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.
“When I hear the term Right wing I think of Hitler and Satan and Civil war.”
Source: Journals (2002), p. 259
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Kurt Cobain 158
American musician and artist 1967–1994Related quotes
To Leon Goldensohn, May 2, 1946, from "The Nuremberg Interviews" by Leon Goldensohn, Robert Gellately - History - 2004.
Extreme Britain Part Two: Tommy Robinson Interview https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5dRiBRM-BD8, UNION magazine (19 November 2015)
2015
“As for me, I cease not to advocate peace. It may be on unjust terms, but even so it is more expedient than the justest of civil wars.”
Equidem ad pacem hortari non desino; quae vel iniusta utilior est quam iustissimum bellum cum civibus.
Epistulae ad Atticum (Letters to Atticus) Book VII, Letter 14, section 3; as translated by E.O. Winstedt in the Loeb Classical Library http://archive.org/stream/letterstoatticus02ciceuoft#page/68/mode/2up
Source: after 2000, Doubt and belief in painting' (2003), p. 106, note 59
“I am not left winged, I am not right winged. I am straight forward.”
Slogan used on Rita Verdonk's weblog http://www.ritaverdonk.net/ retrieved 25 November 2007.
2011-05-15 interview on * Meet the Press
2011-05-15
NBC, quoted in * Gingrich Calls GOP Budget 'Right Wing Social Engineering'
PBS
2011-05-16
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/2011/05/gingrich-keeps-ryan-budget-at-arms-length.html
2011-05-28
2010s
“If war breaks out, I will fight for Hitler since such a war would be against Jewry.”
National Socialism Now.