War Powers Quotes

#1. We all agree that we've got to bring these terrorists to justice and to make sure that they're never allowed to perpetrate such an evil act as they did. And so all of us are dealing with that. We know that the President has the authority to go to war under the War Powers Act.

Barbara Lee

#2. But do I think that our actions in anyway violate the War Powers Resolution, the answer is no.

Barack Obama

#3. Since the enactment of the War Powers Act in 1973, which I supported then and support now, Congress has been reluctant to assert its authority when presidents decide to send American soldiers into harm's way.

Charles B. Rangel

#4. American boys should not be seen dying on the nightly news. Wars should be over in three days or less, or before Congress invokes the War Powers Resolution.

Evan Thomas

#5. Only we, the public, can force our representatives to reverse their abdication of the war powers that the Constitution gives exclusively to the Congress.

Daniel Ellsberg

#6. The War Powers Act requires presidents to seek the consent of the American people, through their representatives, before sending our troops into war. It is the responsibility of Congress to deliberate and consult with the executive branch before involving ourselves in a military conflict.

Charles B. Rangel

#7. John F. Kennedy:] Above all, while defending our own vital interests, nuclear powers must avert those confrontations which bring down an adversary to the choice of either a humiliating retreat or a nuclear war.

Elie Abel

#8. And I understood why he came and why I couldn't go, not just then at least, because one never knows if what one sees will disappear forever.

Kevin Powers

#9. The Founders who crafted our Constitution and Bill of Rights were careful to draft a Constitution of limited powers - one that would protect Americans' liberty at all times - both in war, and in peace.

Al Franken

#10. No man has the right to use the great powers of the Presidency to lead the people, indirectly, into war.

Wendell Willkie

#11. Basically all the religions,sciences and powers of the world boil down to a simple truth. The Best Story Teller will win in the end!

Stanley Victor Paskavich

#12. Adieu the clang of war's alarms! To other deeds my soul is strung, And sweeter notes shall now be sung; My harp shall all its powers reveal, To tell the tale my heart must feel; Love, Love alone, my lyre shall claim, In songs of bliss and sighs of flame.

Kathleen Baldwin

#13. [War] can no longer be of concern to great powers alone.

John F. Kennedy

#14. I didn't want to smile and say thanks. Didn't want to pretend I'd done anything except survive

Kevin Powers

#15. The year 1915 was one of meager results, the advantages remaining on the side of the Central Powers, with this understanding, however: The Allies were growing stronger because Great Britain was making rapid progress in marshaling her resources for war.

Kelly Miller

#16. The widespread diffusion of nuclear weapons would make many nations able, and in some cases also create the pressure, to aggravate an on-going crisis, or even touch off a war between two other powers for purposes of their own.

Herman Kahn

#17. Our moral imperative is to work with all our powers for that day when the children of the world grow up without the fear of nuclear war.

Ronald Reagan

#18. Christianity agrees with Dualism that this universe is at war. But it does not think this is a war between independent powers. It thinks it is a civil war, a rebellion, and that we are living in a part of the universe occupied by the rebel.

C.S. Lewis

#19. What King Abdullah of Jordan said is essentially the war against ISIS is a war for the soul of Islam. And it must be Muslim troops on the ground that will destroy ISIS, with the support of a coalition of major powers - U.S., U.K., France, Germany and Russia.

Hillary Clinton

#20. People are going to die," he said flatly. "It's statistics." Then he got up and left the room.

Kevin Powers

#21. There is a difference between Iraq, where you have Sunni, Shia, and Kurds put together after the First World War by the Western powers. It doesn't work. It needs to break up into three parts.

John Kasich

#22. France believes in armed intervention by America only when the intervention is in France to rescue France from occupation by other powers.

William F. Buckley Jr.

#23. Nationalism is war. - in arguing to strengthen the federal powers of the European Union

Francois Mitterrand

#24. In the war upon the powers of darkness, prayer is the primary and mightiest weapon, both in aggressive war upon them and their works; in the deliverance of men from their power; and against them as a hierarchy of powers opposed to Christ and His Church.

Jessie Penn-Lewis

#25. There was no center to the world. The curves of all our bells are cracked.

Kevin Powers

#26. The European powers had been anxious to see the United States become embroiled in a civil war and eventually break into two smaller and weaker nations. That would pave the way for their further colonization of Latin American without fear of the Americans being able to enforce the Monroe Doctrine.

G. Edward Griffin

#27. When humankind possesses enormous new powers, and when the threat of famine, plague and war is finally lifted, what will we do with ourselves? What will the scientists, investors, bankers and presidents do all day? Write poetry? Success

Yuval Noah Harari

#28. The threat today is not that of the 1930s. It's not big powers going to war with each other. The ravages which fundamentalist political ideology inflicted on the 20th century are memories. The Cold war is over. Europe is at peace, if not always diplomatically.

Tony Blair

#29. In death as in life, I defy the Jews who caused this last war [WW II], and I defy the powers of darkness which they represent. I am proud to die for my ideals, and I am sorry for the sons of Britain who have died without knowing why.

William Joyce

#30. I am reading "The Yellow Birds" by Kevin Powers and "Redeployment" by Phil Klay . Both Powers and Klay are Iraq War vets. Klay's stories are remarkable.

George Packer

#31. Nothing is more isolating than having a particular history.

Kevin Powers

#32. In 1913 many believed that there would never again be a war in Europe. The great powers of the continent were so closely intertwined economically that the view was widespread that they could no longer afford to have military confrontations.

Jean-Claude Juncker

#33. They were orphans of war, washed up on that little island in a tide of blood. What made them amazing wasn't that they had miraculous powers; that they had escaped the ghettos and gas chamges was miracle enough.

Ransom Riggs

#34. When two great powers disagree about anything - it doesn't matter what - they must find a way to settle it somehow by arbitration or by negotiation, not by war or threat of war.

Bertrand Russell

#35. The war came to me in my dreams and showed me its sole purpose: to go on, only to go on.

Kevin Powers

#36. The majority of the so-called great powers have long been exploiting and enslaving a whole series of small and weak peoples. And the imperialist war is nothing other than a war for the division and redivision of this kind of booty.

Vladimir Lenin

#37. Some people believe that the nuclear bomb should be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, since it scared the major powers away from war by equating it with doomsday.

Steven Pinker

#38. Music wasn't about learning how to love. It was about learning what to disown and when to disown it. Even the most magnificent piece would end up as collateral damage in the endless war over taste.

Richard Powers

#39. I'm running a war, not a tea party, okay? I have to worry about what happens if murderous lunatics with insane powers escape into the outside world. Feelings and empathy don't get a lot of attention when I'm juggling concerns like that.

Robert J. Crane

#40. For no amount of our screaming at the people in charge to change things can change them... the powers bent on waging war against the poor and the young and the "other" will only be moved to kinship when they observe it.

Father Greg Boyle

#41. war was the fault of the 'masters of men, everywhere, who subconsciously thrust others into suffering in order to advance their own powers'.28

Helen Macdonald

#42. This is how worship is connected to our ability to love. When we give our ultimate allegiance to any of the principalities and powers, large or small, we find ourselves perennially at war with anyone who places these things at risk. Idolatry breeds perpetual vigilance and violence.

Richard Beck

#43. It may be that for a long time some nations will continue to fight each other, but the example of those nations who prefer arbitration to war, law courts to the battlefield, must sooner or later influence the belligerent powers and make war as unpopular as pugilism is now.

Randal Cremer

#44. Do you know what geography really is?" Ted asked. "It's not the shapes of countries or a list of trade routes. Geography is a snapshot of war, plain and simple. It's a record of the state of hostile powers at a moment of suspended animation.

Christopher Bollen

#45. By the Declaration of Independence, dreaded by the foes an for a time doubtfully viewed by many of the friends of America, everything stood on a new and more respectable footing, both with regard to the operations of war or negotiations with foreign powers.

Mercy Otis Warren

#46. I've come to accept that parts of life are constant, that just because something happens on two different days doesn't make it a goddamn miracle.

Kevin Powers

#47. War expands government powers. The trouble is that, when the war goes away, the government powers do not.

P. J. O'Rourke

#48. I understood that 'The Yellow Birds' would be a peculiar representation of the experience of being at war. I intended it to be so.

Kevin Powers

#49. My personal opinion is that if someone writes honestly about war, it will inherently be anti-war.

Kevin Powers

#50. In wars of the European powers in matters relating to themselves we have never taken any part, nor does it comport with our policy so to do

James Monroe

#51. Black people have always been used as a buffer in this country between powers to prevent class war.

Toni Morrison

#52. I see this piece of legislation as essentially being a declaration of virtual war. It is giving the President tremendous powers to pursue war efforts against a sovereign nation ... I think it is another example of a flawed foreign policy that we have followed for a good many decades.

Ron Paul

#53. The victor powers in the Great War had irresistible force at their disposal if only they could muster the will to deploy it. But they increasingly lacked that will.

Robert Service

#54. As every advance of Power is useful for war, so war is useful for the advance of power; war is like a sheep-dog harrying the laggard Powers to catch up their smarter fellows in the totalitarian race.

Bertrand De Jouvenel

#55. This tune goes manly.
Come, go we to the King. Our power is ready;
Our lack is nothing but our leave. Macbeth
Is ripe for shaking, and the powers above
Put on their instruments. Receive what cheer you may.
The night is long that never finds the day.
They exit.

William Shakespeare

#56. Blake's song isn't really a song for England alone," said Dym. "It's a song for every land. We're all building the unseen Jerusalem together. But the powers of darkness don't want to see a time when the earth shall be filled with the glory of the God as the waters cover the sea.

Constance Savery

#57. The logic of war seems to be if the belligerent can fight, he will fight. That leaders will not surrender until surrender is academic. How is a national leader to explain the sacrifice of so much for nothing?

Thomas Powers

#58. In this distribution of powers the wisdom of our constitution is manifested. It is the province and duty of the Executive to preserve to the Nation the blessings of peace. The Legislature alone can interrupt those blessings, by placing the Nation in a state of War.

Alexander Hamilton

#59. So I ask the nuclear powers to abandon the out-of-date thinking of the Cold War period and take a fresh look. Above all, I appeal to them to bear in mind the long-term threat that nuclear weapons pose to humankind and to begin action towards their elimination.

Joseph Rotblat

#60. These recent weeks have taught me that I am not in control of my own destiny, and that powers much larger than I are at war in this world. I can only be faithful to the tasks set before me. The rest is out of my hands.

L.B. Graham

#61. As peacemakers, we must resist all the powers of war and destruction and proclaim that peace is the divine gift offered to all who affirm life. Resistance means saying 'No' to all the forces of death, wherever they may be.

Henri Nouwen

#62. People were already beginning to forget, what horrible suffering the war had brought them. I did not want to cause fear and panic, but to let people know how dreadful war is and so to stimulate people's powers of resistance.

Otto Dix

#63. Science has produced such powerful weapons that in a war between great powers there would be neither victor nor vanquished. Both would be overwhelmed in destruction.

John Boyd Orr

#64. The most disastrous phenomenon of the current situation is the factor that imperialism is employing for its own ends all the powers of the proletariat, all of its institutions and weapons, which its fighting vanguard has created for its war of liberation.

Clara Zetkin

#65. I believe that the power to declare war is most important in limiting the powers of the national government in regard to the rights of its citizens, but that it does not require Congress to give its approval before the president uses force abroad.

John Yoo

#66. Try to reject war and give peace a chance. Question the powers that be and find out why they make the dubious decisions they do that send young people to war.

Helen Thomas

#67. Life is war. That's not all it is. But it is always that. Our weakness in prayer is owing largely to our neglect of this truth. Prayer is primarily a wartime walkie-talkie for the mission of the church as it advances against the powers of darkness and unbelief.

John Piper

#68. The powers-that-be understand that to create the appropriate atmosphere for war, it's necessary to create within the general populace a hatred, fear or mistrust of others regardless of whether those others belong to a certain group of people or to a religion or a nation.

James Morcan

#69. Since the end of the Cold War two main nuclear powers have begun to make big reductions in their nuclear arsenals. Each of them is dismantling about 2,000 nuclear warheads a year.

Joseph Rotblat

#70. I can't envision an honest war novel that left war in a positive light.

Kevin Powers

#71. The assassination at Sarajevo was certainly the crucial precedent of the European war that its conspirators had sought, but was not the historical cause ... The assassination acted as a lever, prying the various powers into predictable paths.

J. Bowyer Bell

#72. Ragnarok is coming. When the sky splits asunder and the dark powers of Muspell march out on their war journey, Frey

Neil Gaiman

#73. No totalitarians, no wars, no fears, famines or perils of any kind can really break a man's spirit until he breaks it himself by surrendering. Tyranny has many dread powers, but not the power to rule the spirit.

Edgar S. Brightman

#74. I know that war and mayhem run in our blood. I refuse to believe that they must dominate our lives. We humans are animals, too, but animals with amazing powers of rationality, morality, society. We can use our strength and courage not to savage each other, but to defend our highest purposes.

Donella Meadows

#75. Science devises ever bloodier means of war until humanity's powers of destruction overcome our powers of creation and our civilisation drives itself to extinction.

David Mitchell

#76. Oh, Death was never enemy of ours!
We laughed at him, we leagued with him, old chum.
No soldier's paid to kick against His powers.
We laughed, - knowing that better men would come,
And greater wars: when each proud fighter brags
He wars on Death, for lives; not men, for flags.

Wilfred Owen

#77. We may think of peace as the absence of war, that if the great powers would reduce their weapons arsenals, we could have peace. But if we look deeply into the weapons, we will see our own minds - our own prejudices, fears, and ignorance.

Nhat Hanh