Quotes about war (6951 quotes, page 32)

“We find statements by religious, polital leaders and the media that incite Islamophobia. I'm going to give you some, otherwise we wind up talking in very true but general statements. And I think we need to hear the actual words, because these are the words that people, who are in churches, people who are watching the media, hear. And if they don't have a context within which to place them, they will draw us out of conclusions. While George Bush and Tony Blair may distinguish between Islam and extremism, Franklin Graham tells us that "Islam is a very evil religion. All the values that we as a nation hold dear, they don't share those same values at all … these countries that have the majority of Muslims." You might think of Franklin Graham as an individual, but if you are in the Muslim world, you know that Franklin Graham gave the invocation at the first inauguration of president Bush, that Franklin Graham a year and a half later was asked to speak on Good Friday at the Pentagon. That sends a signal. Pat Robertson: "This man [Muhammad] was an absolute wild-eyed fanatic, he was a robber and a brigand. And to say that these terrorists distort Islam … they are carrying out Islam. I mean: This man [Muhammed] was a killer and to think that this is a peaceful religion is fraudulent." Benny Hinn at a pro-Israel rally: "This not a war between Arabs and the Jews, this is between God and the devil."”

John Esposito (1940) writer and professor of Islamic studies

And there are many others.
Speech at the UN seminar on Islamophobia in 2004

God , People , World , Peace

“Oh Baudelaire... He used to be enormously important to me. It's thanks to him that I was able to get through the war [in Paris, during 1940 – 1945 Van Velde had a long and painful break, with only a few paintings he finished]. A true loyal mind without hypocrisy. The most universal spirit. The greatest Frenchman. I have always been much less interested in painters”

Bram van Velde (1895–1981) Dutch painter

than Baudelaire - a great surprise to hear for Charles Juliet the interviewer
14 September 1967; p. 66
1960's, Conversations with Samuel Beckett and Bram van Velde' (1965 - 1969)

Pain , Universe , Painting

“…they were gathered together on that platform with one object. They wanted to stop this war of which they had heard so much talk. They would like to stop it while time remained, for we had had enough of the last war not to want another. The seriousness and urgency of the danger was exemplified by the divergency of political opinion represented on the platform. We had reached a fateful milestone in human history.”

Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech at the Albert Hall, London (3 December 1936) at a cross-party meeting organised by the League of Nations Union "in defence of freedom and peace", quoted in The Times (4 December 1936), p. 18
The 1930s

Fate , History , Time

“"With these victories to which you refer, the Confederate States do seem to have retrieved their falling fortunes," Lord Lyons said. "I have no reason to doubt that Her Majesty's government will soon recognize that fact." "Thank you, your excellency," Lee said quietly. Even had Lincoln refused to give up the war- not impossible, with the Mississippi valley and many coastal pockets held by virtue of Northern naval power and hence relatively secure from rebel AK-47s- recognition by the greatest empire on earth would have assured Confederate independence. Lord Lyons held up a hand. "Many among our upper classes will be glad enough to welcome you to the family of nations, both as a result of your successful fight for self-government and because you have given a black eye to the often vulgar democracy of the United States. Others, however, will judge your republic a sham, with its freedom for white men based upon Negro slavery, a notion loathsome to the civilized world. I should be less than candid if I failed to number myself among that latter group." "Slavery was not the reason the Southern states chose to leave the Union," Lee said. He was aware he sounded uncomfortable, but went on, "We sought only to enjoy the sovereignty guaranteed us under the constitution, a right the North wrongly denied us. Our watchword all along has been, we wish but to be left alone."”

Harry Turtledove book The Guns of the South

Source: The Guns of the South (1992), p. 182-183

Men , World , Family , Democracy

“Some war hero is always getting in my way.”

Adlai Stevenson (1900–1965) mid-20th-century Governor of Illinois and Ambassador to the UN

Attributed to Stevenson by Harry Ashmore of the Arkansas Gazette and entered by William Fulbright in the Congressional Record for July 22, 1965. According to Ashmore, Stevenson said this when he was blocked by a motorcade for Charles de Gaulle

Way

“Jefferson Davis, on the other hand, had made clear from the first days of the war that his paramount goal was the attainment of independence… [H]e fought for such measures as conscription, central direction of the army, and the suspension of habeus corpus.”

Jefferson Davis (1808–1889) President of the Confederate States of America

Paul D. Escott, After Secession: Jefferson Davis and the Failure of Confederate Nationalism (1992), p. 254

“In any war a victory means another war, and yet another, until some day inevitably the tides turn, and the victor is the vanquished, and the circle reverses itself, but remains nevertheless a circle. … I came home more torn in heart than any child should be, for I saw that each side was right as well as wrong, and I yearned over both in a helpless fashion, unable to see how, history being what it was, anything now could be done.”

Pearl S. Buck (1892–1973) American writer

Source: My Several Worlds (1954), p. 61

Home , History , Fashion , Victory

“Ah, gentlemen, if we had only been a little more dependent on this capital during the war, perhaps the world would have had different ideas as to how the war must end!”

Gustav Stresemann (1878–1929) German politician, statesman, and Nobel Peace Prize laureate

Speech in the Reichstag (6 June 1924) on foreign loans to Germany, quoted in W. M. Knight-Patterson, Germany. From Defeat to Conquest 1913-1933 (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1945), p. 348
1920s

World , Idea , Dependency

“we've won the war. Now you have to lead us out of it.”

Ulysses S. Grant (1822–1885) 18th President of the United States

To Abraham Lincoln, Lincoln http://www.imsdb.com/scripts/Lincoln.html (2012)
In fiction, Lincoln (2012)

“Do these things for the sake of your country during the war. Do them for the sake of your country after the war. When the smoke of this great conflict has been dissolved in the atmosphere we breathe there will reappear a new Britain. It will be the old country still, but it will be a new country. Its commerce will be new, its trade will be new, its industries will be new. There will be new conditions of life and of toil, for capital and for labour alike, and there will be new relations between both of them and for ever. (Cheers.) But there will be new ideas, there will be a new outlook, there will be a new character in the land. The men and women of this country will be burnt into fine building material for the new Britain in the fiery kilns of the war. It will not merely be the millions of men who, please God! will come back from the battlefield to enjoy the victory which they have won by their bravery—a finer foundation I would not want for the new country, but it will not be merely that—the Britain that is to be will depend also upon what will be done now by the many more millions who remain at home. There are rare epochs in the history of the world when in a few raging years the character, the destiny, of the whole race is determined for unknown ages. This is one. The winter wheat is being sown. It is better, it is surer, it is more bountiful in its harvest than when it is sown in the soft spring time. There are many storms to pass through, there are many frosts to endure, before the land brings forth its green promise. But let us not be weary in well-doing, for in due season we shall reap if we faint not.”

David Lloyd George (1863–1945) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Loud cheers.
Speech in his constituency of Carnavon Boroughs (3 February 1917), quoted in The Times (5 February 1917), p. 12
Prime Minister

Life , Women , Men , God

“In war, science has proven itself an evil genius; it has made war more terrible than it ever was before. Man used to be content to slaughter his fellowmen on a single plane — the earth's surface. Science has taught him to go down into the water and shoot up from below and to go up into the clouds and shoot down from above, thus making the battlefield three times a bloody as it was before; but science does not teach brotherly love. Science has made war so hellish that civilization was about to commit suicide; and now we are told that newly discovered instruments of destruction will make the cruelties of the late war seem trivial in comparison with the cruelties of wars that may come in the future.”

William Jennings Bryan (1860–1925) United States Secretary of State

Summation
Scopes Trial (1925), Summations

Love , Suicide , Water , Science

“War is mainly a catalogue of blunders.”

Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

On the Soviet Union’s failure to form a united Balkan front against Hitler ; in The Second World War, Volume III : The Grand Alliance (1950) Chapter 20 (The Soviet Nemesis).
Post-war years (1945–1955)

“The ground breaking production of the company, and the point at which the cross-cultural casting began to bite, was Brecht’s anti-war play Mother Courage. Just one comment in a review by critic Malcolm Hay jolted us into the realisation that we were making history: Why is an Indian actor playing the Pastor?”

Angelique Rockas South African actress and founder of Internationalist Theatre, London

The South African Interview (August 8, 2011)

History , Courage

“Let us look facts straight in the eye. World imperialism headed by its aggressive detachment, U. S. imperialism, is directing the course of its economy towards preparations for war. It is arming itself to the teeth. U. S. imperialism is rearming Bonn's Germany, Japan, and all its allies and satellites with all kinds of weapons. It has set up and perfected aggressive military organizations, it has established and continues to establish military bases all around the socialist camp. It is accumulating stocks of nuclear weapons and refuses to disarm, to stop testing nuclear weapons, and is feverishly engaged in inventing new means of mass extermination. Why is it doing all this? To go to a wedding party? No, to go to war against us, to do away with socialism and communism, to put the peoples under bondage.”

Enver Hoxha (1908–1985) the Communist leader of Albania from 1944 until his death in 1985, as the First Secretary of the Party of L…

Speeches, Moscow Address

People , World , Communication , Wedding

“In total, communist (Marxist-Leninist) regimes murdered nearly 148 million people from 1917 to 1987. For a perspective on this incredible toll, note that all domestic and foreign wars during the twentieth century killed in combat around 41 million.”

Rudolph Rummel (1932–2014) American academic

Source: The Blue Book of Freedom: Ending Famine, Poverty, Democide, and War (2007), p. 99

People

“Attention must be given to the study of the given operations. Their study with due allowance made for the existing means of warfare will make it possible to reach a number of useful theoretical conclusions for conducting operations in the initial phase of a war.”

Matvei Zakharov (1898–1972) Soviet military commander

Quoted in "Timely Lessons of History: The Manchurian Model for Soviet Strategy" - Page 4 - by John Despres, Lilita Dzirkals, Barton Whaley - History - 1976

Study

“So many forces and resources would become available if States, aware (or conscious) of their true (or real) mission, would want to get on (or agree) to abolish every politics aiming at ("visant à", Fr.) expansion or hegemony; system that maintain among nations a a perpetual distrust and tension, impose on them (or force or compel, "leur impose", Fr.) formidable armies and crushing war budgets.”

African Spir (1837–1890) Russian philosopher

Source: Words of a Sage : Selected thoughts of African Spir (1937), p. 54.

“There are two sides of war. There is a side that fights, and there is a side that keeps the schools and the factories and the hospitals open. There is a side that is focused on winning battles, and there is a side that is focused on winning life. There is a side that leads the front-line discussion, and there is a side that leads the back-line discussion. There is a side that thinks that peace is the end of fighting, and there is a side that thinks that peace is the arrival of schools and jobs. There is a side that is led by men, and there is a side that is led by women. And in order for us to understand how do we build lasting peace, we must understand war and peace from both sides. We must have a full picture of what that means.”

Zainab Salbi (1969) Iraqi American author, women's rights activist

Speech at TEDGlobal 2010

Life , Women , Men , School

“When General Osborne came to see me just after the victory, he asked me what I thought should be done to educate the Germans. I said there is only one thing to be done and that is to teach them disobedience, as long as they are obedient so long sooner or later they will be ordered about by a bad man and there will be trouble. Teach them disobedience, I said, make every German child know that it is its duty at least once a day to do its good deed and not believe something its father or its teacher tells them, confuse their minds, get their minds confused and perhaps then they will be disobedient and the world will be at peace. The obedient peoples go to war, disobedient people like peace, that is the reason that Italy did not really become a good Axis, the people were not obedient enough, the Japs and the Germans are the only really obedient people on earth and see what happens, teach them disobedience, confuse their minds, teach them disobedience, and the world can be peaceful. General Osborne shook his head sadly, you'll never make the heads of an army understand that.”

Gertrude Stein (1874–1946) American art collector and experimental writer of novels, poetry and plays

Off we all went to see Germany. In: LIFE Magazine, Vol. 19, No. 6, August 6, 1945, S.56, ISSN 0024-3019. google books https://books.google.at/books?id=0EkEAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA54&lpg=PA54&dq=%22gertrude+stein%22+%22off+we+all+went%22&source=bl&ots=xOi2_KGtgA&sig=rCjhy5aEb48I1LiWrDQNNVtw37c&hl=de&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwij1sqZr7_cAhUFdcAKHQQhB_sQ6AEwAHoECAAQAQ#v=onepage&q=%22gertrude%20stein%22%20%22off%20we%20all%20went%22&f=false

People , World , Education , Peace

“Of war men ask the outcome, not the cause.”
quaeritur belli exitus, non causa.

Seneca the Younger Hercules Furens

Hercules Furens (The Madness of Hercules), line 407; (Lycus).
Tragedies

Men

“To increase the number of men and women in all lands who will refuse absolutely to sanction the use of any unchristian weapon, who will follow without compromise the teaching and example of Jesus Christ, and who will seek diligently by every possible means to spread abroad in the lives of individuals and of nations the spirit of Jesus, this is the only sure way to abolish war.”

Kirby Page (1890–1957) American clergyman

Source: The Sword or the Cross, Which Should be the Weapon of the Christian Militant? (1921), Ch.6 p. 107

Women , Men , Way , Christ

“The most important characteristic of documentary classification is that it is concerned with subjects, not just entities of taxonomic classification. What is the nature of the specific subjects - the themes on which books, parts of books, articles or parts of articles are written? A study of book titles alone would suggest that literary subjects have simple names like 'War, Religion', 'Boats', 'Musica; pitch', 'Colour', 'Acridines', 'Wild flowers', and so on. But the study of articles on the documentation level reveals that such titles are simple in appearance only. Such a literary subject is in reality a complex aggregate of specific subjects, eahc which is the main theme discussed from one particular aspect.”

Brian Campbell Vickery (1918–2009) British information theorist

Source: Classification and indexing in science (1958), Chapter 1: The need for classification, p. 8; Partly cited in Nigerian Library and Information Science Review (1987). Vol 5-8. p. 44.

Books , Religion , Flowers , Nature

“that we not leave them to themselves — they are unfit for self-government — and they would soon have anarchy and misrule over there worse than Spain's wars; and”

William McKinley (1843–1901) American politician, 25th president of the United States (in office from 1897 to 1901)

“My uncle [mother’s brother] wrote rather twee books of memoirs in the period between the two World Wars. They’d be deeply embarrassing to read today. In the 19th century my mother’s family were involved with the Pre-Raphaelites, and a direct ancestor of mine was Lady Byron’s lawyer, who advised her to leave the poet because of her husband’s affair with his half-sister. A much earlier ancestor on my mother’s side was chaplain to Richard Corbet, Bishop of Oxford, who wrote the poem ‘Farewell Rewards and Fairies’. In his ‘Brief Lives’ Aubrey describes them getting drunk together in the cellars of Christchurch, Oxford.”

Edward Lucie-Smith (1933) British art critic, writer and curator

From an interview http://rimbaud.org.uk/q-lucie-smith.html

Books , World , Family , Sister

“As it had been explained to David long ago, genetic diversity was very, very important. The more diverse the human gene pool was, the better were humanity’s chances of adapting to any new and unexpected conditions it might encounter, now that it was beginning to push outward into Space, to say nothing of surviving any unexpected natural disasters such as polar shifts or meteor strikes on Earth.
Unfortunately, humanity had been both unlucky and foolish. Out of the dozens of races that had once lived in the world, only a handful had survived into modern times. Some ancient races had been rendered extinct by war. Some had been simply crowded out, retreating into remote regions and forced to breed amongst themselves, which killed them off with lethal recessives.
That had been the bad luck. The foolishness had come when people began to form theories about the process of Evolution. They got it all wrong: most people interpreted the concept of “survival of the fittest” to mean they ought to narrow the gene pool, reducing it in size. So this was done, in genocidal wars and eugenics programs, and how surprised people were when lethal recessives began to occur more frequently! To say nothing of the populations who died in droves when diseases swept through them, because they were all so genetically similar there were none among them with natural immunities.”

Kage Baker book The Machine's Child

Source: The Machine's Child (2006), Chapter 29, “Still Another Morning in 500,000 BCE” (p. 330)

Bad luck , People , World , Disease

“What mighty ills have not been done by woman!
Who was ’t betrayed the Capitol?—A woman!
Who lost Mark Antony the world?—A woman!
Who was the cause of a long ten years’ war,
And laid at last old Troy in ashes?—Woman!
Destructive, damnable, deceitful woman!”

Thomas Otway The Orphan

The Orphan (1680), Act iii. Sc. 1. Compare: "O woman, woman! when to ill thy mind/ Is bent, all hell contains no fouler fiend", Alexander Pope, Homer’s Odyssey, book xi., line 531.

World

“George Washington's long struggle for freedom has also inspired generations of Americans to stand for freedom in their own time. Today, we're fighting a new war to defend our liberty and our people and our way of life. And as we work to advance the cause of freedom around the world, we remember that the father of our country believed that the freedoms we secured in our revolution were not meant for Americans alone. He once wrote, "My best wishes are irresistibly excited whensoever in any country I see an oppressed nation unfurl the banners of freedom." President Washington believed that the success of our democracy would also depend on the virtue of our citizens. In his farewell address to the American people, he said, "Morality is a necessary spring of popular government." Over the centuries, America has succeeded because we have always tried to maintain the decency and the honor of our first President. His example guided us in his time; it guides us in our time, and it will guide us for all time.”

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

President Bush Visits Mount Vernon, Honors President Washington's 275th Birthday on President's Day http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2007/02/20070219.html (February 19, 2007)
2000s, 2007

Life , People , World , Way

“I think the Kennedy-Johnson tax cut was a marvelous success in 1964. It was too bad it was not implemented a little sooner, and Kennedy died, of course. After that, Johnson dallied for a while about raising taxes to pay for the war in Vietnam. The stimulus did not get reversed until the tax increase and expenditure cap of 1969, and that had a quick effect once it was enacted. As you know, we had a recession in 1969–1970.”

Lawrence Klein (1920–2013) American economist

"Keynsianism Again: Interview with Lawrence Klein", Challenge (May-June 2001)

Thinking , Success

“I must be true to my conviction that I share with all men the calling to be the son of the Living God. Beyond the calling of race or nation or creed is this vocation of sonship and brotherhood. And because I believe that the Father is deeply concerned, especially for His suffering and helpless and outcast children, I come today to speak for them. And as I ponder the madness of Vietnam and search within myself for ways to understand and respond in compassion, my mind goes constantly to the people of that peninsula. I speak not now of the soldiers of each side, not of the military government of Saigon, but simply of the people who have been under the curse of war for almost three continuous decades now. I think of them, too, because it is clear to me that there will be no meaningful solution until some attempt is made to know these people and hear their broken cries.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

1960s, Why I Am Opposed to the War in Vietnam (1967)

Men , God , Children , People

“There were two parts of the Greek-speaking world at this time which did not suffer from revolution and did not seek to impose rule over the city states. In Epirus there were three clusters of tribal states, called Molossia, Thesprotia and Chaonia[…]the other part of the Greek-speaking world extended from Pelagonia in the north to Macedonia in the south. It was occupied by several tribal states, which were constantly at war against Illyrians, Paeonians and Thracians.”

N. G. L. Hammond (1907–2001) British classical scholar

"The Genius of Alexander the Great", p.11, Gerald Duckworth & Co Ltd (November 26, 2004)

World , Suffering , Time , Parting

“Why did virtually every culture reward its men for enduring violence? So it would have a cadre of people available to protect it in war.”

Warren Farrell (1943) author, spokesperson, expert witness, political candidate

Women Can't Hear What Men Don't Say (2000)

Men , People

“To have peace and not war, the drift toward a war economy, as facilitated by the moves and the demands of the sophisticated conservatives, must be stopped; to have peace without slump, the tactics and policies of the practical right must be overcome. The political and economic power of both must be broken. The power of these giants of main drift is both economically and politically anchored; both unions and an independent labor party are needed to struggle effective.”

C. Wright Mills (1916–1962) American sociologist

The New Men of Power (1948).
1940s

Peace

“The intolerance of narrow monotheism is written in letters of blood across the history of man from the time when first the tribes of Israel burst into the land of Canaan. The worshippers of the one jealous God are egged on to aggressive wars against people of alien cults. They invoke divine sanction for the cruelties inflicted on the conquered. The spirit of old Israel is inherited by Christianity and Islam.”

Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan (1888–1975) Indian philosopher and statesman who was the first Vice President and the second President of India

Hindu View of Life (1960)

God , People , History , Time

“When the afiairs of this tract was settled, the royal army marched, in the year 592 h., (1196 a. d.) "towards Galewar (Gwalior), and invested that fort, which is the pearl of the necklace of the castles of Hind, the summit of which the nimble-footed wind from below cannot reach, and on the bastion of which the rapid clouds have never cast their shade, and which the swift imagination has never surmounted, and at the height of which the celestial sphere is dazzled."…In compliance with the divine injunction of holy war, they drew out the bloodthirsty sword before the faces of the enemies of religion…Solankh Pal who had raised the standard of infidelity, and perdition, and prided himself on his countless army and elephants, and who expanded the fist^ of oppression from the hiding place of deceit, and who had lighted the flame of turbulence and rebellion, and who had fixed the root of sedition and enmity firm in his heart, and in the courtyard of whose breast the shrub of tyranny and commotion had shot forth its branches, when he saw the power and majesty of the army of Islam," he became alarmed and dispirited. " Wherever he looked, he saw the road of flight blocked up."”

Muhammad of Ghor (1160–1206) Ghurid Sultan

He therefore " sued for pardon, and placed the ring of servitude in his ear," and agreed to pay tribute...
About the capture of Gwalior. Hasan Nizami. Elliot and Dowson, Vol. II : Elliot and Dowson, History of India as told by its own Historians, 8 Volumes, Allahabad Reprint, 1964. pp. 227-228 Also quoted in Jain, Meenakshi (2011). The India they saw: Foreign accounts.

Religion , Imagination , Light , Heart

“As it dragged on, the Iraq War exposed as hollow any American aspirations to global hegemony. Left behind when U. S. troops finally withdrew was their reputation for military supremacy. Meanwhile as reports of prisoner abuse, torture, and the killing of noncombatants mounted, American moral confidence lost its luster.”

Andrew Bacevich (1947) United States Army officer

The Duplicity of the Idealogues: US Policy and Robert Kagan’s Fictive Narrative, 2014 July 11.

Confidence

“In the end, in every war,
whoever won, the people always lost.”

Nguyễn Duy (1948)

"Oh Stone" (Cambodia, 1989)
Distant Road (1999)

People

“A few months after Khieu Samphan’s now famous “admission” that his regime was responsible for the deaths of about one-sixth of the population of Cambodia, Indonesian Prime Minister Adam Malik admitted that 50-80,000 people, close to the same percentage of the population, had been killed in East Timor in the course of what the Indonesia propaganda ministry and the New York Times called the “civil war” – that is, the U. S. backed Indonesian invasion and massacre – though one would not have discovered that fact from the U. S. media. While Khieu Samphan’s “admission” was concocted by the media and scholarship on the basis of remarks that quite possibly were never made, Malik’s admission, by contrast, was clear and explicit. A comparison of media reaction to the actual admission by Malik and the concocted “admission” by Samphan gives some insight into what lies behind the machinations of the Free Press.”

Edward S. Herman (1925–2017) American journalist

Source: After the Cataclysm: Postwar Indochina and the Reconstruction of Imperial Ideology, with Noam Chomsky, 1979, p. 177.

Death , People , Time

“The bullets bursted [sic] at the time of the war, and we used to die with bullets, but now let us die quietly.”

Hollow Horn Bear (1850–1913) 19th century Lakota chief and policeman

During negotiations with Crook and others, in [Books on Google Play Congressional Serial Set, 1890, U.S. Government Printing Office, https://books.google.com/books?id=lQ0ZAAAAYAAJ, 1 March 2018, 59]

Time

“I have met Saddam Hussein exactly the same number of times as Donald Rumsfeld met him. The difference is that Donald Rumsfeld met him to sell him guns and to give him maps the better to target those guns. I met him to try and bring about an end to sanctions, suffering and war, and on the second of the two occasions, I met him to try and persuade him to let Dr Hans Blix and the United Nations weapons inspectors back into the country - a rather better use of two meetings with Saddam Hussein than your own Secretary of State for Defense made of his.”

George Galloway (1954) British politician, broadcaster, and writer

" Galloway v the US Senate: transcript of statement http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3-1616578,00.html", The Times, May 18, 2005
Testimony before the US Senate on May 17, 2005.

Suffering , Time , Country

“For 800 years Hindusthan waged a relentless freedom struggle - probably the most stirring saga of crusade for national freedom witnessed anywhere on the face of this earth. From Maharana Kumbha to Maharana Pratap Simha and Rajasimha in Rajasthan, from Hakka and Bukka to Krishnadevaraya in the South, from Chhatrapati Shivaji to the Peshwas in Maharashtra, from the various martyr Gurus of the Sikhs including Guru Govind Singh to Banda Bairagi and Ranjit Singh in the Punjab, from Chhatrasal in Bundelkhand to Lachit Barphukan in Assam, countless captains of the war of independence piloted the ship of freedom and steered her through perilous tides and tempests. As a result of their ceaseless and crushing blows, the conquering, sword of Islam lay in dust, shattered to pieces.”

H.V. Sheshadri (1926–2005) Indian writer

Source: The Tragic Story of Partition (1982), p.1-2

Freedom

“It will say just about everything I have ever had to say, or will ever have to say, on the human condition of war and what it means to us, as against what we claim it means to us.”

James Jones book Whistle

Introduction for his unfinished novel, Whistle (1978) the third part of his war trilogy (which was completed by Willie Morris); quoted in TIME magazine (13 March 1978) http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,919437,00.html

“The twentieth century had dispensed with the formal declaration of war and introduced the fifth column, sabotage, cold war, and war by proxy, but that was only the beginning. Summit meetings for disarmament pursued mutual understanding and a balance of power but were also held to learn the strengths and weaknesses of the enemy. The world of the war-or-peace alternative became a world in which war was peace and peace war.”

Stanisław Lem book Peace on Earth

Peace on Earth (1987), tr. Elinor Ford (1994) from Pokój na Ziemi, Ch. 2

World , Peace , Understanding , Learning

“The invasion of Georgia and South Carolina is the first. But why should the invasion of these two States affect the credit of the thirteen, more than the invasion of any two others? Massachusetts and Rhode Island have been invaded by armies much more formidable. New York, Connecticut, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia, have been all invaded before. But what has been the issue? Not conquest, not submission. On the contrary, all those States have learned the art of war and the habits of submission to military discipline, and have got themselves well armed, nay, clothed and furnished with a great deal of hard money by these very invasions. And what is more than all the rest, they have got over the fears and terrors that are always occasioned by a first invasion, and are a worse enemy than the English; and besides, they have had such experience of the tyranny and cruelty of the English as have made them more resolute than ever against the English government. Now, why should not the invasion of Georgia and Carolina have the same effects? It is very certain, in the opinion of the Americans themselves, that it will. Besides, the unexampled cruelty of Cornwallis has been enough to revolt even negroes; it has been such as will make the English objects of greater horror there than in any of the other States.”

John Adams (1735–1826) 2nd President of the United States

Letter to Baron Van Der Capellen (21 January 1781), Amsterdam. http://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/2105#lf1431-07_head_239
1780s

Money , Fear , Art , Learning

“They vote for us to go to war instantly, but none of their kids serve in the infantry.”

Immortal Technique (1978) American rapper and activist

Harlem Streets
Albums, Revolutionary Vol. 2 (2003)

“And the evil is done in hopes that evil surrenders
but the deeds of the devil are burned too deep in the embers
and a world of hunger in vengeance will always remember
So please be reassured, we seek no wider war,
we seek no wider war.”

Phil Ochs (1940–1976) American protest singer and songwriter

"We Seek No Wider War" http://web.cecs.pdx.edu/~trent/ochs/lyrics/we-seek-no-wider-war.html (1965) from Farewells & Fantasies (1997)
The song title alludes to a speech by Lyndon Johnson (17 Februaty 1965), in which he said, referring to the war in Vietnam: "We have no ambition there for ourselves, we seek no wider war."
Lyrics

Hunger , World , Hope , Evil

“These burdens and frustrations are accepted by most Americans with maturity and understanding. They may long for the days when war meant charging up San Juan Hill-or when our isolation was guarded by two oceans — or when the atomic bomb was ours alone — or when much of the industrialized world depended upon our resources and our aid. But they now know that those days are gone — and that gone with them are the old policies and the old complacency's. And they know, too, that we must make the best of our new problems and our new opportunities, whatever the risk and the cost.
But there are others who cannot bear the burden of a long twilight struggle. They lack confidence in our long-run capacity to survive and succeed. Hating communism, yet they see communism in the long run, perhaps, as the wave of the future. And they want some quick and easy and final and cheap solution — now.
There are two groups of these frustrated citizens, far apart in their views yet very much alike in their approach. On the one hand are those who urge upon us what I regard to be the pathway of surrender-appeasing our enemies, compromising our commitments, purchasing peace at any price, disavowing our arms, our friends, our obligations. If their view had prevailed, the world of free choice would be smaller today.
On the other hand are those who urge upon us what I regard to be the pathway of war: equating negotiations with appeasement and substituting rigidity for firmness. If their view had prevailed, we would be at war today, and in more than one place.
It is a curious fact that each of these extreme opposites resembles the other. Each believes that we have only two choices: appeasement or war, suicide or surrender, humiliation or holocaust, to be either Red or dead. Each side sees only "hard" and "soft" nations, hard and soft policies, hard and soft men. Each believes that any departure from its own course inevitably leads to the other: one group believes that any peaceful solution means appeasement; the other believes that any arms build-up means war. One group regards everyone else as warmongers, the other regards everyone else as appeasers. Neither side admits that its path will lead to disaster — but neither can tell us how or where to draw the line once we descend the slippery slopes of appeasement or constant intervention.
In short, while both extremes profess to be the true realists of our time, neither could be more unrealistic. While both claim to be doing the nation a service, they could do it no greater disservice. This kind of talk and easy solutions to difficult problems, if believed, could inspire a lack of confidence among our people when they must all — above all else — be united in recognizing the long and difficult days that lie ahead. It could inspire uncertainty among our allies when above all else they must be confident in us. And even more dangerously, it could, if believed, inspire doubt among our adversaries when they must above all be convinced that we will defend our vital interests.
The essential fact that both of these groups fail to grasp is that diplomacy and defense are not substitutes for one another. Either alone would fail. A willingness to resist force, unaccompanied by a willingness to talk, could provoke belligerence — while a willingness to talk, unaccompanied by a willingness to resist force, could invite disaster.”

John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) 35th president of the United States of America

1961, Address at the University of Washington

Men , Hate , People , Lie

“The anatomy and workings of the Deep State are reflexive, rather than a matter of collusion and conspiracy. Simple psychology—human nature at its worst—sees government jobs and programs, war and welfare alike, protected in perpetuity and at all costs by the administrators of government jobs and programs.”

Ilana Mercer South African writer

"Elon Musk, Et al.: The Corporate Arm Of The Deep State," https://townhall.com/columnists/ilanamercer/2017/06/03/elon-musk-et-al-the-corporate-arm-of-the-deepstate-n2335618 Townhall.com, June 3, 2017
2010s, 2017

Nature

“About three million must be regarded as middle peasants, while barely two million consist of kulaks, rich peasants, grain profiteers… Ruthless war on the kulaks! Death to them! … [Class struggle entails] ruthless suppression of the kulaks, those bloodsuckers, vampires, plunderers of the people and profiteers, who batten on famine.”

Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) Russian politician, led the October Revolution

As quoted in Comrade Workers, Forward To The Last, Decisive Fight! Collected Works, Vol. 28, pages 53-7.
Attributions

Death , People

“Now if you ask me, in conclusion, “Well, what, then should properly be done?” Obviously war, but I mean in regard to this issue I would say: Any way possible permission should be refused and if they go ahead and build it, the government should bomb it out of existence, evacuating it first, with no compensation to any of the property owners involved in this monstrosity.”

Leonard Peikoff (1933) Canadian-American philosopher

What do you think of the plan for a mosque in New York City near Ground Zero? (28 June 2010)
2010s

Way

“We received Jewish refugees during the Holocaust, Vietnamese refugees after the Vietnam War. We are even prepared to receive the Rohingyans who were stranded in the seas this year. No nation should just be a bystander in the face of this human emergency crisis”

Francis Escudero (1969) Filipino politician

Tempo http://www.tempo.com.ph/2015/09/07/chiz-calls-on-eu-to-aid-refugees/
2015

Sea

“.. I write you from the French front where I'am serving as a soldier in the Russian ambulance Corps. How are you feeling and what are you doing? How are your friends, Lissitsky, Libakov [also former students of Pen], Mazel, Mekler, and Chagall? Please, for God's sake, answer me. I would be so glad to hear how everyone is.
I'm in fine health, but tired of it all – it's utterly disgraceful, makes the soul turn cold. If only it [the war] would just end.
What are you working on, what are you doing? Please write me.”

Ossip Zadkine (1890–1967) French sculptor

Yours Zadkine.
Quote in a letter of Zadkine (in France) to his former art-teacher Yuri Moiseevich Pen in Vitebsk, Russia, 16 Nov. 1916 (transl. into Belorussian E.M. Kichina); as quoted in Vitebsk: The Life of Art, by Aleksandra Semenovna Shatskikh; Yale University Press, 2007, p. 19
1915 - 1940

God , Health , Feeling , Soul

“When did you become a shivering old woman," Okonkwo asked himself, "you, who are known in all the nine villages for your valor in war? How can a man who has killed five men in battle fall to pieces because he has added a boy to their number? Okonkwo, you have become a woman indeed.”

Chinua Achebe book Things Fall Apart

Source: Things Fall Apart (1958), Chapter 8 (pp. 62–63)

Men , Boy

“If you crave presidential lawlessness, war crimes, and international mayhem, you should adore Democratic presidential aspirant Hillary Clinton.”

Bruce Fein (1947) American lawyer

Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bruce-fein/hillary-clinton-unfit-for_b_8313372.html Hillary Clinton: Unfit for the Presidency

“That's what I hate about the war on drugs. All day long we see those commercials: "Here's your brain, here's your brain on drugs", "Just Say No", "Why do you think they call it dope?" … And then the next commercial is [singing] "This Bud's for yooouuuu." C'mon, everybody, let's be hypocritical bastards. It's okay to drink your drug. We meant those other drugs. Those untaxed drugs. Those are the ones that are bad for you.”

Bill Hicks (1961–1994) American comedian

Flying Saucer Tour Vol. I (2002)

Hate , Drink , Thinking , Singing

“In our new age of terrifying, lethal gadgets, which supplanted so swiftly the old one, the first great aggressive war, if it should come, will be launched by suicidal little madmen pressing an electronic button. Such a war will not last long and none will ever follow it. There will be no conquerors and no conquests, but only the charred bones of the dead on an uninhabited planet.”

William L. Shirer book The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich

Last words of the preface
The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (1960)

Age , Dead , Suicide

“It seems to me that the technique of gaming does at least two things, both of which are extremely important. One is that it tends to make a reality out of the potential and also the intentions nominally ascribed to the enemy. I have had the privilege of studying over the years a number of so-called "strategic studies," and I have often been amazed at the degree to which they are permeated by what one can only call "wishful thinking." There will often be on the first page a list of stated assumptions or postulates which will say something like the following: "(1) The enemy is very intelligent; (2) He has the initiative." When you turn the pages, however, the enemy has ceased to be intelligent, and he has also ceased to have initiative. War gaming does not let you get away with that.”

Bernard Brodie (1910–1978) American nuclear strategist

Strategy as an Art and a Science http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/theorists/brodie1.htm,1959

Game , Intelligence , Thinking , Reality

“Science is turning into a monastery for the Order of Capitulant Friars. Logical calculus is supposed to supersede man as moralist. We submit to the blackmail of the "superior knowledge" that has the temerity to assert that nuclear war can be, by derivation, a good thing, because this follows from simple arithmetic.”

Stanisław Lem book His Master's Voice

Source: His Master's Voice (1968), Ch. 9

Knowledge , Science

“I believe that we have learned the importance of maintaining military strength as a means of preventing war. We have found that a sound military system is necessary in time of peace if we are to remain at peace. Aggressors in the past, relying on our apparent lack of military force, have unwisely precipitated war. Although they have been led to destruction by their misconception of our strength, we have paid a terrible price for our unpreparedness.”

Harry Truman (1884–1972) American politician, 33rd president of the United States (in office from 1945 to 1953)

Special Message to the Congress on the Threat to the Freedom of Europe (1948)

Peace , Learning , Time , Past

“In bitter despair, some people have come to believe that wars are inevitable. With tragic fatalism, they insist that wars have always been, of necessity, and of necessity wars always will be. To such defeatism, men and women of good will must not and can not yield. The outlook for humanity is not so hopeless.”

Harry Truman (1884–1972) American politician, 33rd president of the United States (in office from 1945 to 1953)

Address to Congress (1945)

Women , Men , People , Despair

“Richard resumed reading the T’Rain Gazette, a daily newspaper (electronic format, of course)… which summarized what had been going on all over T’Rain during the preceding twenty-four hours:
Notable achievements, wars, duels, sackings, mortality statistics, plagues, famines…untoward spikes in commodity prices.”

Neal Stephenson book Reamde

Day 1
Reamde (2011), Part I: Nine Dragons

Reading

“My attitude towards peace does not depend on which war we are discussing. I think that words should do the work of bombs”

Margaret Cho (1968) American stand-up comedian

From Her Books, I Have Chosen To Stay And Fight, WAR

Peace , Thinking , Dependency

“The war had been on for quite a while now when Poppa got his notice from the draft. He didn't have to go, but he more or less enlisted. Mother and I and Aunt Mae went down to the train to see him off, and when he left he kissed Mother and he cried, and I'd never seen a man cry before. The train pulled away, and we stood there and watched it go, and Mother kept looking long after it had passed around the hill.”

John Kennedy Toole book The Neon Bible

Source: The Neon Bible, Ch. 4, opening paragraph.

Kiss , Cry , Training

“We’re introducing an updated Assault Weapons Ban for one reason: so that after every mass shooting with a military-style assault weapon, the American people will know that a tool to reduce these massacres is sitting in the Senate, ready for debate and a vote. This bill won’t stop every mass shooting, but it will begin removing these weapons of war from our streets. The first Assault Weapons Ban was just starting to show an effect when the NRA stymied its reauthorization in 2004. Yes, it will be a long process to reduce the massive supply of these assault weapons in our country, but we’ve got to start somewhere. To those who say now isn’t the time, they’re right—we should have extended the original ban 13 years ago, before hundreds more Americans were murdered with these weapons of war. To my colleagues in Congress, I say do your job.”

Dianne Feinstein (1933) American politician

[Senators Introduce Assault Weapons Ban, November 8, 2017, w:Diane Feinstein, Diane, Feinstein, https://www.feinstein.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/2017/11/senators-introduce-assault-weapons-ban]
On the introduction of the Assault Weapons Ban of 2017

People , Time , Country

“The significance of Jesus Christ as the "faithful and true witness" is that He not only witnesses against those who are at war against God, but He also executes them.”

Rousas John Rushdoony (1916–2001) American theologian

Source: Writings, The Institutes of Biblical Law (1973), p. 574

God , Faith , Christ

“I can’t really imagine war. I can imagine having to fight some swarm of zombie machines or snarling horde of posthuman fast-burn wreckage or whatever, but not two or more actual human societies actually fighting each other. I’m aware that people did that, before history, before the Moon, but it seems irrational. One side would have to believe they had something to gain from destroying or damaging the other, which just doesn’t make sense: it runs up against the law of association. And more to the point, each individual on any side would have to believe that they benefited from participating even if they died, which doesn’t make sense either. I suppose kin selection could make genes prevalent that made people vulnerable to that kind of illusion, but that only makes sense with animals that don’t have foresight. Even crows aren’t that stupid, at least not the ones that can talk. You have to get down to ants and such like before you see that kind of genetic mechanical mindlessness.”

Ken MacLeod book Learning the World

Source: Learning the World (2005), Chapter 9 “Red Sun Circle” (pp. 134-135)

People , Stupidity , Law , Imagination

“The idea of sovereignty current in the English speaking world of the 1760s was scarcely more than a century old. It had first emerged during the English Civil War, in the early 1640s, and had been established as a canon of Whig political thought in the Revolution of 1688.”

Bernard Bailyn book The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution

Source: The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution (1967), Chapter V, TRANSFORMATION, p. 198.

World , Idea

“A war takes place; an earthquake occurs; a flood of a magnitude not seen in a hundred years washes over the land; a cartel falls apart; oil prices quadruple; tax laws change, and the market in which you had an open position, or even hedged, moves in a magnitude not only unforeseen, but totally outside past models. They always do. You are in trouble.”

Eugene Rotberg (1930)

"Testimony Before the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Banking, Finance and Urban Affairs." http://www.generotberg.com/speeches/1990s/TESTIMONYCommitteeBanking100198.html, October 1 1998

Law , Change , Past

“Nathan Baca: You are literally staying silent about the two wars that we're in right now.
Sharron Angle: You know, the two wars that we're in right now, is exactly what we're in.”

Sharron Angle (1949) Former member of the Nevada Assembly from 1999 to 2007

“I think you're a damn war criminal and you should be tried as one.”

Joe Biden (1942) 47th Vice President of the United States (in office from 2009 to 2017)

To Slobodan Milosevic. Page 266.
2000s, Promises to Keep (2008)

Thinking

“I have never believed in war. It is a crime against humanity whether you win or lose. I just read an article in this magazine I have in my hands that one day the moon will fall on the earth, but it is my feeling that until then, we should try to make the world a better place to live in.”

Hjalmar Schacht (1877–1970) German politician

To Leon Goldensohn (9 June 1946). Quoted in "The Nuremberg Interviews" - by Leon Goldensohn, Robert Gellately - History - 2004.

World , Feeling , Reading

“The ones who are saying, "You can’t say 'happy holidays'. You have to say 'merry Christmas', because this is our season - this is the Christmas season." Well, it's not the Christmas season, it's the solstice season. And that's why it's not a war on Christmas. It's a war on the solstice, and the Christians started it.”

David Silverman (1957) American animator and director

interviewed regarding American Atheists' Jersey City, New Jersey "You Know It's a Myth" billboard.

Holiday , Christmas , Season , Happiness

“Dare I say it? Congressional Republicans had a collective war-metaphor-gasm trying to make the president‘s budget seem scary.”

Rachel Maddow (1973) American journalist

The Rachel Maddow Show, MSNBC, March 2009 http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29875974/24

“You just can't have this kind of war. There aren't enough bulldozers to scrape the bodies off the streets.”

Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890–1969) American general and politician, 34th president of the United States (in office from 1953 to 1961)

In 1957, as quoted in No Use: Nuclear Weapons and U.S. National Security https://books.google.com/books?id=Y_klAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA91&lpg=PA91&dq=%22there+aren%27t+enough+bulldozers+to+scrape+the+bodies+off+the+streets%22&source=bl&ots=g2f8x1zwaq&sig=JxpjSjWSWqsTKHpxnfAjjmW2ibU&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CCoQ6AEwAmoVChMI6cCQsa6SxgIVAWitCh3TUwty#v=onepage&q=%22there%20aren't%20enough%20bulldozers%20to%20scrape%20the%20bodies%20off%20the%20streets%22&f=false, by Thomas M. Nichols.
1950s

“What he wanted was to make his proclamation as effective as possible in the event of such a peace. He said, in a regretful tone, 'The slaves are not coming so rapidly and so numerously to us as I had hoped'. I replied that the slaveholders knew how to keep such things from their slaves, and probably very few knew of his proclamation. 'Well', he said, 'I want you to set about devising some means of making them acquainted with it, and for bringing them into our lines'. He spoke with great earnestness and much solicitude, and seemed troubled by the attitude of Mr. Greeley, and the growing impatience there was being manifested through the North at the war. He said he was being accused of protracting the war beyond its legitimate object, and of failing to make peace when he might have done so to advantage. He was afraid of what might come of all these complaints, but was persuaded that no solid and lasting peace could come short of absolute submission on the part of the rebels, and he was not for giving them rest by futile conferences at Niagara Falls, or elsewhere, with unauthorized persons. He saw the danger of premature peace, and, like a thoughtful and sagacious man as he was, he wished to provide means of rendering such consummation as harmless as possible. I was the more impressed by this benevolent consideration because he before said, in answer to the peace clamor, that his object was to save the Union, and to do so with or without slavery. What he said on this day showed a deeper moral conviction against slavery than I had ever seen before in anything spoken or written by him. I listened with the deepest interest and profoundest satisfaction, and, at his suggestion, agreed to undertake the organizing a band of scouts, composed of colored men, whose business should be somewhat after the original plan of John Brown, to go into the rebel States, beyond the lines of our armies, and carry the news of emancipation, and urge the slaves to come within our boundaries.”

Frederick Douglass (1818–1895) American social reformer, orator, writer and statesman

Source: 1880s, Life and Times of Frederick Douglass (1881), pp. 434–435.

Men , Peace , Hope , Color

“At eleven o’clock this morning came to an end the cruellest and most terrible War that has ever scourged mankind. I hope we may say that thus, this fateful morning, came to an end all wars.”

David Lloyd George (1863–1945) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1918/nov/11/time-limit-for-reply in the House of Commons (11 November 1918)
Prime Minister

Fate , Hope

“For me personally and for most other Americans, this commitment to peace and diplomacy does not imply a blind or total pacifism. There are times when war is justified, and for many centuries the moral criteria for violence have been carefully delineated.”

Jimmy Carter (1924) American politician, 39th president of the United States (in office from 1977 to 1981)

Page 151
Post-Presidency, Our Endangered Values (2005)

Peace , Time , Personality

“We have come here today to honor the memory of Lafayette, because long ago he came to this country as a private citizen at his own expense and joined us in fighting for the maintenance and extension of our institutions. It was not so much to acquire new rights, as to maintain old rights, that the men of that day put their fortunes to the hazard of war. They were resisting usurpations; they were combating unlawful tyrannies. No doubt they wanted to be Americans, but they wanted most of all to be free. They believed in individual liberty, safeguarded by constitutional guarantees. This principle to them was dearer than life itself. What they fought to preserve and extend, we ought to be ready to fight to maintain.”

Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)

1920s, Ordered Liberty and World Peace (1924)

Life , Men , Memory , Fight

“Even in times of war, you can see current events in their historical perspective, provided that your passion for the truth prevails over your bias in favor of your own nation.”

Leó Szilárd (1898–1964) Physicist and biologist

Are We on the Road to War?

Truth , Passion , Time

“Only the Jews had remained victorious after the dreadful days of World War I. These were the people of whom Christ said, "Its father is the devil."”

Julius Streicher (1885–1946) German politician

Quoted in "Anti-Judaism and the Fourth Gospel" - Page 14 - by Reimund Bieringer, Didier Pollefeyt, Frederique Vandecasteele-Vanneuville - Religion - 2001

People , World , Victory , Christ

“Let him fall if he cannot stand alone! If the Negro cannot live by the line of eternal justice, so beautifully pictured to you in the illustration used by Mr. Phillips, the fault will not be yours, it will be his who made the Negro, and established that line for his government. Let him live or die by that. If you will only untie his hands, and give him a chance, I think he will live. He will work as readily for himself as the white man. A great many delusions have been swept away by this war. One was, that the Negro would not work; he has proved his ability to work. Another was, that the Negro would not fight; that he possessed only the most sheepish attributes of humanity; was a perfect lamb, or an “Uncle Tom;” disposed to take off his coat whenever required, fold his hands, and be whipped by anybody who wanted to whip him. But the war has proved that there is a great deal of human nature in the Negro.”

Frederick Douglass (1818–1895) American social reformer, orator, writer and statesman

1860s, What the Black Man Wants (1865)

Justice , Nature , Thinking , Chance

“Peace for us means the destruction of Israel. We are preparing for an all-out war, a war which will last for generations… We shall not rest until the day when we return to our home, and until we destroy Israel.”

Yasser Arafat (1929–2004) former Palestinian President, and Nobel Peace Prize recipient

Quoted in The Times, UK (5 August 1980).
1980s and 1990s

Peace , Home

“Ikenobo Sen'o remarked on another occasion (this too is in his Sayings) that "the mountains and strands should appear in their own forms". Bringing a new spirit into his school of flower arranging, therefore, he found "flowers" in broken vessels and withered branches, and in them too the enlightenment that comes from flowers. "The ancients arranged flowers and pursued enlightenment." Here we see awakening to the heart of the Japanese spirit, under the influence of Zen. And in it too, perhaps, is the heart of a man living in the devastation of long civil wars.”

Yasunari Kawabata (1899–1972) Japanese author, Nobel Prize winner

Japan, the Beautiful and Myself (1969)

School , Mountain , Flowers , Appearance

“We're strange allies,
With warring hearts.
What wild-eyed beast you be?
The Space Between
The wicked lies we tell
And hope to keep us safe from the pain.”

Dave Matthews (1967) American singer-songwriter, musician and actor

The Space Between
Everyday (2001)

Pain , Hope , Heart

“If the debt which the banking companies owe be a blessing to anybody, it is to themselves alone, who are realizing a solid interest of eight or ten per cent on it. As to the public, these companies have banished all our gold and silver medium, which, before their institution, we had without interest, which never could have perished in our hands, and would have been our salvation now in the hour of war; instead of which they have given us two hundred million of froth and bubble, on which we are to pay them heavy interest, until it shall vanish into air… We are warranted, then, in affirming that this parody on the principle of 'a public debt being a public blessing,' and its mutation into the blessing of private instead of public debts, is as ridiculous as the original principle itself. In both cases, the truth is, that capital may be produced by industry, and accumulated by economy; but jugglers only will propose to create it by legerdemain tricks with paper.”

Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) 3rd President of the United States of America

ME 13:423
1810s, Letters to John Wayles Eppes (1813)

Truth

“The mystery story is a kind of writing that need not dwell in the shadow of the past and owes little if any allegiance to the cult of the classics. It is a good deal more than unlikely that any writer now living will produce a better historical novel than Henry Esmond, a better tale of children than The Golden Age, a sharper social vignette than Madame Bovary, a more graceful and elegant evocation than The Spoils of Poynton, a wider and richer canvas than War and Peace or The Brothers Karamazov. But to devise a more plausible mystery than The Hound of the Baskervilles or The Purloined Letter should not be too difficult. Nowadays it would be rather more difficult not to.”

Raymond Chandler book The Simple Art of Murder

Introduction
The Simple Art of Murder (1950)

Children , Age , Peace , Past

“Government, the peace-officer at home, breathes war abroad, organizes it into a science, reduces it to a system, makes it a trade, and applauds it as if it were the most honorable work of nations.”

William Ellery Channing (1780–1842) United States Unitarian clergyman

War (1816)

Peace , Home , Science

“If christian nations therefore were nations of christians, all war would be impossible and unknown among them.”

Soame Jenyns (1704–1787) British writer

A View of the Internal Evidence of the Christian Religion (1776), p. 47

“Wherever there is somebody else, a war is not far away.”

Dejan Stojanovic (1959) poet, writer, and businessman

“War,” p. 86
The Sun Watches the Sun (1999), Sequence: “A Game”

“When the Armistice came back no one took time to tell us about it; November 11 was just another day of drilling on the Plain. I found out that the war was over only by courtesy of our "barrack policemen", the janitor who looked after the division of the old South Barracks where my "beast" company was quartered, who reported the war's end a couple of days after the fact.”

Maxwell D. Taylor (1901–1987) United States general

Source: Swords and Plowshares (1972), p. 25

Time

“The US owes the world. The US "superpower" cannot even finance its own domestic operations, much less its gratuitous wars except via the kindness of foreigners to lend it money that cannot be repaid.The US will never repay the loans. The American economy has been devastated by offshoring, by foreign competition, and by the importation of foreigners on work visas, while it holds to a free trade ideology that benefits corporate fat cats and shareholders at the expense of American labor. The dollar is failing in its role as reserve currency and will soon be abandoned.When the dollar ceases to be the reserve currency, the US will no longer be able to pay its bills by borrowing more from foreigners.”

Paul Craig Roberts (1939) American economist

"A Bankrupt Superpower," CounterPunch (2008-03-18)

Money , World , Cats

“"A Holy War," Longstreet said. He shook his head. He did not think much of the Cause. He was a professional: the Cause was Victory. It came to him in the night sometimes with a sudden appalling shock that the boys he was fighting were boys he had grown up with. The war had come as a nightmare in which you chose your nightmare side. Once chosen, you put your head down and went on to win.”

Michael Shaara book The Killer Angels

Part I, CH 4: Longstreet, p. 58
The Killer Angels (1974)

Boy , Thinking , Victory , Fight

“Today’s despisers of free speech have their roots in a different ideology from the tribal sort that was used to justify slaveholding and Puritanism. This newer ideology began with Karl Marx—or rather, with the struggle of Marxist intellectuals to explain the failure of the European proletariat to rise in violent revolution at the outbreak of World War I. Rather than joining in solidarity with the working classes of other nations, European workers rallied in dismaying numbers to their national flags, exhausted themselves in a four-year killing spree that beggared all previous descriptions of war, and then succumbed to waves of populist fascism. The only revolution that Marxists could tease out of the charnel house of the Great War was a coup d’état in the most backward and least industrially developed empire of Europe and, even then, only by the substitution of what Vladimir Lenin called a “vanguard” of Marxist elites rather than a spontaneous uprising of the workers.”

Allen C. Guelzo (1953) American historian

2010s, Free Speech and Its Present Crisis (2018)

World , Failure , Housing

“Privilege is basically a form of property, and as John Locke pointed out, property is what makes a civilization rather than a Libyan war zone of Hobbesian anarchy. The world is a better place when people can work constructively to earn privileges, individual and collective, and pass some of them on to their heirs.”

Steve Sailer (1958) American journalist and movie critic

Checking Iron Age Barbarian Prejudice http://takimag.com/article/checking_iron_age_barbarian_prejudice_steve_sailer/print#ixzz4A7r77jkG, Taki's Magazine, April 22, 2015

People , World

“There are some who, for varying reasons, would appease Red China. They are blind to history's clear lesson, for history teaches with unmistakable emphasis that appeasement but begets new and bloodier war. It points to no single instance where this end has justified that means, where appeasement has led to more than a sham peace. Like blackmail, it lays the basis for new and successively greater demands until, as in blackmail, violence becomes the only other alternative.”

Douglas MacArthur (1880–1964) U.S. Army general of the army, field marshal of the Army of the Philippines

1950s, Farewell address to Congress (1951)

Peace , History , Success

“People of America: the world is following your news in regards to your invasion of Iraq, for people have recently come to know that, after several years of tragedies of this war, the vast majority of you want it stopped. Thus, you elected the Democratic Party for this purpose, but the Democrats haven't made a move worth mentioning.”

Osama bin Laden (1957–2011) founder of al-Qaeda

"New OBL Tape: Iraq, Democratic Control" ABC News (7 September 2007) http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalradar/2007/09/new-obl-tape-ir.html.
2000s, 2004, 2004 Video Broadcast on Al-Jazeera October 29

People , World