Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Comment on this quote Share via Email Print this Page [281-300] of 485 War quotesWar QuotesWar Previous 20 quotes Next 20 quotes The Constitution supposes, what the history of all governments demonstrates, that the executive is the branch of government most interested in war, and most prone to it. It has accordingly with studied care, vested the question of war in the legislature.~ James Madison The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite. The former will be exercised principally on external objects, as war, peace, negotiation and foreign commerce.~ James Madison The strongest passions and most dangerous weaknesses of the human breast; ambition, avarice, vanity, the honorable or venal love of fame, are all in conspiracy against the desire and duty of peace.~ James Madison War is in fact the true nurse of executive aggrandizement.~ James Madison [T]he power to declare war is fully and exclusively vested in the legislature.~ James Madison A standing military force, with an overgrown Executive will not long be safe companions to liberty. The means of defence against foreign danger have been always the instruments of tyranny at home.~ James Madison If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy.~ James Madison What becomes of the surplus of human life? It is either, 1st destroyed by infanticide, as among the Chinese and Lacedemonians; or 2nd it is stifled or starved, as among other nations whose population is commensurate to its food; or 3rd it is consumed by wars and endemic diseases; or 4th it overflows, by emigration, to places where a surplus of food is attainable.~ James Madison ... large and permanent military establishments ... are forbidden by the principles of free government, and against the necessity of which the militia were meant to be a constitutional bulwark.~ James Madison Only a debt-backed system of paper money could finance the great wars, the social improvements and the fevered dreams of the 20th century.~ Brian Maher A freedom fighter learns the hard way that it is the oppressor who defines the nature of the struggle, and the oppressed is often left no recourse but to use methods that mirror those of the oppressor. At a point, one can only fight fire with fire.~ Nelson Mandela The issue of this campaign -- it IS that word socialism. Some people like it. Younger people like it. Those of us like me, who grew up in a cold war and saw some aspects of it while visiting places like Vietnam, like I have, and seeing countries like Cuba, being there. I’m seeing what socialism’s like. I don’t like it. OK? It’s not only not free. It doesn’t freakin’ work!~ Chris Matthews I would support a Presidential candidate who pledged to take the following steps: ... At the end of the war in the Persian Gulf, press for ... a 'new world order' based not upon Pax Americana but on peace through law with a stronger U.N. and World Court.~ George McGovern It may be your intent to be our masters; how can it be ours to be your slaves?~ Melians Everything is destroyed by its own particular vice: the destructive power resides within. Rust destroys iron, moths destroy clothes, the worm eats away the wood; but greatest of all evils is envy, impious habitant of corrupt souls, which ever was, is, and shall be a consuming disease.~ Menander To die for an idea: it is unquestionably noble. But how much nobler it would be if men died for ideas that were true.~ H. L. Mencken [T]he only thing wrong with Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address was that it was the South, not the North, that was fighting for a government of the people, by the people and for the people.~ H. L. Mencken The Gettysburg speech was at once the shortest and the most famous oration in American history...the highest emotion reduced to a few poetical phrases. Lincoln himself never even remotely approached it. It is genuinely stupendous. But let us not forget that it is poetry, not logic; beauty, not sense. Think of the argument in it. Put it into the cold words of everyday. The doctrine is simply this: that the Union soldiers who died at Gettysburg sacrificed their lives to the cause of self-determination -- that government of the people, by the people, for the people, should not perish from the earth. It is difficult to imagine anything more untrue. The Union soldiers in the battle actually fought against self-determination; it was the Confederates who fought for the right of their people to govern themselves.~ H. L. Mencken What good does it do to ban some guns. All guns should be banned.~ Howard Metzenbaum War is an ugly thing but not the ugliest of things; the decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feelings which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. A man who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself.~ John Stuart Mill Previous 20 quotes Next 20 quotes Share on Facebook Tweet Email Print