
“You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you.”
Misattributed
Source: Man, the State, and War (1959), Chapter IV, The Second Image, p. 98
“You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you.”
Misattributed
Tehran Hosting Intifada Confernce http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/library/news/iran/2002/20-030602.html March 2002.
2002
Speech delivered at the Pan-American Exposition, Buffalo, New York (September 5, 1901).
1900s
“Beware
At war
Or at peace,
More people die
Of unenlightened self-interest
Than of any other disease”
Report on Manufactures (1791)
Context: It ought readily to be conceded, that the cultivation of the earth as the primary and most certain source of national supply, as the immediate and chief source of subsistence to man, (...) has intrinsically a strong claim to pre-eminence over every other kind of industry. But, that it has a title to any thing like an exclusive predilection, in any country, ought to be admitted with great caution. That it is even more productive than every other branch of Industry requires more evidence, than has yet been given in support of the position. That its real interests, precious and important as without the help of exaggeration, they truly are, will be advanced, rather than injured by the due encouragement of manufactures, may, it is believed, be satisfactorily demonstrated. And it is also believed that the expediency of such encouragement in a general view may be shewn to be recommended by the most cogent and persuasive motives of national policy.
Misattributed
Context: : In a later work, Just and Unjust Wars: A Moral Argument with Historical Illustrations (2000) by Michael Walzer, the author states: War is most often a form of tyranny. It is best described by paraphrasing Trotsky's aphorism about the dialectic: "You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you." This statement on dialectic itself seems to be a paraphrase, with the original in In Defense of Marxism Part VII : "Petty-Bourgeois Moralists and the Proletarian Party" (1942) https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/idom/dm/32-goldman2.htm — where Trotsky publishes a letter to Albert Goldman (5 June 1940) has been translated as "Burnham doesn't recognize dialectics but dialectics does not permit him to escape from its net." More discussion on the origins of this quotation can be found at The Semi-Daily Journal of Economist Brad DeLong: Fair and Balanced Almost Every Day http://econ161.berkeley.edu/movable_type/2003_archives/002422.html.
On his Operating Thetan Courses, in Flag Mission Order 375 (1970).
Grundrisse (1857-1858)
Source: Notebook I, The Chapter on Money, p. 76.