Quotes of the Morning

“My views and feelings (are) in favor of the abolition of war--and I hope it is practicable, by improving the mind and morals of society, to lessen the disposition to war; but of its abolition I despair. “
-President Thomas Jefferson (1743 - 1826)

“Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the clouds of war, it is humanity hanging on a cross of iron.”
-President Dwight Eisenhower, April 16, 1953

“We merely want to live in peace with all the world, to trade with them, to commune with them, to learn from their culture as they may learn from ours, so that the products of our toil may be used for our schools and our roads and our churches and not for guns and planes and tanks and ships of war.”
-President Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890 - 1969)

“Mankind must put an end to war or war will put an end to mankind.”
-President John F. Kennedy, Speech to UN General Assembly, Sept. 25, 1961

“Once lead this people into war and they will forget there ever was such a thing as tolerance.”
-President Woodrow Wilson, in John Dos Passos, "Mr Wilson's War"

“War may sometimes be a necessary evil. But no matter how necessary, it is always an evil, never a good. We will not learn how to live together in peace by killing each other's children.”
-President Jimmy Carter

“History teaches that wars begin when governments believe the price of aggression is cheap.”
-Ronald Reagan (1911 - 2004), Address to the Nation, Jan 16, 1984

“As for perhaps the most notorious terrorist, Osama bin Laden, the administration has so far been unsuccessful in its attempt to locate the mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Asked why, Bush said, ‘Because he's hiding.’"
-Washington Post, January 15, 2005

“When I was a boy I was told that anybody could become President. Now I'm beginning to believe it.”
-Clarence Darrow (1857 - 1938)

“President Bush said the public's decision to reelect him was a ratification of his approach toward Iraq and that there was no reason to hold any administration officials accountable for mistakes or misjudgments in prewar planning or managing the violent aftermath.
‘We had an accountability moment, and that's called the 2004 elections,’ Bush said in an interview with The Washington Post. ‘The American people listened to different assessments made about what was taking place in Iraq, and they looked at the two candidates, and chose me.’"
-Washington Post, January 15, 2005

“The provision of the Constitution giving the war-making power to Congress was dictated, as I understand it, by the following reasons. Kings had always been involving and impoverishing their people in wars, pretending generally, if not always, that the good of the people was the object. This, our Convention understood to be the most oppressive of all Kingly oppressions; and they resolved to so frame the Constitution that no one man should hold the power of bringing this oppression upon us.”
-President Abraham Lincoln (1809 - 1865)

“Its good to be the king.”
-Mel Brooks

"’I did my best to reach out, and I will continue to do so as the president,’ Bush said. ‘It's important for people to know that I'm the president of everybody.’"
-Washington Post, January 15, 2005