Only fools seek power, and the greatest fools seek it through force.

Violence, even well intentioned, always rebounds upon oneself.

How could man rejoice in victory and delight in the slaughter of men?

Phony pretexts repeated often enough become real reasons. Things that...are not true become true in the public mind simply through endless repetition.

You consider war to be inevitable? Very good. Let everyone who advocates war be enrolled in a special regiment of advance-guards, for the front of every storm, of every attack, to lead them all!

from the novel 'Anna Karenina'

What an immense mass of evil must result...from allowing men to assume the right of anticipating what may happen.

We must not only cease our present desire for the growth of the state, but we must desire its decrease, its weakening...

The greater the state, the more wrong and cruel its patriotism, and the greater is the sum of suffering upon which its power is founded.

In all history there is no war which was not hatched by the governments, the governments alone, independent of the interests of the people, to whom war is always pernicious even when successful.

People who talk of outlawing the atomic bomb are mistaken — what needs to be outlawed is war.

War is both the product of an earlier corruption, and a producer of new corruptions.

From "The Conduct of Life" (1951, republished 1970), page 13, Chapter 1, "The Challenge to Renewal," Section 3, "Diagnosis of Our Times."

Misery, mutilation, destruction, terror, starvation and death characterize the process of war and form a principal part of the product.

from "Technics and Civilization"

In war, the army is not merely a pure consumer, but a negative producer...

from "Technics and Civilization"

War vies with magic in its efforts to get something for nothing...

The greatest protection against war is a well educated populace.

Castetter was a WWI veteran; this quote is from the 1930s (from p. 178 of the book "A Page A Day," ed. by Kenneth Adams, published by Authorhouse.com).

How does one prevail in war? Both sides have already lost.

War is not its own end, except in some catastrophic slide into absolute damnation.

The one pervading evil of democracy is the tyranny of the party that succeeds, by force or fraud, in carrying elections.

Where you have a concentration of power in a few hands, all too frequently men with the mentality of gangsters get control.

Everything secret degenerates, even the administration of justice.

War’s a brain spattering windpipe splitting art.

Don't talk to me about atrocities; all war is an atrocity.

Whether or not patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel, national security can be the last refuge of the tyrant.

from 1/14/05

Acts of terror have never brought down liberal democracies. Acts of parliament have closed a few.

It's quite fun to fight 'em, you know. It's a hell of a hoot. It's fun to shoot some people. I'll be right up front with you, I like brawling.

Comments from 2/1/05 conference in San Diego, California. Lt. Mattis commanded troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.