Charles Maurice de Talleyrand Quotes

War is too serious a matter to entrust to military men.

War is too serious a matter to leave to soldiers.

Is a military solution the only way to stop nations from doing bad things?

War as Napoleon knew it just not possible any more. However, we're very unlikely to accept or recognize 'world peace' even when we get it.

We all know that in war the political and military factors have to complement each other.

We were so shocked by how fast that war went that President Bush did not have a plan, a peace plan.

The only foreign policy advice I heard from China was when they said to Sudan, 'Don't go back to war.' That's all they said. They didn't push anything else.

Everyone is interested in war, in that people don't want it to happen. I'm much more interested in peace than in war but it's important to understand why we fight.

Anyone who believes that the eternal question of war and peace in Europe is no longer there risks being deeply mistaken.

There are two things that will always be difficult for a democratic people to do: to start a war and to finish it

Wars are fought for political considerations. Military victory alone is never enough

The most expensive peace is far less costly than the cheapest war.

To insist on strength ... is not war-mongering. It is peace-mongering.

We’re not going to need as many people to do peacekeeping as we needed to fight the war.

I have done all I can to prevent wars. All my life I've been dedicated to preventing just what has happened today.

It’s damn easy to get into a war, but damned harder to extricate yourself once you get in.

Whenever we get involved in a war, the White House seems to have 3 priorities: We cannot appear to be losing; we must appear to be winning; we must look like we know what we are doing.

Since the foolish part of mankind will make wars, from time to time, with each other, not having sense enough otherwise to settle their differences, it certainly becomes the wiser part, who cannot prevent these wars, to alleviate as much as possible the calamities attending them.

Military action without political context is ineffective.

Though no one wants war, Congress needed to give the President the authority he needs to protect America while encouraging the use of diplomacy and negotiations to try and arrive at a peaceful solution to this problem.

Every government has as much of a duty to avoid war as a ship's captain has to avoid a shipwreck.

There was never a good war, or a bad peace.

It might be useful to be able to predict war. But tension does not necessarily lead to war, but often to peace and to denouement.

The real peril of war lies not in military defeat. It lies in war itself, whether we win or lose.

Doves oppose war on the grounds that the risks exceed the gains. War with Iraq could be very costly, possibly degenerating into urban warfare.