Vigilant Investor

For Memorial Day this year, we thought it would be valuable to post a series of quotes about War from many wise thinkers over the years. We walk you through the thoughts and comments from all ages, from our founding fathers — Jefferson, Adams, Washington — to the ancients, to famous authors and generals.

We hope you take the time to ponder their wisdom as you remember the dead on this Memorial Day, for it is usually in the midst of war that thoughts are clouded by the mission at hand.

America does not go abroad in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all.
~John Quincy Adams

Always there has been some terrible evil at home or some monstrous foreign power that was going to gobble us up if we did not blindly rally behind it.
~General Douglas MacArthur

The most successful war seldom pays for its losses.
~Thomas Jefferson

It is our true policy to steer clear of entangling alliances with any portion of the foreign world.
~George Washington

Commerce with all nations, alliance with none, should be our motto.
~Thomas Jefferson

There never was a good war or a bad peace.
~Benjamin Franklin

I believe in only one thing: liberty; but I do not believe in liberty enough to want to force it upon anyone.
~H. L. Mencken

Guard against the impostures of pretended patriotism.
~George Washington

If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy.
~James Madison


A lasting order cannot be established by bayonets.
~Ludwig von Mises

Setting a good example is a far better way to spread ideals than through force of arms.
~Congressman Ron Paul

War is the gambling table of governments, and citizens the dupes of the game.
~Thomas Paine

History teaches that war begins when governments believe the price of aggression is cheap.
~Ronald Reagan

Most wars are started by well-fed people with time on their hands to dream up half-baked ideologies or grandiose ambitions, and to nurse real or imagined grievances.
~Thomas Sowell

We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. When the loyal opposition dies, I think the soul of America dies with it.
~Edward R. Murrow

The cry has been that when war is declared, all opposition should be hushed. A sentiment more unworthy of a free country could hardly be propagated.
~William Ellery Channing

The opinion of 10,000 men is of no value if none of them know anything about the subject.
~Marcus Aurelius

The dangerous patriot…drifts into chauvinism and exhibits blind enthusiasm for military actions.
~Colonel James A. Donovan, Marine Corps

It is only those who have neither fired a shot nor heard the shrieks and groans of the wounded who cry aloud for blood…War is hell.
~General William Tecumseh Sherman

Some men…in order to prevent the supposed intentions of their adversaries, have committed the most enormous cruelties…
~Clearchus, in Xenophon

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.
~H. L. Mencken

The means of defense against foreign danger historically have become the instruments of tyranny at home.
~James Madison

Power is usurped from the people, first by implementing fear, then it is maintained by slandering as ‘unpatriotic’ those who refuse submission.
~Ramman Kenoun

In order to rally people, governments need enemies. They want us to be afraid, to hate, so we will rally behind them.
~Thich Nhat Hanh, Vietnamese Buddhist monk

The worst barbarity of war is that it forces men collectively to commit acts against which individually they would revolt with their whole being.
~Ellen Key

Because I do it with one small ship, I am called a terrorist. You do it with a whole fleet and are called an emperor.
~A pirate, from St. Augustine’s “City of God”

The belief in the possibility of a short decisive war appears to be one of the most ancient and dangerous of human illusions.
~Robert Lynd

Never believe any war will be smooth and easy, or that anyone who embarks on the strange voyage can measure the tides and hurricanes he will encounter.
~Sir Winston Churchill

I’m fed up to the ears with old men dreaming up wars for young men to die in.
~George McGovern

The statesman who yields to war fever…is no longer the master of policy but the slave of unforeseeable and uncontrollable events.
~Sir Winston Churchill

The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule.
~H.L. Mencken

..Violence as a way of gaining power…is being camouflaged under the guise of tradition, national honor [and] national security…
~Alfred Adler

A state of war only serves as an excuse for domestic tyranny.
~Alexander Solzhenitsyn

The welfare of the people in particular has always been the alibi of tyrants.
~Albert Camus

Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.
~William Pitt

Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised “for the good of its victims” may be the most oppressive.
~C. S. Lewis

Anyone who has the power to make you believe absurdities has the power to make you commit injustices.
~Voltaire

The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws.
~Tacitus

It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.
~Voltaire

I believe in only one thing: liberty; but I do not believe in liberty enough to want to force it upon anyone.
~H. L. Mencken

The obligations of our representatives in Washington are to protect our liberty, not coddle the world, precipitating no-win wars, while bringing bankruptcy and economic turmoil to our people.
~Ron Paul

“My country right or wrong” is like saying, “My mother drunk or sober.”
~G. K. Chesterton

When the tyrant has disposed of foreign enemies by conquest or treaty, and there is nothing to fear from them, then he is always stirring up some war or other, in order that the people may require a leader.
~Plato

It is in war that the State really comes into its own: swelling in power, in number, in pride, in absolute dominion over the economy and the society.
~Murray Rothbard

After each war there is a little less democracy to save.
~Brooks Atkinson

War against a foreign country only happens when the moneyed classes think they are going to profit from it.
~George Orwell

War prosperity is like the prosperity that an earthquake or a plague brings.
~Ludwig von Mises

All wars come to an end, at least temporarily. But the authority acquired by the state hangs on; political power never abdicates.
~Frank Chodorov

Power always thinks…that it is doing God’s service when it is violating all his laws.
~John Adams

Remember that a government big enough to give you everything you want is also big enough to take away everything you have.
~Davy Crockett

War–after all, what is it that the people get? Why–widows, taxes, wooden legs and debt.
~Samuel B. Pettengill

How far can you go without destroying from within what you are trying to defend from without?
~Dwight D. Eisenhower

There is no instance of a country having benefited from prolonged warfare.
~Sun Tzu

If you live long enough, you’ll see that every victory turns into a defeat.
~Simone de Beauvoir

When [men] go to war, what they want is to impose on their enemies the victor’s will and call it peace.
~St. Augustine

No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.
~James Madison

It is a universal truth that the loss of liberty at home is to be charged to the provisions against danger, real or pretended, from abroad.
~James Madison

The 1st panacea of a mismanaged nation is inflation of the currency; the 2nd is war. Both bring a temporary prosperity; a permanent ruin.
~Ernest Hemingway

Conflict cannot survive without your participation.
~Dr. Wayne Dyer

Loyalty to the country always. Loyalty to the government when it deserves it.
~Mark Twain

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