War Quotes

The United States will wage war but not declare it.

In the days and in the years that are to come we shall work for a just and honorable peace, a durable peace, as today we work and fight for total victory in war. We can and we will achieve such a peace.

And so today, in this year of war, 1945, we have learned lessons - at a fearful cost - and we shall profit by them.

Men's souls will be shaken with the violences of war. For these men are lately drawn from the ways of peace.

Day in and day out we shall heap tons upon tons of high explosives on their war factories and utilities and seaports.

I ask that the Congress declare that since the unprovoked and dastardly attack by Japan on Sunday, December 7, 1941, a state of war has existed between the United States and the Japanese Empire.

If there is anyone who still wonders why this war is being fought, let him look to Norway. If there is anyone who has any delusions that this war could have been averted, let him look to Norway.

You have heard for six years that I was about to plunge the Nation into war; that you and your little brothers would be sent to the bloody fields of battle in Europe; that I was driving the Nation into bankruptcy; and that I breakfasted every morning on a dish of 'grilled millionaire'.

War is a contagion, whether it be declared or undeclared. It can engulf states and peoples remote from the original scene of hostilities.

We are determined to keep out of war, yet we cannot insure ourselves against the disastrous effects of war and the dangers of involvement.

We cannot have complete protection in a world of disorder in which confidence and security have broken down.

America hates war. America hopes for peace. Therefore, America actively engages in the search for peace.

We are not isolationists except in so far as we seek to isolate ourselves completely from war.

So long as war exists on earth there will be some danger that even the Nation which most ardently desires peace may be drawn into war.

I wish I could keep war from all Nations; but that is beyond my power. I can at least make certain that no act of the United States helps to produce or to promote war.

The conscience of America revolts against war and that any Nation which provokes war forfeits the sympathy of the people of the United States.

A dark old world was devastated by wars between conflicting religions. A dark modern world faces wars between conflicting economic and political fanaticisms in which are intertwined race hatreds.

Several centuries ago the greatest writer in history described the two most menacing clouds that hang over human government and human society as "malice domestic and fierce foreign war."

Our national determination to keep free of foreign wars and foreign entanglements cannot prevent us from feeling deep concern when ideals and principles that we have cherished are challenged.

Don't forget what I discovered that over ninety percent of all national deficits from 1921 to 1939 were caused by payments for past, present, and future wars.