...nuclear war could alleviate some of the factors leading to today's ecological disturbances that are due to current high population concentrations and heavy industrial production.
US Office of Civil Defense, 1982
A Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor is a strategic impossibility.
Major George Fielding Eliot
September 1938
Airplanes are interesting toys but of no military value.
Marechal Ferdinand Foch, Professor of Strategy, Ecole Superieure de Guerre
Cracking the [WWII] Italian codes was something you did at the pub over a beer. It was both relaxing and enjoyable...
Peter Hilton, WW2 British codebreaker
He grounds the warship he walks on.
John Bracken on Captain Barney Kelly, who ran U.S.S. Enterprise aground in San Francisco Bay in May 1983.
I can picture in my mind a world without war, a world without hate. And I can picture us attacking that world, because they'd never expect it.
Jack Handey
I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.
Albert Einstein
I propose getting rid of conventional armaments and replacing them with reasonably priced hydrogen bombs that would be distributed equally throughout the world.
Idi Amin
I tell you Wellington is a bad general, the English are bad soldiers; we will settle the matter by lunch time.
Napoleon Bonaparte, at breakfast on the morning of the Battle of Waterloo
I'd like to see government get out of war altogether and leave the whole field to private industry.
Joseph Heller
Navy Law
If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs, maybe you just don't understand the situation.
If you don't know what I'm talking about, I share your lack of knowledge. I don't know what I'm talking about.
General Lewis B. Hershey
It is time the Arabs and the Jews sat down and settled this dispute in the true Christian spirit.
Senator Warren Austin
No matter what happens, the US Navy is not going to be caught napping.
US Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox, December 4, 1941
Our bombs are smarter than the average high school student. At least they can find Kuwait.
A. Whitney Brown
Peace, n. In international affairs, a period of cheating between two periods of fighting.
Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?)
Sometimes I think war is God's way of teaching us geography.
Paul Rodriguez
The chances of Germany making a quick job of overwhelming Poland are not good.
Major George Fielding Eliot, 13 May 1939
The world is a madhouse, so it's only right that it is patrolled by armed idiots.
Brendan Behan
They couldn't hit an elephant at this dist...
The last words of General John Sedgwick (spoken while looking over the parapet at enemy lines during the battle of Spotsylvania in 1864)
They've got us surrounded again, the poor bastards.
General Creighton W. Abrams, at the Battle of the Bulge
US aid to South Vietnam may be stepped up. But no US combat troops are going into the jungle to engage in a shooting war with Communist guerrillas.
US News and World Report, 1961