The task is not to overcome opponents in general but only those opponents against whom one has to summon all one's strength, one's skill and one's swordsmanship-in fact to master opponents who are one's equals.
Our goal in Iraq is victory. Our goal is for a young democracy to be able to sustain itself, govern itself, and defend itself and serve as an ally in the war on terror.
Things have gotten openly more extreme in the last few years. I was lecturing in Hungary, whose prime minister, Victor Orban, is an example of this trend. All over Budapest, statues have been replaced, museum exhibits have been redone, to turn ethnic Hungarians, not Jews, into the prime victims of the Germans during World War II. Five years ago, who would have thought this possible?
It has cost me years of thought to arrive at certain results, by many believed to be unattainable, for which there are now numerous claimants, and the number of these is rapidly increasing, like that of the colonels in the South after the war.
To me war is something to be outgrown, recognized as immature, wasteful, and so destructive to life that human beings should shun it ... as they once shunned bubonic plague.
A defeat in war is not the greatest of all evils; but when the defeat has been inflicted by enemies who are not worthy of you, then the calamity is doubled.
Except when you're marching to war, it's not a very optimistic thought, is it? In other words, it's the opposite of optimistic when you're thinking you're going to war.
With regard to ground of this nature, be before the enemy in occupying the raised and sunny spots, and carefully guard your line of supplies. Then you will be able to fight with advantage.
Bolkenstein, a Minister, was speaking on the Dutch programme from London, and he said that they ought to make a collection of diaries and letters after the war. Of course, they all made a rush at my diary immediately. Just imagine how interesting it would be if I were to publish a romance of the "Secret Annexe." The title alone would be enough to make people think it was a detective story.
Centuries hence, when current social and political problems may seem as remote as the problems of the Thirty Years' War are to us, our age may be remembered chiefly for one fact: It was the time when the inhabitants of the earth first made contact with the vast cosmos in which their small planet is embedded.