A Quote by Allan Massie

Blunders are an inescapable feature of war, because choice in military affairs lies generally between the bad and the worse.

Allan Massie

Quote Topics

Affairs Bad Because Between Blunders Choice Feature Generally Inescapable Lies Military War Worse

Quote Author

Allan Massie
Scottish - Novelist

Politics is a field where the choice lies constantly between two blunders.

John Morley

There are some militarists who say: ‘We are not interested in politics but only in the profession of arms.’ It is vital that these simple-minded militarists be made to realize the relationship that exists between politics and military affairs. Military action is a method used to attain a political goal. While military affairs and political affairs are not identical, it is impossible to isolate one from the other.

Mao Zedong

In philosophy seminars, the choice is usually between good and evil. In the real world, however, the choice is often between a bad guy and a worse guy.

Dinesh D'Souza

I'm beginning to think the only choice anyone has in life is between either a bad choice or a worse one.

Sherrilyn Kenyon

It's not a choice between war and peace. It's a choice between war and endless war. It's not appeasement. I think it's better even to call it American self-interest.

Michael Scheuer

The real peril of war lies not in military defeat. It lies in war itself, whether we win or lose.

John T. Flynn

You know in politics you are dealing in the realm of choices. You don't always have clear-cut decision between a thoroughly principled position and a thoroughly unprincipled one. You're making snap decisions with paucity of information, generally trying to do the best that you can, but you will make errors, and sometimes it's a decision between a bad and a worse alternative. It has to be done, because we need to order our society, and of politics it can literally be said: Bad job, but someone's got to do it.

Peter Costello

For the US, the Kosovo War was a success because it encouraged the development of the Pentagon's 'Revolution in Military Affairs' (RMA). The war provided a test site for experimentation, and paved the way for emergence of what I call in Strategie de la deception 'the second deterrence'.

Paul Virilio

The frightening aspect is that it's part of a larger effort from the Pentagon to tear down the wall between public affairs and propaganda, and essentially say there is no difference between information operations, public affairs and psychological operations. They have a new name for that too, it's called Information Engagement. What I hope people take away from this is that it's a window into a larger phenomenon. After a decade of Iraq war you have this Pentagon-military apparatus run amok using resources that they shouldn't be to try to manipulate U.S. public opinion.

Michael Hastings

There is no getting around the reality that the second Iraq war was a war of choice; had it been carried out differently, it still would have been an expensive choice and almost certainly a bad one.

Richard N. Haass

Film is a visceral experience so I think a good war movie is a valuable tool for making us understand what our military goes through, what the issues are, the good and bad sides of war and what we're asking our military to do.

Helen Mirren

There is a residual sense for me, having grown up in the early '70s, that I did not know I had, which was a sense that the military are different than I. Because there was such a divide between the military world - and there still is, because there's no draft - and the civilian world is one of the rotten harvests of the Vietnam War, was this sort of bifurcation of America in that way.

Stephen Colbert

I think that quite often you can only find a choice between bad and worse. But I think it's worth making the effort, and I like to expose my characters to that sort of situation.

Robert Jordan

No war ought ever to be undertaken but under circumstances which render all intercourse of courtesy between the combatants impossible. It is a bad thing that men should hate each other; but it is far worse that they should contract the habit of cutting one another's throats without hatred. War is never lenient but where it is wanton; when men are compelled to fight in self-defence, they must hate and avenge: this may be bad; but it is human nature.