“What do nations care about the cost of war, if by spending a few hundred millions in steel and gunpowder they can gain a thousand millions in diamonds and cocoa?”

—  W.E.B. Du Bois

Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "What do nations care about the cost of war, if by spending a few hundred millions in steel and gunpowder they can gain …" by W.E.B. Du Bois?
W.E.B. Du Bois photo
W.E.B. Du Bois62
American sociologist, historian, activist and writer 1868–1963

Related quotes

James A. Garfield photo

“It is not part of the functions of the national government to find employment for people — and if we were to appropriate a hundred millions for this purpose, we should be taxing forty millions of people to keep a few thousand employed.”

James A. Garfield (1831–1881) American politician, 20th President of the United States (in office in 1881)

To B. A. Hinsdale in 1874, as quoted in The Life and Letters of James Abram Garfield: 1831-1877 (1925) by Theodore Clarke Smith, p. 517
1870s

Spider Robinson photo

“It took a couple of hundred million years to develop a thinking ape and you want a smart one in a lousy few hundred thousand?”

Spider Robinson (1948) Canadian author

God Is An Iron (1977)
Context: "It took a couple of hundred million years to develop a thinking ape and you want a smart one in a lousy few hundred thousand? That lemming drive you're talking about is there — but there's another kind of drive, another kind of force that's working against it. Or else there wouldn't still be any people and there wouldn't be the words to have this conversation and—" She paused, looked down at herself. "And I wouldn't be here to say them."

Stanisław Lem photo

“The fate of a single man can be rich with significance, that of a few hundred less so, but the history of thousands and millions of men does not mean anything at all, in any adequate sense of the word.”

Stanisław Lem book Solaris

Source: Solaris (1961), Ch. 8 "The Monsters", p. 120

Robert Herrick photo

“Give me a kiss, and to that kiss a score;
Then to that twenty, add a hundred more:
A thousand to that hundred: so kiss on,
To make that thousand up a million.
Treble that million, and when that is done,
Let's kiss afresh, as when we first begun.”

Robert Herrick book Hesperides

"To Anthea: Ah, My Anthea!"
Hesperides (1648)

“It may be worthwhile to spend a few million dollars to determine the efficacy of program that would involve spending billions of dollars.”

Harvey S. Rosen (1949) American economist

Source: Public Finance - International Edition - Sixth Edition, Chapter 2, Tools of Positive Analysis, p. 24-25

E.E. Cummings photo

“a million thousand hundred nothings seem
—we are himself's own self; his very him”

E.E. Cummings (1894–1962) American poet

84
95 poems (1958)

Timothy Leary photo

“Seven million people I turned on, and only one hundred thousand have come by to thank me.”

Timothy Leary (1920–1996) American psychologist

Don Lattin, The Harvard Psychedelic Club (2010), p. 202

Samuel Gompers photo

“The man who receives five thousand dollars a year wants six thousand dollars a year, and the man who owns eight or nine hundred thousand dollars will want a hundred thousand dollars more to make it a million, while the man who has his millions will want everything he can lay his hands on and then raise his voice against the poor devil who wants ten cents more a day.”

Samuel Gompers (1850–1924) American Labor Leader[AFL]

What Does the Working Man Want? (speech), Louisville, KY (May 1890)

“If all I cared about was me, I could make a million. And that's what they will never understand.”

Edie Sedgwick (1943–1971) Socialite, actress, model

Edie : Girl On Fire (2006)

Thaddeus Stevens photo

“Every humane and patriotic heart must grieve to see a bloody and causeless rebellion, costing thousands of human lives and millions of treasure.”

Thaddeus Stevens (1792–1868) American politician

&quot;Subduing the Rebellion&quot; (22 January 1862), as quoted in The Selected Works of Thaddeus Stevens http://books.google.com/books?id=A0Fs655TKfsC&amp;printsec=frontcover&amp;source=gbs_ge_summary_r&amp;cad=0#v=onepage&amp;q&amp;f=false <br class="br">1860s <br class="br">Context: Every humane and patriotic heart must grieve to see a bloody and causeless rebellion, costing thousands of human lives and millions of treasure. But as it was predetermined and inevitable, it was long enough delayed. Now is the appropriate time to solve the greatest problem ever submitted to civilized man.

Related topics