24 Quotes by Kenneth Waltz

According to the first image of international relations, the locus of the important causes of war is found in the nature and behavior of man. Wars result from selfishness, from misdirected aggressive impulses, from stupidity.

In anarchy there is no automatic harmony .

To build a theory of international relations on accidents of geography and history is dangerous.

If we gather more and more data and establish more and more associations, however, we will not finally find that we know something. We will simply end up having more and more data and larger sets of correlations.

War may achieve a redistribution of resources, but labor, not war, creates wealth.

Asking who won a given war, someone has said, is like asking who won the San Francisco earthquake. That in war there is no victory but only varying degrees of defeat is a proposition that has gained increasing acceptance in the twentieth century.

In a zero-sum game, the problem is entirely one of distribution, not at all one of production.

The implication of game theory, which is also the implication of the third image, is, however, that the freedom of choice of any one state is limited by the actions of the others.

Is it capitalism or states that must be destroyed in order to get peace, or must both be abolished?