Even a pacifist should admire the military virtues.

I don't think that what's going on in Bosnia is political activity. It's partly political, but it's partly atavistic as well.

Men killing other men really is an extraordinary phenomenon. Why does it happen? And how long has it gone on? And have the motives changed?

I think to be shot in a mountain valley somewhere or other is altogether less glorious than crashing an airliner into a skyscraper.

Nobody should teach anywhere for 25 years, but I did.

The revival of Islam dates from the early years of the 20th century. It was brought about by their humiliation, by their sense of how low they'd fallen compared with the West.

If Wellington epitomizes the English gentleman, Eisenhower epitomizes the natural American gentleman.

The great Chinese classics have always said that it's better not to fight; that the clever man achieves his ends without violence; that a battle delayed is better than a battle fought.

I think that black Africa is extremely terrifying. Black Africa can become a maelstrom of warring tribes without the outside world needing to feel the need to do anything about it.

I think Americans like the practical; they like the human. And I like both those things myself, and I try and put them into my books.

There are certain wicked people in the world that you can't deal with except by force.

Good men who exercise power are really the most fascinating of all people.

It's commonly said that people who've been ill in childhood and who've had an upset education never really regret that they do. It means that you don't look at the world in the way that other people do, and if you were inclined to be a writer, that's a help.

The great men of power who seek to change the nations they belong to usually are pretty terrible people.

The Islam of the 18th, 19th and first half of the 20th century was a poor thing. Nobody bothered about it. Islam was that funny sort of pure system of beliefs that depressed people in the Middle East held as their religion.

It's a necessary quality of a diplomat or a politician that he will compromise. Uncompromising politicians or diplomats get you into the most terrible trouble.

I can't visualize the situation in which we nuke ourselves into extinction.

We may have to have a geo-political regrouping or major geo-political changes.

Even a pacifist should admire the military virtues.

I don't look to find an educated person in the ranks of university graduates, necessarily. Some of the most educated people I know have never been near a university.

Well, if they are trying to kill you, on the whole they're the people you have to kill, aren't they?

The leader of men in warfare can show himself to his followers only through a mask, a mask that he must make for himself, but a mask made in such form as will mark him to men of his time and place as the leader they want and need.

Some people are more terrorist than others.

Soldiers, when committed to a task, can't compromise. It's unrelenting devotion to the standards of duty and courage, absolute loyalty to others, not letting the task go until it's been done.

Our military commanders have said over and over again that a timetable for withdrawal sends the wrong message to our troops, but more importantly to our enemy.

The successful establishment of a buffer zone around Fort Carson will provide an example for other bases around the country as we seek to protect the training mission of the U.S. military while preserving critical habitats on our ranges.

The sanctity of our battlefields, monuments, and veterans institutions is of utmost importance to preserve military history and pay respect to those who fought.

We won't always have the strongest military.

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

All of us who are convinced that our military needs all the support the government and public will provide are pleased that he will have his chance to do just that.

Can you imagine what Bush would say if someone like Hugo Chavez asked him for a little piece of land to install a military base, and he only wanted to plant a Venezuelan flag there?

I visited the Chinese side last year. The Chinese are in a constant state of military readiness. They have all their nuclear weapons in the area, presumably trained on targets across the border.

War should be the only study of a prince. He should consider peace only as a breathing-time, which gives him leisure to contrive, and furnishes as ability to execute, military plans.

The decision to go to war is the most important decision that I can make as a representative in Congress. As a veteran, I see any potential military action first through the eyes of the young men and women who volunteered to wear the uniform and would carry out such a mission.

Since far fewer people are recruited to serve in a voluntary military, the connection between America and its military is increasingly tenuous and less personal.

In the recent years there have been criticisms levelled against Japan suggesting that she should offer more military forces to the United Nations forces and thereby play a more active role in the keeping and restoration of peace in various parts of the world.

We know that the decisions we reach will have a profound impact on the communities hosting our military installations, and more importantly, on the people who bring those communities to life.

The military lead turbulent lives, but they are people like everybody else.

We ought to recognize that we have an offensive responsibility to take the war to the terrorists where they are. That responsibility has waned in the last year as military and intelligence resources were withdrawn from Afghanistan and Pakistan to be used in Iraq.

An overstretched military undermines homeland security and our ability to meet threats around the world.

Everywhere that the struggle for national freedom has triumphed, once the authorities agreed, there were military coups d'etat that overthrew their leaders. That is the result time and time again.

The People's Republic of China has not yet reached the military might of the Soviet Empire. It requires a little more time and a little more infusion of Western aid, loans, technology and the hard currency of our tourists.

If you ask me to summarise our mission, I would put it this way: We were a military regime that sought to lay the foundations for freedom and liberty in a complex society.

There is a difference between a military mission and the aspiration for the long-term plans for the country. What we want is a stable enough Afghanistan, able to look after its own security so we can leave without the fear of it imploding... But let's be clear - it's not going to be perfect.

Fourth, we might have declared an embargo against the shipping from American ports of any merchandise to either one of these governments that persisted in maintaining its military zone.

You get a lawyer whether you're in a military tribunal or whether you're in a federal court, number one. The attorney general decided that the court with the biggest - with the greatest venue, with the best jurisdiction was the New York court. That was the right decision to make.

Normal military trade is undoubtedly part of the normal State-to-State relations.

To honor our national promise to our veterans, we must continue to improve services for our men and women in uniform today and provide long overdue benefits for the veterans and military retirees who have already served.

To the contrary, I believe the U.S. military has already done all that has been asked of them. Saddam Hussein is on trial. The threat from alleged weapons of mass destruction programs in Iraq has been neutralized.