Democratic Quote by Philip Noel-Baker, Baron Noel-Baker

Defeatism is the wretchedest of policies.

— George Bernard Shaw

Defeatism about the past is a grievous error; defeatism about the future is a crime!

— Philip Noel-Baker, Baron Noel-Baker

There is not one incident in the history of humanity in which defeatism led to peace which was anything other than a complete fraud.

— Douglas MacArthur

A long war almost always places nations in this sad alternative: that their defeat delivers them to destruction and their triumph to despotism.

— Alexis de Tocqueville

In human history a moral victory is always a disaster, for it debauches and degrades both the victor and the vanquished.

— H. L. Mencken

War contains so much folly, as well as wickedness, that much is to be hoped from the progress of reason.

— James Madison

Few revolutions succeed, and when they do, you often discover they did not gain what you hoped for, and you condemn yourself to perpetual…

— Francesco Guicciardini

War is the greatest failure of mankind.

— Aaron Huey

Councils of war breed timidity and defeatism.

— Jack Kemp

War remains the decisive human failure.

— John Kenneth Galbraith

Peace is a certain resistance to the terrible satisfactions of war.

— Judith Butler

Be skeptical of concepts that divorce war from its political nature, particularly those that promise fast, cheap victory through technology.

— H. R. McMaster