“A preventive war, to my mind, is an impossibility today.”
News Conference of (11 August 1954) http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/print.php?pid=9977
Variant: When people speak to you about a preventive war, you tell them to go and fight it. After my experience, I have come to hate war. War settles nothing.
Quoted in Quote magazine (4 April 1965) and The Quotable Dwight D. Eisenhower (1967) edited by Elsie Gollagher, p. 219<!-- seldom found variants: All of us have heard this term 'preventative war' since the earliest days of Hitler. I recall that is about the first time I heard it. In this day and time... I don't believe there is such a thing; and, frankly, I wouldn't even listen to anyone seriously that came in and talked about such a thing.
A preventative war, to my mind, is an impossibility. I don't believe there is such a thing, and frankly I wouldn't even listen to anyone seriously that came in and talked about such a thing.-->
1950s
Context: All of us have heard this term "preventive war" since the earliest days of Hitler. I recall that is about the first time I heard it. In this day and time, if we believe for one second that nuclear fission and fusion, that type of weapon, would be used in such a war — what is a preventive war?
I would say a preventive war, if the words mean anything, is to wage some sort of quick police action in order that you might avoid a terrific cataclysm of destruction later.
A preventive war, to my mind, is an impossibility today. How could you have one if one of its features would be several cities lying in ruins, several cities where many, many thousands of people would be dead and injured and mangled, the transportation systems destroyed, sanitation implements and systems all gone? That isn't preventive war; that is war.
I don't believe there is such a thing; and, frankly, I wouldn't even listen to anyone seriously that came in and talked about such a thing.
… It seems to me that when, by definition, a term is just ridiculous in itself, there is no use in going any further.
There are all sorts of reasons, moral and political and everything else, against this theory, but it is so completely unthinkable in today's conditions that I thought it is no use to go any further.
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Dwight D. Eisenhower 173
American general and politician, 34th president of the Unit… 1890–1969Related quotes
“Preventing war is much better than protesting against the war. Protesting the war is too late.”
Source: Being Peace
“You cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war.”
“Now is the time to prevent a third world war.”
Now is the Time to Prevent a Third World War (1950)
Context: World government must progressively be established, common problems must be solved by common action, economic and racial justice and fellowship must be achieved... empires must be transformed into commonwealths, the race of armaments must be stopped and the system of balance-of-armed-power must be brought to an end, the churches must take Jesus seriously by trusting goodwill and pacific means and by disentangling themselves from the war system, a mighty movement of peoples must be created so that governments will maintain friendly and cooperative relations and will refrain from hostile and provocative actions.... Now is the time to prevent a third world war.
“My father taught me to understand that not much was impossible, if you had a mind to go after it.”
p 7
Achieving The Impossible (2010)
Context: My father taught me to understand that not much was impossible, if you had a mind to go after it. What seems beyond you is only unreachable if that’s what you believe.
Letter in Harijan (1938) http://web.archive.org/20021008131454/die_meistersinger.tripod.com/gandhi9.html
1930s
“Preventive war is like committing suicide for fear of death.”
Quoted as a remark of Bismark without quotation marks, in Thinking About the Unthinkable in the 1980s (1984) by Herman Kahn, p. 136, a paraphrase of what Bismarck told the Reichstag on Feb. 9, 1876. Referring to March 1875, when the French National Assembly had decided to strengthen their army by 144,000 additional troops, Bismarck asked the deputies to imagine he had told them a year ago that one had to wage war without having been attacked or humiliated: „Würden Sie da nicht sehr geneigt gewesen sein, zunächst nach dem Arzte zu schicken (Heiterkeit), um untersuchen zu lassen, wie ich dazu käme, dass ich nach meiner langen politischen Erfahrung die kolossale Dummheit begehen könnte, so vor Sie zu treten und zu sagen: Es ist möglich, dass wir in einigen Jahren einmal angegriffen werden, damit wir dem nun zuvorkommen, fallen wir rasch über unsere Nachbarn her und hauen sie zusammen, ehe sie sich vollständig erholen – gewissermaßen Selbstmord aus Besorgniß vor dem Tode" (Would you not have been inclined very much to send for a physician in the first place and let him find out, how I with my long experience in politics could commit the colossal stupidity of [...] telling you: It is possible that in some years we might be attacked; to pre-empt that, let us overrun our neighbors and smash them before they have fully recovered [from the war of 1870/71] - in a way [commit] suicide from fear of death) reichstagsprotokolle.de 1875/76,2 http://www.reichstagsprotokolle.de/Blatt3_k2_bsb00018381_00571.html p. 1329-30
1870s
“The only way to win the next world war is to prevent it.”
Address at a Rally in the Civic Auditorium, Seattle, Washington (October 17, 1956). Source: Eisenhower Presidential Library. Archived https://web.archive.org/web/20210125121539/https://www.eisenhowerlibrary.gov/eisenhowers/quotes from the original https://www.eisenhowerlibrary.gov/eisenhowers/quotes on January 25, 2021.
1950s
To Leon Goldensohn, March 10, 1946, "The Nuremberg Interviews" by Leon Goldensohn - History - 2007