War Quotes

“As this book shows, there were failures and mistakes. The full story is, of course, not yet known. But based on the evidence available now, I believe President Biden and this team will be largely studied in history as an example of steady and purposeful leadership.”
― Bob Woodward, War

“Donald Trump is not only the wrong many for the presidency, he is unfit to lead the country. Trump was far worse than Richard Nixon, the provably criminal president. As I have pointed out, Trump governed by fear and rage. And indifference to the public and national interest. Trump was the most reckless and impulsive president in American history and is demonstrating the very same character as a presidential candidate in 2024.”
― Bob Woodward, War

“In an ope-ed in The Washington Post in February 2020, Navy Admiral William McRaven, who was the U.S. Special Operations commander who oversaw the raid that killed Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden a decade earlier said: As Americans we should be frightened - deeply afraid for the future of the nation. When good men and women can't speak the truth, when facts are inconvenient, when integrity and character no longer matter, when presidential ego and self preservation are more important than national security - then there is nothing left to stop the triumph of evil.”
― Bob Woodward, War

“Dear Ukrainians,” Zelensky said in his inauguration address. “After my election win, my six-year-old son said: ‘Dad, they say on TV that Zelensky is the president…. So, it means that I am the President too?!’ At the time, it sounded funny, but later I realized that it was true. Because each of us is the president. “From now on, each of us is responsible for the country that we leave to our children,” Zelensky said. “Each of us, in his place, can do everything for the prosperity of Ukraine.” He raised his first priority: a cease-fire in the Donbas where Russian-backed separatists and Ukrainian forces had been fighting since Putin’s 2014 invasion. “I have been often asked: What price are you ready to pay for the cease-fire? It’s a strange question,” Zelensky said. “What price are you ready to pay for the lives of your loved ones? I can assure that I’m ready to pay any price to stop the deaths of our heroes. I’m definitely not afraid to make difficult decisions and I’m ready to lose my fame, my ratings, and if need be without any hesitation, my position to bring peace, as long as we do not give up our territories. “History is unfair,” Zelensky added. “We are not the ones who have started this war. But we are the ones who have to finish it. “I really do not want you to hang my portraits on your office walls. Because a president is not an icon and not an idol. A president is not a portrait. Hang pictures of your children. And before you make any decision, look into their eyes,” he said. “And finally,” Zelensky concluded, “all my life I tried to do all I could so that Ukrainians laughed. That was my mission. Now I will do all I can so that Ukrainians at least do not cry anymore.”
― Bob Woodward, War

“In the 2020 election, Trump received 74 million votes, more than any presidential candidate in history with the exception of Joe Biden, who won 81 million votes. Biden secured the Electoral College with 306 votes to Trump's 232.”
― Bob Woodward, War

“Many of Trump's former top cabinet officers and aides have said publicly that Trump should not be president again and should not even be on the ballot. Those include: former vice president MIke Pence; former secretary of defense Mark Esper; former chairman of the Joint Chiefs General Mark Milley; former national security adviser John Bolton; former secretary of defense James Mattis; former director of national intelligence Dan Coats, former chief of staff John Kelley; former chief of staf Mick Mulvaney; and former secretary of state Rex Tillerson.”
― Bob Woodward, War

“Overall, Hamas killed more than 1,200 Israelis and dragged more than 240 hostages and back across the border into underground tunnels in Gaza. It was the deadliest attack in Jewish history since the Holocaust.”
― Bob Woodward, War

“President Trump had secretly sent Putin a bunch of Abbott Point of Care Covid test machines for his personal use as the virus spread rapidly through Russia.”
― Bob Woodward, War

“Biden had later claimed during that meeting he said to Putin, “I’m looking into your eyes and I don’t think you have a soul.” Putin smiled and told Biden, through an interpreter, “We understand one another.”
― Bob Woodward, War

“Biden’s next words would stick forever with Klain: “This guy just isn’t really an American president.”
― Bob Woodward, War

“The reasons for this massive migration influx at the border were numerous. Employment opportunities in the United States were skyrocketing. In Biden’s first year 6.7 million jobs were added. No other president since World War II had such job growth in their first or any year in office.”
― Bob Woodward, War

“Wishing Donald Trump away is not a viable strategy. Donald Trump’s not going away. There are millions of people in the Republican Party who believe in him, and the goal is to try to take the magic he has with our base and make it ‘Trump Plus.”
― Bob Woodward, War

“Zelensky won a crushing 73.17 percent of the vote, compared with 24.5 percent for Poroshenko.”
― Bob Woodward, War

“Austin delivered his final point. “All these actors in the world that you think are your friends or who are looking aside, would all turn against Russia in this scenario—the Chinese, the Indians, the Turks, the Israelis,” he said. “This would isolate Russia on the world stage to a degree you Russians cannot fully appreciate.” “I don’t take kindly to being threatened,” Shoigu finally responded. “Mr. Minister,” Austin said bluntly with not a hint of anger, “I am the leader of the most powerful military in the history of the world. I don’t make threats.”
― Bob Woodward, War

“As Americans, we should be frightened—deeply afraid for the future of the nation. When good men and women can’t speak the truth, when facts are inconvenient, when integrity and character no longer matter, when presidential ego and self-preservation are more important than national security—then there is nothing left to stop the triumph of evil.”
― Bob Woodward, War

“Military theory does not account for regular dudes with track pants and hunting rifles,” said General Valerii Zaluzhnyi, the so-called Iron General, the commander in chief of Ukraine’s military.”
― Bob Woodward, War

“As best I can tell,” Blinken said, “the rights of ethnic Russians in Ukraine are greater than the rights of ethnic Russians in Russia.”
― Bob Woodward, War

“This cavalier attitude about nuclear weapons and impulsive, combative diplomacy terrified Trump’s national security advisers.”
― Bob Woodward, War

“Ukraine had fought the David and Goliath of battles and held Russia off against all of their expectations. But U.S. intel reports to Biden showed that Putin believed time and the size of Russia’s army were on his side.”
― Bob Woodward, War

“Putin would not stop at Ukraine, Biden was convinced of that. The Ukraine war was now a fight for freedom and freedom loving nations everywhere. Russia had displayed shocking ineptitude in the opening hours and days of the war, piercing the mythology that the Russian army was a formidable, super-capable fighting force.”
― Bob Woodward, War

“The legacy of the Biden presidency will be the core national security team that he built and kept in place for nearly four years. They brought decades of experience as well as basic human decency. War shows the traditional and novel ways Biden and his core team pursued an intelligence-driven foreign policy to warn the world that war was coming in Ukraine, to supply Ukraine with the weapons they need to defend themselves against Russia, and to try to tamp down escalations in the Israel-Gaza war.”
― Bob Woodward, War

“The psychological dynamic in play was that Zelensky did not want to signal that a full Russian invasion was going to happen because it would create a self-fulfilling prophecy of the Ukrainian economy and potentially the government collapsing.”
― Bob Woodward, War

“Lavrov denied any invasion was planned. The U.S. intelligence later found that Lavrov still was not fully informed of what Putin had in store. Blinken almost felt sorry for Lavrov. He had become a mouthpiece. It was sad someone so senior and with such longevity was not clued in, making the attempt at diplomacy pointless.”
― Bob Woodward, War

“Without getting into too much detail,” Pentagon press secretary John Kirby said in a public briefing on January 14, “we do have information that indicates that Russia is already working actively to create a pretext for a potential invasion. “We’ve seen this kind of thing before out of Russia,” Kirby said. “When there isn’t an actual crisis to suit their needs, they’ll make one up.”
― Bob Woodward, War

“In the White House, Director for Intelligence Programs Maher Bitar reviewed intel reports that Russia planned to stage an explosion in eastern Ukraine and claim Ukraine was responsible. Russia would say the Ukrainian government had killed ethnic Russians and then move into Ukraine under the false pretext of rescuing them. The Russian plot even talked about hiring actors who could play mourners at a funeral.”
― Bob Woodward, War

“But Biden drew the line on the kinds of weapons he was prepared to send. He would not go too big or too powerful. If Russia invaded and Ukraine fell in three to five days, the president did not want top-of-the-line American military technology falling into Russian hands. After the withdrawal from Afghanistan, the images of the Taliban brandishing U.S. weapons and equipment provided to the Afghan military still burned.”
― Bob Woodward, War

“Take a look at all the things that I’ve done,” Trump declared. “Obama sent them pillows. I sent them tank-busters.” President Obama had provided Ukraine with more than $120 million in security assistance but refused to send lethal weapons. Trump was the first president to approve the sale of U.S. lethal weapons to Ukraine, including Javelin antitank missiles.”
― Bob Woodward, War

“More than 2,400 Ukrainian civilians were killed in Mariupol. More than 450 civilians were massacred in Bucha with clear evidence of execution: hands tied behind backs, gunshots to the head, slit throats. In Irpin, more than 290 civilians were found dead—many from indiscriminate Russian fire or execution. The missile strikes in crowded urban centers were at the busiest time of the day. Putin was also responsible for the mass abduction of at least 6,000 Ukrainian children, taken from occupied territories like Mariupol, Kherson and Kharkiv and adopted out to Russian families.”
― Bob Woodward, War

“Quiet intelligence sharing was not proving persuasive and that was dangerous when faced with an adversary like Russia that was so highly skilled in the art of disinformation. It gave Putin an opportunity to divide public opinion using carefully crafted pretexts and lies to explain away an invasion.”
― Bob Woodward, War

“Johnson, a member of the British Conservative Party and the product of prestigious Eton and Oxford, found the conversation with Putin “very creepy,” later confiding to an associate that the Russian autocrat was a “small, puckish, lowlife.”
― Bob Woodward, War