“We'd been assured it wouldn't be painful, though she might experience 'discomfort,' a term beloved of the medical profession that seems to be a synonym for agony that isn't yours.”
Source: We Need to Talk About Kevin
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Lionel Shriver 34
American writer 1957Related quotes

Song lyrics, Blood on the Tracks (1975), If You See Her, Say Hello

"Does God Exist?" debate vs Stephen Law, Westminster Central Hall, London, , quoted in * 2012-10-04
William Lane Craig argues that animals can’t feel pain
Jerry
Coyne
Jerry Coyne
Why Evolution Is True
http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2012/10/04/william-lane-craig-argues-that-animals-cant-feel-pain/
2013-03-07
“Though life seems painful, at the same time it is wonderful”
空色(Sorairo), Siki
Lyrics

News Conference of (11 August 1954) http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/print.php?pid=9977
Variant: When people speak to you about a preventive war, you tell them to go and fight it. After my experience, I have come to hate war. War settles nothing.
Quoted in Quote magazine (4 April 1965) and The Quotable Dwight D. Eisenhower (1967) edited by Elsie Gollagher, p. 219<!-- seldom found variants: All of us have heard this term 'preventative war' since the earliest days of Hitler. I recall that is about the first time I heard it. In this day and time... I don't believe there is such a thing; and, frankly, I wouldn't even listen to anyone seriously that came in and talked about such a thing.
A preventative war, to my mind, is an impossibility. I don't believe there is such a thing, and frankly I wouldn't even listen to anyone seriously that came in and talked about such a thing.-->
1950s
Context: All of us have heard this term "preventive war" since the earliest days of Hitler. I recall that is about the first time I heard it. In this day and time, if we believe for one second that nuclear fission and fusion, that type of weapon, would be used in such a war — what is a preventive war?
I would say a preventive war, if the words mean anything, is to wage some sort of quick police action in order that you might avoid a terrific cataclysm of destruction later.
A preventive war, to my mind, is an impossibility today. How could you have one if one of its features would be several cities lying in ruins, several cities where many, many thousands of people would be dead and injured and mangled, the transportation systems destroyed, sanitation implements and systems all gone? That isn't preventive war; that is war.
I don't believe there is such a thing; and, frankly, I wouldn't even listen to anyone seriously that came in and talked about such a thing.
… It seems to me that when, by definition, a term is just ridiculous in itself, there is no use in going any further.
There are all sorts of reasons, moral and political and everything else, against this theory, but it is so completely unthinkable in today's conditions that I thought it is no use to go any further.

1990s, The Monarchy: A Critique of Britain's Favourite Fetish

Source: Christianity and the Social Crisis (1907), Ch.1 The Historical Roots of Christianity the Hebrew Prophets, p. 13