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Norman Angell citations
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Ralph Norman Angell-Lane, né à Holbeach dans le comté du Lincolnshire en Angleterre le 26 décembre 1872 et mort à Croydon dans le Grand Londres le 7 octobre 1967, est un écrivain et homme politique anglais, lauréat du prix Nobel de la paix en 1933.

Son essai La Grande Illusion, publié en 1910, rencontre un succès international. Selon lui, croire à une guerre entre grandes puissances est une « grande illusion ». Angell remanie cette analyse, démentie par les faits en 1914-1918, dans une version de son livre parue en 1933, où il pense que déclarer la guerre à un autre pays est contre-productif sur le plan économique.

Il a été fait chevalier le 1er janvier 1931. Wikipedia  

✵ 26. décembre 1872 – 7. octobre 1967
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Norman Angell: 44   citations 0   J'aime

Norman Angell: Citations en anglais

“Let us face squarely the paradox that the world which goes to war is a world, usually, genuinely desiring peace. War is the outcome, not mainly of evil intentions, but on the whole, of good intentions which miscarry or are frustrated. It is made, not usually by evil men knowing themselves to be wrong, but is the outcome of policies pursued by good men usually passionately convinced that they are right.”

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Norman Angell

Peace and the Public Mind (1935)

“The convictions of the multitudes — and on certain points like the desirability of organizing the world on a nationalist basis there is overwhelming agreement — are sincere convictions. They are, as we know, sometimes disastrously erroneous; but they are also disastrously honest. The Nationalisms, the Protectionisms, the Mercantilisms and all the other fallacies which rack Europe and create the chaos are sincerely held fallacies. They are, to these multitudes, the truth, and the prophet who denies them shall be stoned.”

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Norman Angell

Peace and the Public Mind (1935)

“What are the fundamental motives that explain the present rivalry of armaments in Europe, notably the Anglo-German? Each nation pleads the need for defence; but this implies that someone is likely to attack, and has therefore a presumed interest in so doing. What are the motives which each State thus fears its neighbors may obey?
They are based on the universal assumption that a nation, in order to find outlets for expanding population and increasing industry, or simply to ensure the best conditions possible for its people, is necessarily pushed to territorial expansion and the exercise of political force against others…. It is assumed that a nation's relative prosperity is broadly determined by its political power; that nations being competing units, advantage in the last resort goes to the possessor of preponderant military force, the weaker goes to the wall, as in the other forms of the struggle for life.
The author challenges this whole doctrine. He attempts to show that it belongs to a stage of development out of which we have passed that the commerce and industry of a people no longer depend upon the expansion of its political frontiers; that a nation's political and economic frontiers do not now necessarily coincide; that military power is socially and economically futile, and can have no relation to the prosperity of the people exercising it; that it is impossible for one nation to seize by force the wealth or trade of another — to enrich itself by subjugating, or imposing its will by force on another; that in short, war, even when victorious, can no longer achieve those aims for which people strive….”

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Norman Angell livre The Great Illusion

The Great Illusion (1910)

“One great state says to others, as each in effect has been saying during the ten years of armament debate: "It is true that we ask for considerable power. Perhaps, all things considered, greater power than you. But it need not disturb you in the least, for we give you our most positive assurance that that power will be used purely for defense. And by defense we mean this: that when we get into a dispute with you as to our respective rights, when, that is, the question is whether you are right or we are right, what we mean by defense is that we shall always be in a position to be sole judge of the question. And so much stronger than you, that you will have to accept our verdict without any possibility of appeal. Could anything be fairer?"”

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Peace and the Public Mind (1935)

“Our daily life is no longer cursed by fear of those pestilences, plagues, black deaths, which used to devastate Europe. The layman has abolished those plagues by using the medical expert's knowledge. The medical expert has said in effect, "There are not many things that we are agreed upon, but at least we are agreed upon this: that though we cannot cure bubonic plague or cholera, we can prevent them, for we know that they are caused by microorganisms transmitted through water and vermin. Keep sewage from your drinking water and vermin from your homes, and you will prevent these plagues." The layman has seen the point, applied appropriate measures, and these dreadful pestilences have disappeared.
Now, if our publics these last twenty years could have grasped certain social truths, not inherently more difficult to understand than the microbic theory of disease, a large part at least of the economic and political pestilences which have come upon us in our generation would not have arisen.”

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Peace and the Public Mind (1935)

“God has made Canada one of those nations which cannot be conquered and cannot be destroyed, except by itself.”

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Norman Angell

"Canada's Best Service for British Ideals" (1913)

“One speaks of dictators ruling by "force". But what has enabled dictatorial governments to possess force? The only means by which a man can become a dictator is by getting at the public mind. The politician does not become dictator by the strength of his own muscles. He must persuade others, millions of others, to use their muscles in a certain way.
The German National Socialists began as a party of ten persons. And it would have remained a party of ten persons had not its promoters been able to persuade — not force — others. Ten persons had no force as against the power of the German nation. The potential power of that party of ten persons consisted simply in its potential power to reach the public mind. Without that popular appeal it could never have come into being. And if, and when, it loses that popular appeal, it will cease to be.”

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Peace and the Public Mind (1935)

“Man's greatest advances these last few generations have been made by the application of human intelligence to the management of matter. Now we are confronted by a more difficult problem, the application of intelligence to the management of human relations. Unless we can advance in that field also, the very instruments that man's intelligence has created may be the instruments of his destruction.”

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Peace and the Public Mind (1935)

“Within the state we have made defense of the individual the obligation of the whole community, and by that fact have established such preponderance of power on the side of the law that it could never be good business to challenge it. And that fact has, in large measure, swept highwaymen from the roads and pirates from the seas.”

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Norman Angell

Peace and the Public Mind (1935)

“This book endeavors to clear away the mists which prevent so many from seeing the road.”

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Norman Angell livre The Great Illusion

The Great Illusion (1910)

“Why is it relatively easy for a few armament makers to persuade 'men to go to war, to give their lives; and quite impossible for the much larger group who would benefit by another form of general destruction to persuade men to destroy their property? It is broadly, of course, because the folly of burning down houses is plain; the folly of the policies which lead to war is not so plain.”

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Peace and the Public Mind (1935)

“It is not the facts which guide the conduct of men, but their opinions about facts; which may be entirely wrong. We can only make them right by discussion.”

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As quoted in American Railway Engineering Association : Proceedings of the Annual Convention, Volume 51 (1950), p. 815; also quoted in Forbes Book of Quotations: 10,000 Thoughts on the Business of Life (2016), edited by Ted Goodman

“The root problem is very simply stated: if there were no sovereign independent states, if the states of the civilized world were organized in some sort of federalism as the states of the American Union, for instance, are organized, there would be no international war as we know it. ... The main obstacle is nationalism.”

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Norman Angell

Statement of 1933, as quoted in Journal of Peace Studies (1994), p. 54; also partly quoted in Logic (1989) by Robert Baum, p. 87

“Political nationalism has become, for the European of our age the most important thing in the world, more important than civilization, humanity, decency, kindness, pity, more important than life itself.”

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Norman Angell

The Unseen Assassins https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.216538/page/n49 (1932), p. 48; in later variants, "pity" was misquoted as "piety" in the Naval War College Review, Vol. 10 (1957), p. 27, and some internet citations have compressed "has become, for the European of our age" to read "has become for our age".

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