Top 100 Military Force Quotes
#1. Four or five frigates will do the business without any military force.
Lord North
#2. Military force is irrelevant to many of the most urgent threats we face. If we are to solve our myriad domestic problems and revitalize our economy we need to be more selective about our involvement in foreign crises large and small.
William Hartung
#3. We need to destroy ISIS in the caliphate. That's - that should be our objective. The refugee issue will be solved if we destroy ISIS there, which means we need to have a no-fly zone, safe zones there for refugees and to build a military force.
Jeb Bush
#4. I think most Americans believe that although it's better not to use military force if you can avoid it, that the world simply doesn't provide us the luxury of giving away military force as an important tool of foreign policy.
Robert Kagan
#5. We believe half-instinctively that evil always defeats itself in the long run. Pacifism is founded largely on this belief. Don't resist evil, and it will somehow destroy itself. But why should it? What evidence is there that it does ... unless conquered from the outside by military force?
George Orwell
#6. A military force, at the command of Congress, can execute no laws, but such as the people perceive to be just and constitutional; for they will possess the power, and jealousy will instantly inspire the inclination, to resist the execution of a law which appears to them unjust and oppressive.
Noah Webster
#7. Nine years ago on September 14, 2001, I placed the lone vote against the 'Authorization for Use of Military Force' - an authorization that I knew would provide a blank check to wage war anywhere, at any time, and for any length.
Barbara Lee
#8. The use of large-scale military force in volatile regions of underdeveloped countries is difficult to do right, has major unintended consequences and rarely turns out to be quick, effective, controlled and short lived.
Dennis C. Blair
#9. With amazement and disappointment, we discovered in late October and early November that the beaten Russians seemed quite unaware that as a military force they had almost ceased to exist.
Gunther Blumentritt
#10. The amount of military force necessary to provide reassurance depends on how dangerous people think the world is. And that I think ultimately depends upon the kinds of government that hold sway in major countries.
Michael Mandelbaum
#11. And after September the 11th, the United States Congress also granted me additional authority to use military force against al Qaeda ...
George W. Bush
#12. I considered myself engaged in a war from Day One. And my objective was to force the federal government - the Kennedy administration at that time - into a position where they would have to use the United States military force to enforce my rights as a citizen.
James Meredith
#13. To subdue and crush the masses of a nation by military force, when all are unanimous in the determination to be free, is to attempt the imprisonment of a whole people; all such projects must be temporary and transient, and terminate in a catastrophe...
William Dalrymple
#14. If you don't have a good idea of what to do next after using military force, then don't use it in the first place.
Ted Lieu
#15. Any military force should be dictated by the vital national security interests of the United States. And if and when we use force, we should use overwhelming force for a clearly stated objective. And then when we're done, we should get the heck out.
Ted Cruz
#16. The spirit of this country is totally adverse to a large military force.
Thomas Jefferson
#17. Nothing matures a military force quicker than actual military operations.
Duncan Hunter
#18. I went to Ft Bragg and learned that Delta was indeed gearing up for the rescue. Still I was concerned the Reagan staff would not be willing to take the risk of sending an official military force into Laos.
Bo Gritz
#19. Strategy is the bridge that connects political goals with military force (and vice versa).
Peter D. Haynes
#20. The big issue is whether the United States will succeed in its venture of reshaping the Middle East. It is not clear to me that using military force is the way to do it. We should not have gone into Iraq. But we have.
Milton Friedman
#21. Our country regularly uses military force, but only a fraction of Americans serve in the military. This means fewer and fewer people have a direct link to the military, and yet it remains as important as ever that we have a rich understanding of what we are doing as a country.
Phil Klay
#22. So a military force has no constant formation, water has no constant shape: the ability to gain victory by changing and adapting according to the opponent is called genius.
Sun Tzu
#23. Germany is too big to sit on the sidelines on world issues. Military force is not the ultima ratio it used to be, but it can be used, with care.
Frank-Walter Steinmeier
#24. [A] military force was collected in Europe, formidable by their arms and numbers, if the generals had understood the science of command, and the soldiers the duty of obedience.
Edward Gibbon
#25. No one will remember that President Obama supported the Arab Spring if it eventually fails and the region collapses back into the political Dark Ages. If we actively engage these movements with advice, with money, and, when necessary, with military force, then we get a vote in how it all turns out.
Sebastian Junger
#26. We should never allow computers to make inherently governmental decisions in terms of the application of military force, even if that's happening on the internet.
Edward Snowden
#27. Training a reliable military force that adheres to Western norms and standards is the work of a generation, not a few months.
David Ignatius
#28. It appears that with the deadline for exile come and gone, Saddam Hussein has chosen to make military force the ultimate weapons inspections enforcement mechanism. If so, the only exit strategy is victory, this is our common mission and the world's cause.
John F. Kerry
#29. Obama behaves like a centrist who leans tentatively left on certain social programs but boldly right on military force and civil liberties.
David K. Shipler
#30. America has the strongest, best-trained, best-led military force in the world, and we have failed them. Our military today is struggling in virtually every category that measures preparedness.
John McCain
#31. At the same time I think it is absolutely necessary that there be no confusion, no misunderstanding that if the Iraqis.. do not comply, then there will be consequences and those consequences will involve the use of military force to disarm them through changing the regime.
Colin Powell
#32. Let our position be absolutely clear: An attempt by any outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf region will be regarded as an assault on the vital interests of the United States of America, and such an assault will be repelled by any means necessary, including military force.
Jimmy Carter
#33. America stood at the summit of power, emerging from the Cold War as an economic, cultural and military force without equal.
Lincoln Chafee
#34. Judge candidly what a wretched figure the American empire will exhibit in the eye of other nations, without a power to array and support a military force for its own protection.
Oliver Ellsworth
#35. The world dominion of western thought, forms of organisation, technology and military force is not God-given, nor eternal, nor greatly appreciated by the rest of the world.
James Buchan
#36. To say that a social order is maintained by military force immediately raises the question: what maintains the military order? It is impossible to organise an army solely by coercion. At least some of the commanders and soldiers must truly believe in something, be
Yuval Noah Harari
#37. My advice is: 1. Be judicious in the use of military force. 2. When military force is required, use overwhelming force. 3. Do not micromanage military leaders. 4. Ensure your battle plans will win the conflict and win the peace.
Steve Stivers
#38. United States has comparative advantage in military force. It tends to react to anything at first with military force, that's what it's good at. And I think they overdid it. There was more military force than was necessary.
Noam Chomsky
#39. If we have reason to believe someone is preparing an attack against the U.S., has developed that capability, harbours those aspirations, then I think the U.S. is justified in dealing with that, if necessary, by military force.
Dick Cheney
#40. I think that our American people will welcome a Russian military force for peace-keeping purposes.
Sam Nunn
#41. We can no longer apply the classic criteria to clearly determine whether and when we should use military force. We are waging war in Afghanistan, for example, but it's an asymmetrical war where the enemies are criminals instead of soldiers.
Otto Schily
#42. Air power is the most difficult of military force to measure or even express in precise terms.
Winston Churchill
#43. The first duty of the sovereign [is] that of protecting the society from the violence and invasion of other independent societies, [which] can be performed only by means of a military force
Adam Smith
#44. The application of military force, or the prospect of such application, inhibits terrorist violence.
Benjamin Netanyahu
#45. I spent thirty-three years and four months in active military service as a member of this country's most agile military force, the Marine Corps. I served in all commissioned ranks from Second Lieutenant to Major-General.
Smedley Butler
#46. We have an authorization to use military force against terrorists. We passed it after 9/11.
Hillary Clinton
#47. You can't solve a dignity problem with military force.
Rand Paul
#48. Every time our government chooses to use military force to bring about change in the world, it once again teaches our children the myth of redemptive violence, the myth that violence can be an instrument for good.
Shane Claiborne
#49. A standing military force, with an overgrown Executive will not long be safe companions to liberty.
James Madison
#50. We want to approach this in a multilateral way, talking with our friends, consulting with our security council colleagues in the United Nations, hoping to find a way to solve this peacefully, but at the same time recognising that unless the threat of military force is there, Iraq will not disarm.
Colin Powell
#51. Resort to military force is a first sure sign that we are giving up the struggle for the democratic way of life, and that the Old World has conquered morally as well as geographically succeeding in imposing upon us its ideals and methods.
John Dewey
#52. The two things that could have been better is number one, to get major military force into the community almost immediately to make sure that there was law and order. Number two, we had enough helicopters to airlift food into the centers of population and those places.
Warren Rudman
#53. The pathos of it all is that the America which is to be protected by a huge military force is not the America of the people, but that of the privileged class ...
Emma Goldman
#54. Our country represents nothing but peaceful intentions toward all the earth, but it ought not to fail to maintain such a military force as comports with the dignity and security of a great people.
Calvin Coolidge
#55. (D) Write a political treatise - not to exceed 250,000 words or 500 sides, whichever is less - detailing your solution to stabilising relations in the region. Military force above brigade level is not permitted, nor is divine intervention. You may include diagrams.
Jonathan L. Howard
#57. In time, the church will actually be organized more as a military force with an army, navy, air force, etc.
Rick Joyner
#58. We had the best-equipped and we have the best-trained military force on the face of the earth, right here in Oklahoma.
Harry M. Wyatt III
#59. I believe that there is a greater power in the world than the evil power of military force, of nuclear bombs
there is the power of good, of morality, of humanitarianism.
Linus Pauling
#60. The authority of the prince," said Artaxerxes, "must be defended by a military force; that force can only be maintained by taxes; all taxes must, at last, fall upon agriculture; and agriculture can never flourish except under the protection of justice and moderation." ^55
Edward Gibbon
#61. For interests that are vital to the U.S. - that is, essential for our survival and wellbeing - the U.S. should be prepared to use military force - including unilaterally, if necessary.
Graham T. Allison
#62. The United States does not view our authority to use military force against Al Qaeda as being restricted solely to 'hot' battlefields like Afghanistan.
John O. Brennan
#63. We should be more modest in our belief that we can impose democracy on a country through military force.
Barack Obama
#64. If you are going to use military force, then you ought to use overwhelming military force. Use too much and deliberately use too much; you'll save lives, not only your own, but the enemy's too.
Curtis LeMay
#65. The highly motivated young people who comprise the backbone of our military force truly are taking their place as one of America's greatest generations.
Trent Lott
#66. The use of military force against Iran would be very dangerous. It would be very provocative. The only thing worse would be Iran being a nuclear power.
Rudy Giuliani
#67. He'd know that I think that ... well, that bending an enemy's will through military force is the absolute last way a nation ought to go about solving their problems.
Meg Cabot
#68. So long as nuclear weapons continue to exist, so will the temptation to threaten others with overwhelming military force.
Daisaku Ikeda
#69. You have no idea how much it contributes to the general politeness and pleasantness of diplomacy when you have a little quiet armed force in the background
George F. Kennan
#70. The commander must decide how he will fight the battle before it begins. He must then decide who he will use the military effort at his disposal to force the battle to swing the way he wishes it to go; he must make the enemy dance to his tune from the beginning and not vice versa.
Bernard Law Montgomery
#71. An army should always be so distributed that its parts can aid each other and combine to produce the maximum possible concentration of force at one place, while the minimum force necessary is used elsewhere to prepare the success of the concentration.
B.H. Liddell Hart
#72. When they arrived, they arrived in force- a dozen military ships surrounding the safe house, guns drawn.
Marissa Meyer
#73. Airpower has become predominant, both as a deterrent to war, and-in the eventuality of war-as the devastating force to destroy an enemy's potential and fatally undermine his will to wage war.
Omar N. Bradley
#74. I always wanted to go into the military or something like that - my whole family, all my friends are either Air Force, Navy, or Marines.
RJ Mitte
#75. San Antonio is like a military town. It's like literally - when I was growing up there, there were five Air Force bases, plus Fort Sam Houston. I was always sort of near the military.
Steve Earle
#76. America's finest - our men and women in uniform, are a force for good throughout the world, and that is nothing to apologize for.
Sarah Palin
#77. In the name of "force protection," the military often rolls up windows, builds walls, and points rifles at the outside world. The best force protection, however, is to be surrounded by friends and allies.
Eric Greitens
#78. No commander was ever privileged to lead a finer force; no commander ever derived greater inspiration from the performance of his troops.
John J. Pershing
#79. You've got to hae ground forces that are capable of going after them and rooting them out.
Raymond T. Odierno
#80. Putting women in military combat is the cutting edge of the feminist goal to force us into an androgynous society.
Phyllis Schlafly
#81. At Lackland Air Force Base, they make an effort to retrain military dogs that suffer from PTSD. It's a lengthy, long process. The treatment is much the same as it would be for people, but it's a difficult road back.
Robert Crais
#82. it was the power of the military, and in particular that of the Air Force, which was the hidden hand that allowed universalist ideas to matter so much more than terrain and the historical experience of people living on it.
Robert D. Kaplan
#84. The soldier is the Army. No army is better than its soldiers. The Soldier is also a citizen. In fact, the highest obligation and privilege of citizenship is that of bearing arms for one's country
George S. Patton Jr.
#85. People in uniform are not sacrosanct. They don't have all the answers. The use of force is a political decision at its core, in terms of its objectives; then the military, as the experts, must be brought in to tell you how to do it.
Richard Holbrooke
#86. Once you get them running, you stay right on top of them, and that way a small force can defeat a large one every time ... Only thus can a weaker country cope with a stronger; it must make up in activity what it lacks in strength.
Stonewall Jackson
#87. In view of the result of attained at the Washington Treaty which, my advisors believe, guarantee peace in the Pacific for some time to come, it is proposed to reduce the establishment of the navy and army, and postpone the expansion of the air force.
Henry Forster, 1st Baron Forster
#88. My experience is that if the military didn't want to use force and was confronted with a president that did, the military would come back with what I would call the 'bomb Moscow' scenario. They would say it had to be done with conditions that were so extreme, you obviously wouldn't do it.
George P. Shultz
#89. The day after the prison was transferred to the military intelligence command, they had an entire battalion - 1,200, 1,500 soldiers - arrive at Abu Ghraib just for force protection alone.
Janis Karpinski
#90. The Air Force is pulling nine cargo aircraft from military operations to support President Obama's stepped-up visits to campaign events. Good, now he can carry his entire ego with him on the trail.
Fred Thompson
#91. A force engaged is out of the hand of its commander.
Ardant Du Picq
#93. It follows then as certain as that night succeeds the day, that without a decisive naval force we can do nothing definitive, and with it, everything honorable and glorious.
George Washington
#94. Before statehood was achieved, Syria and Egypt had their tanks and military equipment lined up to invade Tel Aviv and destroy it; but the Israelis scrambled together an air force, some of it from old Second World War Messerschmidts, and the invasion was halted.
Steven Spielberg
#95. Overwhelmingly, Israel's political and military establishment want the rest of the world to act diplomatically or otherwise to stop Iran. But if that doesn't happen, then the impulse toward the use of force will become quite strong.
Dennis Ross
#96. This cannot be the United States being the air force for Shia militias, or a Shia on Sunni Arab fight.
David Petraeus
#97. Our warriors are no longer limited to the people who fly the airplanes ... Our entire force is a warrior force. Being a warrior is not an AFSC, ... it's a condition of the heart.
John P. Jumper
#98. Any communitys arm of force - military, police, security - needs people in it who can do necessary evil, and yet not be made evil by it. To do only the necessary and no more. To constantly question the assumptions, to stop the slide into atrocity.
Lois McMaster Bujold
#99. Therefore, if one were to consider that there was virtually no possibility of success through the US-Japan negotiations, the military and economic pressures would only force Japan into further crisis if time were allowed to pass in vain.
Hideki Tojo
#100. The Americans called theirs the Officers Club but the Canadians called ours the Officers Mess. The American term was the more honest; ours the more accurate. Drunken officers at play are messy.
R.J. Childerhose
