To urge the preparation of defence is not to assert the imminence of war. On the contrary, if war were imminent, preparations for defence would be too late.

Politics is almost as exciting as war, and quite as dangerous. In war you can only be killed once, but in politics many times.

In a war, you can only be killed once, but in politics, many times.

We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies... the mystic chords of memory... will swell the chorus of the Union... touched by the better angels of our nature.

The man who cannot look upon the battlefield dry-eyed will allow many men to be killed uselessly.

Look at the mistake that Hitler made in not trying invasion in 1940....We had not, at that time, fifty tanks; we had a couple of hundred field guns, some of them brought out of the museums....Think what [the Germans] would do to us if they got here. Think what they would do to us, we who have barred their way to the loot of the whole world, we whom they hate the most because they dread and envy us the most.