“There is an urge and rage in people to destroy, to kill, to murder, and until all mankind, without exception, undergoes a great change, wars will be waged, everything that has been built up, cultivated and grown, will be destroyed and disfigured, after which mankind will have to begin all over again.”
3 May 1944
The Diary of a Young Girl (1942 - 1944)
Context: I don't believe that the big men, the politicians and the capitalists alone are guilty of the war. Oh, no, the little man is just as keen, otherwise the people of the world would have risen in revolt long ago! There is an urge and rage in people to destroy, to kill, to murder, and until all mankind, without exception, undergoes a great change, wars will be waged, everything that has been built up, cultivated and grown, will be destroyed and disfigured, after which mankind will have to begin all over again.
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Anne Frank110
victim of the Holocaust and author of a diary 1929–1945Related quotes
William Winwood Reade (1838–1875) British historian
Source: The Martyrdom of Man (1872), Chapter IV, "Intellect", pp. 405-6.
“The accumulation of nuclear arms has to be constrained if mankind is not to destroy itself.”
Henry Kissinger (1923–2023) United States Secretary of State
Press conference held on 13 February, 1974
Sallustius Roman philosopher and writer
XVII. That the World is by nature Eternal.
On the Gods and the Cosmos
“A great civilization is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself within.”
Will Durant book The Story of Civilization
Epilogue: "Why Rome Fell", p. 665
The Story of Civilization (1935–1975), III - Caesar and Christ (1944)
André Gide (1869–1951) French novelist and essayist
Toutes choses sont dites déjà; mais comme personne n'écoute, il faut toujours recommencer. <br class="br"> Le Traité du Narcisse https://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/Le_Trait%C3%A9_du_narcisse (The Treatise of the Narcissus) <br class="br">Nothing is said that has not been said before. -- Terence
John Maynard Keynes book The Economic Consequences of the Peace
Source: The Economic Consequences of the Peace (1919), Chapter II, Section III, p. 19
John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) 35th president of the United States of America
1963, Limited Nuclear Test Ban Treaty speech
William Ellery Channing (1780–1842) United States Unitarian clergyman
War (1816)
Context: We need not war to awaken human energy. There is at least equal scope for courage and magnanimity in blessing, as in destroying mankind. The condition of the human race offers inexhaustible objects for enterprise, and fortitude, and magnanimity. In relieving the countless wants and sorrows of the world, in exploring unknown regions, in carrying the arts and virtues of civilization to unimproved communities, in extending the bounds of knowledge, in diffusing the spirit of freedom, and especially in spreading the light and influence of Christianity, how much may be dared, how much endured!
“A war is raging within me that burns everything. So I can begin again.”
Karel Appel (1921–2006) Dutch painter, sculptor, and poet
quote 1982 - from CF, 48; p. 83
Karel Appel, a gesture of colour' (1992/2009)