“It is not easy for a free community to organise for war. We are not accustomed to listen to experts or prophets. Our strength lies in an ability to improvise. Yet an open mind to untried ideas is also necessary. No-one can say when the end will come. In the war services it is recognised that the best security for an early conclusion is a plan for long endurance.”

— John Maynard Keynes

Source: How to Pay for the War (1940), Ch. 1 : The Character of the Problem

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John Maynard Keynes 122

British economist 1883–1946

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“We are at war, and our security as a nation depends on winning that war.”

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opening statement to 9/11 Commission http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/04/08/rice.transcript/, May 19, 2004.

“To avoid a future of war, crime, and bankruptcy, the individual must begin to plan his own destiny, and the best source for the necessary information comes down to us through the writings of the ancients.”

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Context: To avoid a future of war, crime, and bankruptcy, the individual must begin to plan his own destiny, and the best source for the necessary information comes down to us through the writings of the ancients. The greatest knowledge of all time should be available … in a book that would be a monument, not merely a coffin.

“If I were president, I would try to be one who says, you know what, I'm a Reagan Conservative. I'm someone who believes in peace through strength, and I would try to lead the country in that way knowing that our goal is peace, and that war is the last resort, not the first resort. And, that when we go to war, we go to war in a constitutional way, which means that we have to vote on it, that war is initiated by congress, not by the president, that we go to war electively (ph). That when we go to war, we don't fight with one arm tied behind our back, we fight all out to win, but then we come home.”

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2015-09-16
CNN REAGAN LIBRARY DEBATE: Later Debate Full Transcript
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http://cnnpressroom.blogs.cnn.com/2015/09/16/cnn-reagan-library-debate-later-debate-full-transcript/
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“We, the people, still believe that enduring security and lasting peace do not require perpetual war.”

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2013, Second Inaugural Address (January 2013)

“It may be inappropriate to put it in this way, but the atomic bombs and the Soviet entry into the war are, in a sense, God's gifts. Now we can end the war without making it clear that we have to end the war because of the domestic situation. I have long been advocating the conclusion [of the war], not because I am afraid of the enemy's attacks or because of the atomic bombs or the Soviet participation in the war; The most important reason is my concern over the domestic situation.”

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“Make no mistake of it, we will live. We will be alive and we will walk and talk and eat and sing and laugh and feel and love and bear our children in tranquillity, in security, in decency, in peace. You plan the wars, you masters of men — plan the wars and point the way and we will point the gun.”

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“When people were committed to the idea that in the field of religion only one plan must be adopted, bloody wars resulted. With the acknowledgment of the principle of religious freedom these wars ceased.”

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“It became evident to me long before the war was over that the effect of it, which would hit this country hardest in the years immediately succeeding, was the tragedy of the loss of the men who were just qualifying and getting ready to be the leaders of our younger men…There is nothing in the first twenty years after the war that can make good to this country the loss of so many men of that age. And that was an additional reason why we men who were middle-aged already when the war began should have banded ourselves together by the time the war ended under a vow to our better selves that we would give for the rest of our lives, as a thank-offering to the dead, nothing but the best services we could render to our country. It has become our lot not to seek the ease that we might legitimately seek, but to carry on to the end and help the next generation that is coming along—the generation that was too young to fight—help that to take its place as and when the time comes. It is, and it will be, a tremendous burden on the older men, but it is their proud contribution—the giving of the best they can to help a broken and a shattered world.”

Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech in Leeds (13 March 1925), quoted in On England, and Other Addresses (1926), p. 63-64.
1925

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