The gradual decline of a society is often a self-induced process of trying to meet ever-expanding appetites, rather than a physical inability to produce past levels of food and fuel, or to maintain adequate defense.

This bloody past suggests to us that enemies cease hostilities only when they are battered enough to acknowledge that there is no hope in victory - and thus that further resistance means only useless sacrifice.

Often, the pretexts for starting a war are not real shortages of land, food or fuel, but rather perceptions - like fear, honor and perceived self-interest.

History has shown that a government's redistribution of shrinking wealth, in preference to a private sector's creation of new sources of it, can prove more destructive than even the most deadly enemy.

The whole art of war consists of guessing at what is on the other side of the hill.

War is party-blind. It doesn't care who is in the Oval Office. The forces that drive us to war don't care whether it's Republican, Democrat, or other. The fact is, these parties are prey to special interests. That is something Eisenhower was afraid of.

It would have been amazing to have been a student at Oxford during that golden moment in the 1910s, rubbing elbows with the likes of Aldous Huxley and T.E. Lawrence, before World War I shattered everything forever.

You can have peace. Or you can have freedom. Don't ever count on having both at once.