“As far as they were concerned, gunfire was nothing but noise. That’s why wars can keep going. Even the people who make them, who fight in them, don’t really get the picture. Even with a bullet in their gut, they’d go on picking up old shoes that “might come in handy.” The way a sheep, lying on its side in a meadow, will keep on grazing with its dying breath. Most people don’t die until the last moment; others start twenty years in advance, sometimes more. Those are the unfortunates.”

—  Louis-ferdinand Céline, book Journey to the End of the Night

Source: Journey to the End of the Night (1932), Chapter 4

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "As far as they were concerned, gunfire was nothing but noise. That’s why wars can keep going. Even the people who make …" by Louis-ferdinand Céline?
Louis-ferdinand Céline photo
Louis-ferdinand Céline88
French writer 1894–1961

Related quotes

“The consensus is that no more than five to ten people in a hundred who die by gunfire in Los Angeles are any loss to society. These people fight small wars amongst themselves. It would seem a valid social service to keep them well-supplied with ammunition.”

Jeff Cooper (1920–2006) American journalist

Jeff Cooper in Guns & Ammo magazine, April 1991.

Cassandra Clare photo

“Heroes aren't always the ones who win. They're the ones who lose, sometimes. But they keep fighting, they keep coming back. They don't give up. That's what makes them heroes.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Heavenly Fire

Clary Fray, to Emma Carstairs, pg. 95
Variant: Heroes aren't always the ones who win. They're the ones who lose, sometimes. But they keep fighting, they keep coming back. They don't give up. That's what makes them heroes.
Source: The Mortal Instruments, City of Heavenly Fire (2014)

Ricky Gervais photo

“People who criticize you have usually never achieved anywhere near what you have. Most of them would be too scared to even try. Keep going.”

Ricky Gervais (1961) English comedian, actor, director, producer, musician, writer, and former radio presenter

Nassim Nicholas Taleb photo

“My major hobby is teasing people who take themselves and the quality of their knowledge too seriously and those who don’t have the guts to sometimes say: I don’t know….”

Nassim Nicholas Taleb (1960) Lebanese-American essayist, scholar, statistician, former trader and risk analyst

Nassim Nicholas Taleb's Home Page http://www.fooledbyrandomness.com/

Nicholas Lore photo

“Real friends are those people who will stand for you expressing yourself fully, who will go out of their way to support you to keep your word, to go the extra mile, to get out of the box, to make your dreams come true.”

Nicholas Lore (1944) American social scientist

The Pathfinder (1998)

Charles Bukowski photo

“If you’re going to try, go all the
way.
otherwise, don’t even start.”

Charles Bukowski book Hot Water Music

Source: Hot Water Music

Michael Franti photo

“Those who start wars never fight them, and those who fight wars never like them.”

Michael Franti (1966) American rapper

Time to Go Home, Yell Fire! (2006)

“Sometimes people put up walls, not to keep others out, but to see who cares enough to break them down.”

Banana Yoshimoto (1964) Japanese writer

Pat Cadigan photo

“The Beater has still been young enough to feel immortal, at least on his better days. It was all, Wow, if we don’t slow down, we’re gonna die before we get old, except somehow it hadn’t happened that way. So they’d all assumed it never would, not dying, not getting old—hell, not even growing up.”

Pat Cadigan book Synners

Source: Synners (1991), Chapter 11 (p. 109)

Otto Neurath photo

“If one could only fly over the Earth and show everybody, Chinese gardeners live side by side in old fashion. Next to them a capitalist germ cell which puts its feelers out into the country! See the factory chimney smoking! Ships come and go. And in the North, nomads and tribes of hunters who don’t know anything of a capitalist order even though they sell furs to entrepreneurs. A sharpened eye would be able to grasp this. All of this can be grasped and represented in pictures!”

Otto Neurath (1882–1945) austrian economist, philosopher and sociologist

Otto Neurath (1928), "Kolonialpolitische Aufklärung durch Bildstatistik," Arbeit und Wirtschaft, Vol. 15: p. 677 (reprinted in Neurath 1991, Bildpädagogische Schriften: 130); Translated and cited in Nikolow (2013; 88)
1920s

Related topics