In order to bring a nation to support the burdens incident to maintaining great military establishments, it is necessary to create an emotional state akin to war psychology. There must be the portrayal of an external menace or of internal conditions rendered intolerable by the unjust restraints of foreign nations. This involves the development to a high degree of the nation-hero nation-villain ideology and the arousing of the population to a sense of the duty of sacrifice.

Once - many, many years ago - I thought I made a wrong decision. Of course, it turned out that I had been right all along. But I was wrong to have thought that I was wrong

The U.S. has no friends, only interests.

You have to take chances for peace, just as you must take chances in war. Some say that we were brought to the verge of war. Of course we were brought to the verge of war. The ability to get to the verge without getting into the war is the necessary art... If you try to run away from it, if you are scared to go to the brink, you are lost. We've had to look it square in the face... We walked to the brink and we looked it in the face. We took strong action.

The world will never have lasting peace so long as men reserve for war the finest human qualities. Peace, no less than war, requires idealism and self-sacrifice and a righteous and dynamic faith.

Our capacity to retaliate must be, and is, massive in order to deter all forms of aggression

Of all tasks of government the most basic is to protect its citizens against violence.