“The Roman state survives by its ancient customs and its manhood.”
Moribus antiquis res stat Romana virisque.
Ennius (-239–-169 BC) Roman writer
Annals, Book V
“Revolutionaries knew quite well that the autocratic Empire, with its hangmen, its pogroms, its finery, its famines, its Siberian jails and ancient iniquity, could never survive the war.”
On Russia in World War I
Attributed
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Victor Serge3
Russian revolutionary and writer 1890–1947Related quotes
“A war is never undertaken by the ideal state, except in defense of its honor or its safety.”
Nullum bellum suscipi a civitate optima nisi aut pro fide aut pro salute.
Marcus Tullius Cicero (-106–-43 BC) Roman philosopher and statesman
De Re Publica, Book 3, Chapter 23
“The spell of power never quite releases its hold.”
Isaac Asimov (1920–1992) American writer and professor of biochemistry at Boston University, known for his works of science fiction …
Source: The Foundation series (1951–1993), Second Foundation (1953), Chapter 12 “Lord”
Nelson Mandela (1918–2013) President of South Africa, anti-apartheid activist
1990s, Long Walk to Freedom (1995)
John Mearsheimer book The Tragedy of Great Power Politics
Source: The Tragedy of Great Power Politics (2001), Chapter 6, Great Powers in Action, p. 202
Toni Morrison (1931–2019) American writer
Nobel Prize Lecture (1993)
Context: Language can never "pin down" slavery, genocide, war. Nor should it yearn for the arrogance to be able to do so. Its force, its felicity is in its reach toward the ineffable. Be it grand or slender, burrowing, blasting, or refusing to sanctify; whether it laughs out loud or is a cry without an alphabet, the choice word, the chosen silence, unmolested language surges toward knowledge, not its destruction. But who does not know of literature banned because it is interrogative; discredited because it is critical; erased because alternate? And how many are outraged by the thought of a self-ravaged tongue?
“To fight the Empire is to be infected by its derangement”
Philip K. Dick book VALIS
VALIS (1981)
Context: To fight the Empire is to be infected by its derangement … Whoever defeats the Empire becomes the Empire; it proliferates like a virus … thereby it becomes its enemies.
“War its thousands slays, Peace its ten thousands.”
Beilby Porteus (1731–1809) Bishop of Chester; Bishop of London
Source: Death: A Poetical Essay (1759), Line 178.