George Friedman Quotes About War

Quotes about: War

Army Cold War Country Rage Reality Technology War

What is the great fear of the United States? That an Eastern power will build a navy to challenge us. How do you keep them from doing that? Keep them at each other's throats so they don't have any money to do this. This is why we fought the First World War, the Second World War, and the Cold War.

George Friedman

War, Challenges, Navy

Source: www.businessinsider.com
Wars are times of intense technological transformation, because societies invest - sometimes with extensive borrowing - when and where matters of life and death are at stake.

George Friedman

War, Life And Death, Matter

George Friedman (2011). “The Next Decade: Where We've Been . . . and Where We're Going”, p.225, Anchor
The tragedy of the human condition is that the thing that makes us most human - community - originates in the inhumanity of war.

George Friedman

War, Community, Tragedy

George Friedman (2011). “The Next Decade: Where We've Been . . . and Where We're Going”, p.220, Anchor
The man who hates war more than he hates the Nazis is a wicked man.

George Friedman

War, Hate, Men

Source: www.psychologytoday.com
The poets think about war more than the social scientists.

George Friedman

War, Thinking, Scientist

Source: www.psychologytoday.com
The most horrible sort of war is civil war.

George Friedman

War, Civil War, Horrible

Source: www.psychologytoday.com
It has always struck me as the world's great fortune that the two great superpowers were the United States and the Soviet Union, who managed the Cold War with meticulous care in retrospect. Imagine the European diplomats of 1914 or 1938 armed with nuclear weapons. It is easy to believe they would not have been as cautious.

George Friedman

War, Believe, Two
War to me is very much like sex. You can develop a theory that says sex is primarily for the exchange of genetic material, or that it's a celebration of life, or you can make up 50,000 theories about why human beings have sex, all of which are in some sense true, all of which by themselves miss the point. Because the answer is extraordinarily complex. It may be for fun, it may be for reproduction, for financial reasons, any number of things.

George Friedman

Sex, Fun, War

Source: www.psychologytoday.com
I think the personal and psychological aspects of war remain the same. War is about killing and dying. A man or woman stands at the post and there is a very real possibility of dying in the next five minutes. Whether he dies or not depends partly on him and partly on luck, and yet he must continue to function.

George Friedman

Real, War, Men

Source: www.psychologytoday.com
There is a radical and unprecedented shift [in war] that is part of the general transformation of civilization. First, understand that the past 150 years of warfare are totally unprecedented in that we introduced a breathtakingly inefficient technology: guns. In the First World War, and this is not an exaggeration, it took 10,000 rounds of ammunition to kill one person. Any given shot had a one in 10,000 probability of ending someone's life.

George Friedman

War, Technology, Gun

Source: www.psychologytoday.com
There has never been a century that has not had a systemic war - a systemic war, meaning when the entire system convulses. From the Seven Years' War in Europe to the Napoleonic Wars of the 19th century to the World Wars, every century has one.

George Friedman

War, Years, Europe

Source: www.businessinsider.com
When you have the countries like Germany, China, and Russia decline, and be replaced by others, that's when systemic wars start. That's when it gets dangerous, because they haven't yet reached a balance. So Germany united in 1871 and all hell broke loose. Japan rose in the early 20th century, and then you had chaos. So we're looking at a systemic shift. Be ready for war.

George Friedman

Country, War, Japan

Source: www.businessinsider.com
Well the most likely emerging countries are Japan, Turkey, and Poland. So I would say Eastern Europe, the Middle East and a maritime war by Japan with the United States enjoying its own pleasures.

George Friedman

Country, War, Japan

Source: www.businessinsider.com
One definition of the wicked is that they will resort to whatever means are necessary to achieve their ends. Therefore, if those who oppose wickedness don't learn the art of war, they will be helpless.

George Friedman

Art, War, Mean

Source: www.psychologytoday.com
War and sex are what I call the two abysmal - by that I mean deep - parts of the human condition.

George Friedman

Sex, War, Mean

Source: www.psychologytoday.com
I think there are worse things than war. For example, injustice.

George Friedman

War, Thinking, Example

Source: www.psychologytoday.com
War is an extraordinary condition to be in - to be, for example, in the combat information center of a warship [and behaving] as though you were merely processing credit card applications. [Instead,] the information you're processing is that an incoming missile is 15 kilometers away, now 10 kilometers away, now 5 kilometers. You have to separate yourself psychologically from the fact that your mortal existence may well end. That is the ancient reality of war.

George Friedman

War, Reality, Cards

Source: www.psychologytoday.com
Every theory I've seen that contains an explanation of war fails. I think they fail for the same reason that explanations of sex fail. War derives from things so deep and so complex, I'm thoroughly baffled by it at the end of the day.

George Friedman

Sex, War, Thinking

Source: www.psychologytoday.com
In a way, we can have a much easier discussion about the future of technology than we can about why a young man kills another man in a war.

George Friedman

War, Technology, Men

Source: www.psychologytoday.com
The important thing in war is that there is an element of rage, but you must remain very distant from it.

George Friedman

War, Important, Elements

Source: www.psychologytoday.com
When I went to war, I did not go making geopolitical calculations. I went to war with a lust.

George Friedman

War, Lust, Geopolitical

Source: www.psychologytoday.com
When you're young and going to war, it's a genuinely exciting moment. You are going to risk yourself. On the battlefield, you are suddenly free. You realize: I'm here, I'm in it. Exaltation. Suddenly you're hit by another extraordinary feeling: my God, I can be killed. And: will I embarrass myself? It's like you're in a kaleidoscope and all of these extraordinary feelings are zipping by.

George Friedman

War, Feelings, Risk

Source: www.psychologytoday.com
Because the US has control of the sea. Because the US has built up its wealth. Because the US is the only country in the world really not to have a war fought on its territory since the time of the Civil War ... Therefore we can afford mistakes that would kill other countries. And therefore we can take risks that they can't ... the core answer to why the United States is like this is we didn't fight World War I and World War II and the Cold War here.

George Friedman

Country, War, Mistake

Source: www.businessinsider.com
By the 20th century, war ceased to be an encounter between two armies. It became an encounter between two societies, because a factory worker producing a gun or a bomb is as deadly as a pilot.

George Friedman

War, Army, Gun

Source: www.psychologytoday.com
The British bombed German cities [during World War II] to keep the workers awake at night. So instead of dropping one bomb, we sent a thousand planes and, yes, we took out the factory sometimes, but we also took out the city. It reached the point where we wanted more efficient ways to destroy a city. The result was nuclear weapons.

George Friedman

War, Night, Cities

Source: www.psychologytoday.com

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Born: February 1, 1949
Occupation: Political Scientist
Cite this Page: Citation

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