War Initiation Quotes

The Mexican War was one of the most unjust ever waged by a stronger against a weaker nation. We were sent to provoke a fight, but it was essential that Mexico should commence it.

The war had been unnecessarily and unconstitutionally initiated by the president.

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

Naturally the common people don't want war. . . but after all it is the leaders of a country who determine policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along. . .

The power to declare war, including the power of judging the causes of war, is fully and exclusively vested in the legislature.

Wars are begun by frightened men. They fear war, but more than that, they fear what will happen if they don't start one or take equivalent action, I suppose.

War on the other hand is such a terrible thing, that no man, especially a Christian man, has the right to assume the responsibility of starting it.

Israel does not start wars.

The United States, as the world knows, will never start a war.

The congressional role in declaring war is especially important not when the United States is the victim of an attack, but when the United States is planning to wage war abroad.

There are plenty of cases of war being begun before it is declared.

When one person can initiate war, by its definition, a republic no longer exists.

It is always easy enough to take up arms, but very difficult to lay them down; the commencement and the termination of war are notnecessarily in the same hands; even a coward may begin, but the end comes only when the victors are willing.

I can't keep my head above water one minute to the next: it's not just the parties and the goo-gooing with what's-her-name, I've got the decide how long the Five Hundredth Anniversary Parade is going to be and where does it start and when does it start and which nobleman gets to march in front of which other nobleman so that everyone's still speaking to me at the end of it, plus I've got a wife to murder and a country to frame for it, plus I've got to get the war going once that's all happened, and all this is stuff I've got to do myself. Here's what it all comes down to: I'm just swamped, Ty.

Rulers who want to unleash war know very well that they must procure or invent a first victim.

There are two things which a democratic people will always find very difficult - to begin a war and to end it.

Well, I asked him who would start the war first.

To the best of my knowledge, no war was ever started by women. But it is women and children who have always suffered most in situations of conflict.

I have prophesied for years that I was born for a Great War; that if I did not witness the coming of the Second American Civil War, I would begin it myself.

Supposedly, going to war initiates you into this gnostic priesthood of people who've had a liminal experience forever separating them from civilians. Except... you go there, and it is what it is. A form of human activity as varied as any other.

Well, my theory is this: war is such a terrible, such an atrocious, thing that no man, at least no Christian man, has the right to assume the responsibility of beginning it; but it belongs to government alone, when it becomes inevitable.

It's very easy to start a war but the muftah, as the Arabs say, the key to switch off a war, is very difficult to find.

People who start wars never know exactly how they will turn out.

Those who start war often know that because of their high political position their own lives will not be in danger. on the Diane Rehm Show.

When you look at the beginning of the actual war, it's not hard to recognize that the Pakistanis were the ones to attack.