These National Security quotes will inspire you. National security or national defense is the security and defense of a nation-state, including its citizens, economy, and institutions, which is regarded as a duty of government.
A collection of motivating, happy, and encouraging National Security quotes, National Security sayings, and National Security proverbs.
Best National Security Quotes
- “National security is the first duty of government but we are also committed to reversing the substantial erosion of civil liberties.” ~ Theresa May
- “I think the environment should be put in the category of our national security. Defense of our resources is just as important as defense abroad. Otherwise what is there to defend?” ~ Robert Redford
- “I believe with all my heart that our first priority must be world peace, and that use of force is always and only a last resort, when everything else has failed, and then only with regard to our national security.” ~ Ronald Reagan
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“We must protect the very things that make America so special – most certainly including our civil liberties. But we cannot do so without strong national security and a thoughtful and informed discourse.” ~ Mike Pompeo
- “Do not compromise on national security for purely budgetary reasons. The world is dangerous, and we must always be prepared for anything that might threaten our national interests and security.” ~ Sanford Bishop
- “We cannot continue to rely only on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives that we’ve set. We’ve got to have a civilian national security force that’s just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded.” ~ Barack Obama
- “‘National Security’ is the root password to the Constitution.” ~ Phil Karn
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“I think anybody that is concerned with national security, and if you look at our Constitution – the Constitution states very clearly that the number one task of our government is to provide for the common defense and protection of this country.” ~ Ted Yoho
- “Gross negligence in handling national security is a felony.” ~ Bill O’Reilly
- “Power always has to be kept in check; power exercised in secret, especially under the cloak of national security, is doubly dangerous.” ~ William Proxmire
- “National security begins with border security. Foreign terrorists will not be able to strike America if they cannot get into our country.” ~ Donald Trump
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“National security is a serious matter and I do not think it is in proper to discuss such details in a public forum.” ~ Narendra Modi
- “Honest people, knowledgeable people, really well-informed people can have very different views about what the right measures are on national security.” ~ Malcolm Turnbull
- “I’m afraid, based on my own experience, that fascism will come to America in the name of national security.” ~ Jim Garrison
- “National security is the fig leaf against freedom of information.” ~ Ralph Nader
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“We must retool our nation to prepare for the challenge we already face to maintain our position in the global economy. And this much is certain: America will not have national security without economic security.” ~ John F. Kerry
- “The United States has every intention of continuing to do the kind of reconnaissance and surveillance work we have done for decades, well known to everyone, that is essential to protect our national security, and frankly, the security of our friends in various regions of the world. It is part of our collection system.” ~ Colin Powell , National Security quotes and protection
- “National security, the government is in charge of that. And you better have a president that understands the threats we [the state] face and what we have to do about it and if you can’t articulate that as a candidate, you cannot be commander-in-chief.” ~ Marco Rubio
- “We need to stop spending money on those weapons systems that do not advance national security.” ~ Lawrence Korb
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“I would say national security is work in progress.” ~ Jeb Bush
- “If something is being done on a secret basis in national security, that’s a great reason for elected officials to not talk about it. And that’s a great way to shirk accountability for it with the public.” ~ Rachel Maddow
- “There is simply too much unnecessary suffering in our world. And we should see that as a national security risk, by the way. Given enough time, desperate people will tend to do desperate things. At a certain point you won’t be able to build enough prisons or enough bombs to eradicate the effects of all that violence inside so many hearts.” ~ Marianne Williamson
- “Violence as a way of gaining power… is being camouflaged under the guise of tradition, national honor [and] national security.” ~ Alfred Adler
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“First, we must continually reaffirm the principle that the security of the United States is not, and should never be, a partisan matter. The United States can best defend its national security interests abroad by uniting behind a bipartisan security policy at home.” ~ William Cohen
- “The U.S. has the most advanced cyber-weaponry on the planet, and t if you look at the U.S. from the perspective of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army, which runs most of its cyber activities, they look at you and they see Google and Facebook – the two largest depositories of personal data in the world – and they see the reach of the National Security Agency, which has huge digital capacity to know what is going on around the world. So the Chinese would see cyber as an un-level playing field, because the U.S. holds all sorts of advantages.” ~ Misha Glenny
- “Oceans are one of the most important things in the world now and that is a national security threat of the United States of America, to be honest with you. That is why seeing the habitat destroyed is so short-sighted by us.” ~ Ian Somerhalder
- “Actually, the phrase “national security” is barely used until the 1930s. And there’s a reason. By then, the United States was beginning to become global. Before that the United States had been mostly a regional power – Britain was the biggest global power. After the Second World War, national security is everywhere, because we basically owned the world, so our security is threatened everywhere. Not just on our borders, but everywhere – so you have to have a thousand military bases around the world for “defense.”” ~ Noam Chomsky
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“Immigration security is national security.” ~ Kellyanne Conway
- “Our true choice is not between tax reduction on the one hand and the avoidance of large federal deficits on the other. It is increasingly clear that no matter what party is in power, so long as our national security needs keep rising, an economy hampered by restrictive tax rates will never produce enough revenues to balance our budget, just as it will never produce enough jobs or enough profits.” ~ John F. Kennedy
- “In a little while, I’d like to address one of the most important aspects of America’s national security, and that’s cyber security. To truly make America safe, we must make cyber security a major priority, which I don’t believe we’re doing right now, for both government and the private sector.” ~ Donald Trump
- “The Clinton White House today said they would start to give national security and intelligence briefings to George Bush. I don’t know how well this is working out. Today after the first one Bush said, ‘I’ve got one question: What color is the red phone?'” ~ Bill Maher
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“We have to fight for our freedoms, also, economic and our national security freedoms.” ~ Sarah Palin
- “We’ve seen a departure from the traditional work of the National Security Agency. They’ve become sort of the national hacking agency, the national surveillance agency. And they’ve lost sight of the fact that everything they do is supposed to make us more secure as a nation and a society.” ~ Edward Snowden
- “Peacekeeping works in some situations, but it very often needs other ingredients. Peacekeeping is not the aspirin of international security.” ~ Jean-Marie Guehenno
- “Now, here’s a good question: should serious people focus on global political instability – terrorism, failing states, nuclear weapons – or should we focus on global climate instability – droughts, floods, extreme weather? Here’s the correct answer: yes, both, because climate disruption will make every other national security problem worse.” ~ Van Jones
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“We need to put the security back in the National Security Agency. We can’t have the national surveillance agency.” ~ Edward Snowden
- “The right to a trial is a core principle of the American legal system. Depriving Americans of these essential liberties undermines the Constitution while doing nothing to strengthen our national security.” ~ John Garamendi
- “Americans once believed that their prosperity and way of life depended on having assured access to Persian Gulf oil. Today, that is no longer the case. The United States is once more an oil exporter. Available and accessible reserves of oil and natural gas in North America are far greater than was once believed. Yet the assumption that the Persian Gulf still qualifies as crucial to American national security persists in Washington. Why?” ~ Andrew Bacevich
- “The national security issues are very important for two reasons. First, because everybody knows that we want to be safe. But, secondly, people see these issues as probably the clearest window into somebody’s temperament, their judgment, whether they’re steady or volatile.” ~ Tim Kaine
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“Obviously I have concerns, right, about national security in terms of Russia, and China, and North Korea, and obviously, the problems we have in the Middle East.” ~ Kimberly Guilfoyle
- “The president of the United States is the commander in chief, and the people who work with him at the National Security Council are his arm in working with the Defense Department. And, quite frankly, they have responsibility for all of the government. We are one component of the government.” ~ Chuck Hagel
- “Israel has its own right as a nation to defend its national security.” ~ Al Gore
- “At 2:26 AM on 3 June 1980, Colonel William Odom of the Strategic Air Command alerted National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski that the US nuclear warning system had detected an imminent 220-missile nuclear attack on the US. Shortly thereafter, the automated system revised its projection from 220 missiles to an all-out attack of 2200 missiles. Just before Brzezinski was about to wake up President Carter to authorize a counterattack, he was told that the ‘attack’ was an illusion caused by ‘a computer error in the system’.” ~ Stansfield Turner
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“Should National Security Issues be decided by a Local Referendum?” ~ Arun Jaitley
- “Even if torture works, it cannot be tolerated — not in one case or a thousand or a million. If their efficacy becomes the measure of abhorrent acts, all sorts of unspeakable crimes somehow become acceptable. I may have found myself on the wrong side of government on torture. But I’m on the right side of history. There are things we should not do, even in the name of national security. One of them, I now firmly believe, is torture.” ~ John Kiriakou
- “We need a president who stands up, number one, and says, we will defeat ISIS. And number two, says the greatest national security threat facing America is a nuclear Iran.” ~ Ted Cruz
- “There is the case of Henry Kissinger who was a known scholar who later became the National Security Advisor to President Nixon and later on Secretary of State. He received the Nobel Peace Prize for his role in establishing relations between the U.S. and China. At the same time that he was doing that he was also encouraging all sorts of covert actions against Cuba including political assassinations. This contradiction is one that is hard to understand.” ~ Alejandro Castro Espin
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“I would urge that we all use a little bit of caution in dealing with an issue that is so vital to our national security.” ~ Theodore Stevens
- “For the last eight years, American policy toward Iraq has been based on the direct threat Saddam poses to international security. That threat is clear. Saddam’s history of aggression leaves little doubt that he would resume his drive for regional domination and his quest for weapons of mass destruction if he had the chance.” ~ Sandy Berger
- “Is there art that is more beautiful, more divine, and more eternal that the art of martyrdom? A nation with martyrdom knows no captivity. Those who wish to undermine this principle undermines the foundations of our independence and national security . . . The message of the (Islamic) Revolution is global, and is not restricted to a specific place or time . . . Allah willing, Islam will conquer what? It will conquer all the mountain tops of the world.” ~ Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
- “Donald Trump has made it clear, he wants to make a priority of national security, rebuilding our military, but he wants to do it in a fiscally responsible way.” ~ Mike Pence
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“Two increasing themes which appear to dominate our listening, reading and watching lives are propaganda and ‘national security’, or manufactured war.” ~ John Pilger
- “But when Warren has spoken on national security, she has invariably spouted warmed-over, banal Democratic hawk tripe of the kind that she just recited about Israel and Gaza. During her Senate campaign, for instance, she issued wildly militaristic – and in some cases clearly false – statements about Iran and its nuclear program that would have been comfortable on the pages of The Weekly Standard.” ~ Glenn Greenwald
- “It is Basic Management 101 that if you reward failure you are going to get more failure, and if you want success you should reward success. But if you look at the way this administration has approached national security, they have kind of got that principle backwards.” ~ Chris Van Hollen
- “The Pentagon needs precious resources to build the strength of America, and we can’t say, ‘this is really important to this community, and it’s really not vital to the national security, but we ought to do it anyway.’ So, I think we have to have a discipline on this” ~ John Kasich
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“If we have Osama bin Laden in our sights and the Pakistani government is unable or unwilling to take them out, then, I think that we have to act and we will take them out. We will kill bin Laden. We will crush al Qaeda. That has to be our biggest national security priority.” ~ Barack Obama
- “Richard Nixon clearly broke the law in the cover up of Watergate and hush money payments. That was all criminal activity. With these guys, we’re not talking about the kind of common crimes that Nixon committed. I can’t tell you whether they are technically breaking the law, but basically, the American government has been hijacked by neoconservatives. They are taking an awful lot of national security operations into the White House.” ~ Seymour Hersh
- “I think it’s a real debate how big NATO should be and whether or not it’s more provocative than good. Whenever there’s a war fought, our soldiers fight it and our dollars pay for it. And, really, our decisions need to be about our national security.” ~ Rand Paul
- “We need to look at [Osama bin Laden killing ] as a great victory for the American military and intelligence personnel and for the American people. A lot of bravery and courage displayed by those folks on behalf of all of us. It’s also a good day for the administration. I think President [Barack] Obama and his national security team acted on the intelligence when it came in, and they deserve a lot of credit, too.” ~ Sarah Palin
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“I think that Joe Biden is qualified in many respects. But I do point out that he’s been wrong on many foreign policy and national security issues, which is supposed to be his strength.” ~ John McCain
- “Law-abiding Americans deserve to know that their government will not secretly tap their phones, read their medical records, access their library accounts or otherwise invade their personal lives, with no oversight or accountability. Law-abiding Americans also deserve to know that when law enforcement can show an impartial judge clear evidence of criminal activity or a threat to national security, swift and decisive action will be taken to protect the public. That is the balance we must achieve.” ~ Ralph Neas
- “I think they are paying a lot more attention to news now, by the way, in part because of national-security issues. A lot of young people have friends or family in the military today.” ~ Tom Brokaw
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“NATO is in our national security interests. And, yes, we pay a lot for it, but, when we had Afghanistan, NATO troops were by our side from almost all of the NATO members. And they put their life and treasure on the line for us.” ~ James Franklin Jeffrey
- “New Labour was the most short-sighted, self-serving, incompetent, useless, and ineffective government that Britain has ever known.” ~ Liam Fox
- “Allowing suspects to indefinitely linger in our cells is, in fact, detrimental to our national security goals. If a suspect is proven to be a terrorist, for the sake of the victims and deterring any future attacks, he or she must be brought to justice. America has done this with Timothy McVeigh and hundreds of other terrorists.” ~ John Garamendi
