Alexander Hamilton on war and peace

A national debt, if it is not excessive, will be to us a national blessing.

Why has government been instituted at all? Because the passions of men will not conform to the dictates of reason and justice, without constraint.

Nobody expects to trust his body overmuch after the age of fifty.

The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.

Thomas Jefferson1743–1826Letter to William Stephens Smith (13 November 1787). Manuscript at the Library of Congress.

• Liberty

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.

Dwight D. Eisenhower1890–1969The Chance for Peace (1953)

• Guns

The object of war is not to die for your country but to make the other bastard die for his.

George S. Patton1885–1945