“Those impractical dreamers are entitled to ask their critics what is so practical about war.”
UN Address (1999)
Context: For how many thousands of years now have we humans been what we insist on calling "civilized?" And yet, in total contradiction, we also persist in the savage belief that we must occasionally, at least, settle our arguments by killing one another.
While we spend much of our time and a great deal of our treasure in preparing for war, we see no comparable effort to establish a lasting peace. Meanwhile, emphasizing the sloth in this regard, those advocates who work for world peace by urging a system of world government are called impractical dreamers. Those impractical dreamers are entitled to ask their critics what is so practical about war.
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Walter Cronkite 50
American broadcast journalist 1916–2009Related quotes

“The Outsider has his proper place in the Order of Society, as the impractical dreamer.”
Source: The Outsider (1956), Chapter Three, The Romantic Outsider
“Intellect is neither practical nor impractical; it is extra-practical.”
Source: Anti-Intellectualism in American Life (1974), p. 30

“Jesus is not an impractical idealist; he is the practical realist.”
1950s, Loving Your Enemies (Christmas 1957)

Quoted in Time magazine, October 31, 1977. http://www.time.com/time/magazine/printout/0,8816,945814,00.html
Also attributed to Christopher Hampton by the Sunday Times Magazine (16 October 1977)

Sunday Times Magazine (London, October 16, 1977)

One Minute News (1947), interview with British Pathé's John Parsons
Introduction, The Nature of Probability Theory, p. 6.
An Introduction To Probability Theory And Its Applications (Third Edition)