Stand your ground. Don't fire unless fired upon, but if they mean to have a war, let it begin here.

Stand your ground. Don't fire unless fired upon, but if they mean to have a war, let it begin here.

If it were proved to me that in making war, my ideal had a chance of being realized, I would read more

If it were proved to me that in making war, my ideal had a chance of being realized, I would still say "no" to war. For one does not create a human society on mounds of corpses.

I have always said that a conference was held for one reason only, to give everybody chance to get sore read more

I have always said that a conference was held for one reason only, to give everybody chance to get sore at everybody else. Sometimes it takes two or three conferences to scare up a war, but generally one will do it.

Diplomats are just as essential in starting a war as soldiers are in finishing it.

Diplomats are just as essential in starting a war as soldiers are in finishing it.

A riot is a spontaneous outburst. A war is subject to advance planning.

A riot is a spontaneous outburst. A war is subject to advance planning.

War is the unfolding of miscalculations.

War is the unfolding of miscalculations.

Carry on, carry on, for the men and boys are gone,
But the furrow shan't lie fallow while the read more

Carry on, carry on, for the men and boys are gone,
But the furrow shan't lie fallow while the women carry on.

There will one day spring from the brain of science a machine or force so fearful in its potentialities, so read more

There will one day spring from the brain of science a machine or force so fearful in its potentialities, so absolutely terrifying, that even man, the fighter, who will dare torture and death in order to inflict torture and death, will be appalled, and so abandon war forever.

If war should sweep our commerce from the seas, another generation will restore it. If war exhausts our treasury, future read more

If war should sweep our commerce from the seas, another generation will restore it. If war exhausts our treasury, future industry will replenish it. If war desiccate and lay waste our fields, under new cultivation they will grow green again and ripen to future harvest. If the walls of yonder Capitol should fall and its decorations be covered by the dust of battle, all these can be rebuilt. But who shall reconstruct the fabric of a demolished government; who shall dwell in the well-proportioned columns of constitutional liberty; who shall frame together the skillful architecture which unites sovereignty with state's rights, individual security with prosperity?