly against except one man, and that was the President [JFK]. The President just didn't want to be convinced that this was the right thing to do.... It was really the President's personal conviction that U.S. ground troops shouldn't go in.

We've never declared war on anybody. We [Iran] defended ourselves against wars that were imposed on us. We have no desire to engage in confrontation with anybody.

Whenever you have a possibility of going in two ways, either for peace or for war, for peaceful methods of for military methods, in the present age there is a strong prejudice for the peaceful ones. War seldom ever leads to good results.

Sure, we want to go home. We want this war over with. The quickest way to get it over with is to go get the bastards who started it.

We do this in order to slow down aggression. We do this to increase the confidence of the brave people of South Vietnam who have bravely born this brutal battle for so many years with so many casualties. And we do this to convince the leaders of North Vietnam-and all who seek to share their conquest-of a simple fact: We will not be defeated. We will not grow tired. We will not withdraw either openly or under the cloak of a meaningless agreement.

I am pleased though that there's a possibility of a diplomatic solution [in Syria]. I remain somewhat skeptical, but I am pleased that it's a possibility and I think people like myself who've been arguing for delaying this bombing, have allowed this diplomatic possibility to occur.

War is an act of force, and to the application of that force there is no limit. Each of the adversaries forces the hand of the other, and a reciprocal action results which in theory can have no limit.

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

Take the military option off the table - we have already seen it doesn't work.

Waging war is not a primary physical need.