Post-Presidency, Nobel lecture (2002)
Source: The Nobel Peace Prize Lecture
“We will not learn how to live together in peace by killing each other's children.”
Fussell here slightly paraphrases Hemingway's statement from his Foreword to Treasury for the Free World (1946): Never think that war, no matter how necessary nor how justified, is not a crime. Ask the infantry and ask the dead.
Humanities interview (1996)
As quoted in Margaret Mead : Some Personal Views (1979) edited by Rhoda Métraux
As quoted in American Quotations (1992) by Gorton Carruth and Eugene H. Ehrlich
1970s
Variant: At times it may be necessary temporarily to accept a lesser evil, but one must never label a necessary evil as good.
“Never think that war, no matter how necessary, nor how justified, is not a crime.”
Introduction to Treasury of the Free World (1946)
Source: Ernest Hemingway: A Literary Reference
Context: An aggressive war is the great crime against everything good in the world. A defensive war, which must necessarily turn to aggressive at the earliest moment, is the necessary great counter-crime. But never think that war, no matter how necessary, nor how justified, is not a crime. Ask the infantry and ask the dead.
“The most necessary learning is that which unlearns evil. ”
2015, Commemoration of the 150th Anniversary of the 13th Amendment (December 2015)
“Most "necessary evils" are far more evil than necessary.”
Source: Losing My Virginity: How I've Survived, Had Fun, and Made a Fortune Doing Business My Way
Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), pp. 129-130
“Taxes are an evil—a necessary evil, but still an evil, and the fewer of them we have the better.”
Churchill By Himself: The Definitive Collections of Quotations, ed. Richard Langworth, 2008, p. 424, (1907, 12 February)
Early career years (1898–1929)
