No war is inevitable until it breaks out.

There is nothing more agreeable in life than to make peace with the Establishment - and nothing more corrupting.

Like most of those who study history, he (Napoleon III) learned from the mistakes of the past how to make new ones.

A master of improvised speech and improvised policies.

No war is inevitable until it breaks out.

He was what I often think is a dangerous thing for a statesman to be - a student of history; and like most of those who study history, he learned from the mistakes of the past how to make new ones.

Nothing is inevitable until it happens.

The crusade against Communism was even more imaginary than the specter of Communism.

A racing tipster who only reached Hitler's level of accuracy would not do well for his clients.

The great armies, accumulated to provide security and preserve the peace, carried the nations to war by their own weight.

Human blunders usually do more to shape history than human wickedness.

The greatest problem about old age is the fear that it may go on too long.

No matter what political reasons are given for war, the underlying reason is always economic.

Lenin was the first to discover that capitalism 'inevitably' caused war; and he discovered this only when the First World War was already being fought. Of course he was right. Since every great state was capitalist in 1914.

Psychoanalysts believe that the only 'normal' people are those who cause no trouble either to themselves or anyone else.

In my opinion, most of the great men of the past were only there for the beer - the wealth, prestige and grandeur that went with the power.

Perfect soldier perfect gentleman never gave offence to anyone not even the enemy.

If there had been no troublemakers, no dissenters, we should still be living in caves.

By Rice's own standards, the war was well underway by the time he took office. He was a war president the moment he took the oath. But did he act like one?

Before and during the first phase of the war his administration repeatedly maligned the UN but now, that Iraq has turned into a quagmire, it is asking the UN for help.

What the war did was give me the opportunity of three years of continuous reading, and it was in the course of reading that I became convinced that I should become an economist.

Most fathers don't see the war within the daughter, her struggles with conflicting images of the idealized and flawed father, her temptation both to retreat to Daddy's lap and protection and to push out of his embrace to that of beau and the world beyond home.

In war there is no prize for runner-up.

But in the first Gulf war the United Kingdom was not under any threat from Iraq, and is still less so in the second one. Then there is no justification for obstructing freedom of information, particularly as nations have a right to know what their soldiers are being used for.

No one will deny that the excessive use of alcohol and alcoholic beverages would do more than any other single factor to make impossible a total war effort.

Since I'm allergic to various things, the army wouldn't accept me during the war, and I got into the Office of War Information, which sent music to Europe.

We were succeeding. When you looked at specifics, this became a war of attrition. We were winning.

Fantasy is toxic: the private cruelty and the world war both have their start in the heated brain.

Hair is also a problem. I remember once, when I was reporting from Beirut at the height of the civil war, someone wrote in to the BBC complaining about my appearance.

War, in some instances, especially defensive, has been authorized by Heaven.

There are not fifty ways of fighting, there's only one, and that's to win. Neither revolution nor war consists in doing what one pleases.

Especially today as we fight the war on terror - against an enemy that represents hatred, extremism and stands behind no flag - we need to remember the sacrifices that have gone into protecting our flag.

The seasons come up undisturbed by crime and war.

I was told my son was killed in the war on terror. He was killed by George Bush's war of terror on the world.

Fascism is a worldwide disease. Its greatest threat to the United States will come after the war, either via Latin America or within the United States itself.

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

We in this Congress have a choice. The American people have a right to exercise a choice on this issue, as to whether our men and women will continue to fight and die in a war based on deception and fantasy, or to start bringing the troops home.

War is just one more big government program.

In a war, you must hate somebody or love somebody; you must have a position or you cannot stand what goes on.

For a war correspondent to miss an invasion is like refusing a date with Lana Turner.

It is obvious that taking the country from a state of war to being a lawful state won't be easy.

But let's be clear. We're talking about a country where there's no opposition. As leader he can ignore Parliament and - sorry that's Tony Blair isn't it? Um, so he doesn't even have to ask the country before he goes to war - sorry that's still Tony Blair.

Every war results from the struggle for markets and spheres of influence, and every war is sold to the public by professional liars and totally sincere religious maniacs, as a Holy Crusade to save God and Goodness from Satan and Evil.

For governments at war, the media is an instrument of war or an element in war that is to be controlled.

I think unleashing 3,000 smart bombs against the city of Baghdad in the first several days of the war... to me, if those were unleashed against the San Francisco Bay Area, I would call that an act of extreme terrorism.

The high point of civilization is that you can hate me and I can hate you but we develop an etiquette that allows us to deal with each other because if we acted solely upon our impulse we'd probably go to war.

In the First World War, there was the sudden passion of nationalism, and the killing took place because of these emotions. But the Soviet case is different, because you had systematic murder, like the Holocaust.

We have the melancholy dilemma of not being in a state to make peace or to prosecute war.

It is only those who have neither fired a shot nor heard the shrieks and groans of the wounded who cry aloud for blood, more vengeance, more desolation. War is hell.