“Any government has as much of a duty to avoid war as a ship's captain has to avoid a shipwreck.”
Variant translation: Every government has as much of a duty to avoid war as a ship's captain has to avoid a shipwreck.
Sur l’eau (1888)
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Guy De Maupassant 59
French writer 1850–1893Related quotes
Knowing Yourself: The True in the False (1996)

Memories of President Lincoln. O Captain! my Captain!
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

“It is best to avoid low company, whether they come in peace or in war.”
An argosy of fables, p. 245
about himself, Extracted from Baharīstān-e- Jami

On Good Morning Britain speaking about his view of tax avoidance schemes and if Gary Barlow should give back his OBE following claims that the singer took part in one - Prime Minister David Cameron speaks to Good Morning Britain, ITV (12 May 2014) http://www.itv.com/presscentre/press-releases/prime-minister-david-cameron-speaks-good-morning-britain
2010s, 2014

“You don't avoid such a war, you merely postpone it, to your own disadvantage.”
Source: The Prince (1513), Ch. 3 (as translated by RM Adams)
Context: If someone puts up the argument that King Louis gave the Romagna to Pope Alexander, and the kingdom of Naples to Spain, in order to avoid a war, I would answer as I did before: that you should never let things get out of hand in order to avoid war. You don't avoid such a war, you merely postpone it, to your own disadvantage.

“Poland wants war with Germany and Germany will not be able to avoid it even if she wants to.”
Daily Mail, August 6th, 1939, according to JRBooksOnline http://www.jrbooksonline.com/polish_atrocities.htm, also published in The Liberty Bell, Volume 17 page 23 https://books.google.ca/books?id=ZpgfAQAAMAAJ and 2012 book The Myth of German Villainy https://books.google.ca/books?id=Lz8vNz4gfPwC&pg=PA319 (page 319) page 36 of the 2017 book Heroes of the Reich https://books.google.ca/books?id=IbHADgAAQBAJ&pg=PT36 also uses it
Attributed to Rydz

Endorsement of a letter relating to the Whiskey Ring (29 July 1875).
1870s