All Will be Well (2004)
“The price of inaction is far greater than the cost of making a mistake.”
2011, Address on interventions in Libya (March 2011)
Context: America has an important strategic interest in preventing Qaddafi from overrunning those who oppose him. A massacre would have driven thousands of additional refugees across Libya’s borders, putting enormous strains on the peaceful — yet fragile — transitions in Egypt and Tunisia. The democratic impulses that are dawning across the region would be eclipsed by the darkest form of dictatorship, as repressive leaders concluded that violence is the best strategy to cling to power. The writ of the United Nations Security Council would have been shown to be little more than empty words, crippling that institution’s future credibility to uphold global peace and security. So while I will never minimize the costs involved in military action, I am convinced that a failure to act in Libya would have carried a far greater price for America.
“Nothing is without cost. There is a price to all power, and it is not always obvious.”
Source: Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn, The Dragonbone Chair (1988), Chapter 10, “King Hemlock” (p. 142).
“The cost of liberty is less than the price of repression.”
John Brown: A Biography (1909): "The Legacy of John Brown"
Charles E. Wilson cited in: Ernest Dale (1950), Sources of economic information for collective bargaining. p. 36
“There can be no greater error than to expect or calculate upon real favors from nation to nation.”
1790s, Farewell Address (1796)
“Error is the price we pay for progress.”
1920s, Process and Reality: An Essay in Cosmology (1929)
“Nothing is more damaging to a new truth than an old error.”
Maxim 715, trans. Stopp
Maxims and Reflections (1833)
