Quotes about war
page 4

“I'm not going to sacrifice love, real love, for any *%@$n' war or any friend, or any business, because in the end you're alone at night.”

John Lennon (1940–1980) English singer and songwriter

Love, Business, Night

“It's going to look pretty good, then, isn't it," said War testily, "the One Horseman and Three Pedestrians of the Apocalypse.”

Terry Pratchett book Sourcery

Source: Sourcery

“Actually, your past successes are your biggest obstacle: every battle, every war, is different, and you cannot assume that what worked before will work today.”

Robert Greene The 33 Strategies of War

Source: The 33 Strategies of War

Success, Past

“In peace there's nothing so becomes a man as modest stillness and humility; but when the blast of war blows in our ears, then imitate the action of the tiger; stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood, disguise fair nature with hard-favor'd rage.”

William Shakespeare Henry V

Source: Henry V

Peace, Nature, Rage

“Battle scars from the war of good versus evil have a unique beauty all their own.”

P. C. Cast book Hunted

Source: Hunted

Beauty, Evil

“Italian fascism was the immediate outgrowth of the betrayal by the reformists of the uprising of the Italian proletariat. From the time the [first world] war ended, there was an upward trend in the revolutionary movement in Italy, and in September 1920 it resulted in the seizure of factories and industries by the workers. The dictatorship of the proletariat was an actual fact; all that was lacking was to organize it and draw from it all the necessary conclusions. The social democracy took fright and sprang back. After its bold and heroic exertions, the proletariat was left facing the void. The disruption of the revolutionary movement became the most important factor in the growth of fascism. In September, the revolutionary advance came to a standstill; and November already witnessed the first major demonstration of the fascists”

Leon Trotsky (1879–1940) Marxist revolutionary from Russia

the seizure of Bologna
Source: Fascism: What It Is and How to Fight It (1944), Ch. 2

World, Democracy, Betrayal, Time

“Jellicoe was the only man on either side who could lose the war in an afternoon.”

Winston S. Churchill book The World Crisis

The World Crisis, 1916-1918 Part I : Chapter V (Jutland: The Preliminaries), Churchill, Butterworth (1927), pp. 112.
Early career years (1898–1929)

“I have a feeling that we are doing better in the war [in Vietnam] than the people have been told.”

Ronald Reagan (1911–2004) American politician, 40th president of the United States (in office from 1981 to 1989)

As quoted in Los Angeles Times (16 October 1967)
1960s

People, Feeling

“After the failure of his first experimental explorations around Vicksburg, a committee of abolition war managers waited upon the President and demanded the General’s removal, on the false charge that he was a whiskey drinker, and little better than a common drunkard. “Ah!” exclaimed Honest Old Abe, “you surprise me, gentlemen. But can you tell me where he gets his whiskey?” “We cannot, Mr. President. But why do you desire to know?” “Because, if I can only find out, I will send a barrel of this wonderful whiskey to every general in the army.””

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States

Statement first attributed in the New York Herald, (September 18, 1863) in response to allegations his most successful general drank too much; as quoted in Wit and Wisdom of the American Presidents: A Book of Quotations (2000) by Joslyn T. Pine, p. 26.
When some one charged Gen. Grant, in the President’s hearing, with drinking too much liquor, Mr. Lincoln, recalling Gen. Grant’s successes, said that if he could find out what brand of whisky Grant drank, he would send a barrel of it to all the other commanders.
The New York Times, October 30, 1863
Major Eckert asked Mr. Lincoln if the story of his interview with the complainant against General Grant was true. The story was: a growler called on the President and complained bitterly of General Grant’s drunkenness. The President inquired very solicitously, if the man could tell him where the General got his liquor. The man really was very sorry but couldn’t say where he did get it. The President replied that he would like very much to find out so he could get a quantity of it and send a barrel to all his Major Generals. Mr. Lincoln said he had heard the story before and it would be very good if he had said it, but he did not, and he supposed it was charged to him to give it currency. He then said the original of this story was in King George’s time. Bitter complaints were made to the King against his General Wolfe in which it was charged that he was mad. “Well,” said the King, “I wish he would bite some of my other Generals then.
Authenticity of quote first refuted in “The Military Telegraph During the Civil War in the United States” by William R. Plum, (1882).
Disputed

Failure, Waiting, Falseness

“[…] despite how hard sometimes the world seems to be, and all you see on television is war and conflict and poverty and violence, the truth is that if you had to choose when to be born, not knowing where or who you would be, in all of human history, now would be the time. Because the world is less violent, it is healthier, it is wealthier, it is more tolerant and it offers more opportunity than any time in human history for more people than any time in human history. Now, that doesn’t mean that there aren’t still terrible things happening around the world or in this region. We still have things like human trafficking. And we still have terrible abuse of children. And there are conflicts. And so these are things that we’re going to have to tackle and deal with. But you should know that with each successive generation things have improved just a little bit. And over time, that little bit adds to a lot. And it’s now up to you, the next generation, to make sure that 20 years from now, or 30 years from now, people look back and say, wow, things are a lot better now than they were back then. And there will still be problems 20 or 30 years from now also. But they will be different problems, because you will have solved many of the problems that exist today.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2014, Young Southeast Asian Leaders Initiative Town Hall (April 2014)

Children, People, Truth, World

“Martin Luther King, Jr. once wrote that you cannot commit an act of violence against a non-sentient object. Back in 1986, the Green Party of Canada tried to toss me out of the Party for sinking whaling ships on the ground that it was a violent act. I pointed out that the Green Party of Canada supported violence when it was convenient politically — for example they supported and continue to support abortion which is, like it or not, a violent act, certainly more violent than sinking some metal into the sea. Violence is not violent when we justify it, be it abortion, or war, or eating meat for example. I support abortion but I'm not a hypocrite about it — it's violent, I accept that. Every American taxpayer accepts the violence that their tax-dollars fund.”

Paul Watson (1950) Canadian environmental activist

When asked how he addressed accusations of property destruction as being a violent act. Taken from an interview given to the environmentalist magazine, Resistance: Journal of the Earth Liberation Movement http://www.resistancemagazine.org/

Support, Sea

“The legacy of modernity is a legacy of fratricidal wars, devastating "development," cruel "civilization," and previously unimagined violence. Erich Auerbach once wrote that tragedy is the only genre that can properly claim realism in Western literature, and perhaps this is true precisely because of the tragedy Western modernity has imposed on the world.”

Antonio Negri book Empire

46
Empire

World, Literature

“War is a series of catastrophes that results in a victory.”

Georges Clemenceau (1841–1929) French politician

Statement to Woodrow Wilson at the Paris Peace Conference (12 January 1919), as quoted in The Macmillan Dictionary of Political Quotations (1993) by Lewis D. Eigen and Jonathan Paul Siegel, p. 689
Prime Minister

Victory

“In the cotton States, after the war…the Jew came down in force, set up shop on the plantation, supplied all the negro's wants on credit, and at the end of the season was proprietor of the negro's share of the present crop and of part of his share of the next one. Before long, the whites detested the Jew, and it is doubtful if the negro loved him.”

Mark Twain book Concerning the Jews

Concerning the Jews (Harper's Magazine, Sept. 1899)

Love, Parting, Season

“All delays are dangerous in war.”

John Dryden Tyrannick Love

Tyrannick Love (1669), Act I, scene i.

“The social order of Islam is opposed to our Western values. Human rights and democracy are as incompatible with the Muslim religious doctrine as is the equality of women. In Islam, the individual and his free will count for nothing; faith and religious struggle – jihad, the holy war – for everything.”

Jörg Haider (1950–2008) Austrian politician

stated in the early 1990s, as quoted in "Towards a Community of Values?" by Hans-Georg Betz – in Austria in the European Union (2003), p. 434

Women, Faith, Democracy

“Nowhere are our calculations more frequently upset than in war.”

Livy (-59–17 BC) Roman historian

Book XXX, sec. 30
History of Rome

“China is now suffering from poverty, not from unequal distribution of wealth. Where there are inequalities of wealth, the methods of Marx can, of course, be used; a class war can be advocated to destroy the inequalities. But in China, where industry is not yet developed, Marx's class war and dictatorship of the proletariat are impracticable.”

Sun Yat-sen (1866–1925) Chinese physician, politician and revolutionary

Capital and the State (1924)

Suffering, Wealth

“Defense is the first act of war.”

Byron Katie (1942) American spiritual writer

Your Inner Awakening

“We will not apologize for our way of life, nor will we waver in its defense, and for those who seek to advance their aims by inducing terror and slaughtering innocents, we say to you now that our spirit is stronger and cannot be broken; you cannot outlast us, and we will defeat you.
For we know that our patchwork heritage is a strength, not a weakness. We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus — and non-believers. We are shaped by every language and culture, drawn from every end of this Earth; and because we have tasted the bitter swill of civil war and segregation, and emerged from that dark chapter stronger and more united, we cannot help but believe that the old hatreds shall someday pass; that the lines of tribe shall soon dissolve; that as the world grows smaller, our common humanity shall reveal itself; and that America must play its role in ushering in a new era of peace.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2009, First Inaugural Address (January 2009)

Life, World, Peace, Way

“When we send our young men and women into harm's way, we have a solemn obligation not to fudge the numbers or shade the truth about why they're going, to care for their families while they're gone, to tend to the soldiers upon their return, and to never ever go to war without enough troops to win the war, secure the peace, and earn the respect of the world.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2004, Democratic National Convention speech (July 2004)

Women, Men, Truth, World

“Banks are the temples of America. This is a holy war. Our economy is our religion.”

Giannina Braschi book United States of Banana

United States of Banana (2011)

Religion

“Ashley finishes her story and then goes around the room and asks everyone else why they're supporting the campaign. They all have different stories and reasons. Many bring up a specific issue. And finally they come to this elderly black man who's been sitting there quietly the entire time. And Ashley asks him why he's there. And he does not bring up a specific issue. He does not say health care or the economy. He does not say education or the war. He does not say that he was there because of Barack Obama. He simply says to everyone in the room, "I am here because of Ashley."
"I'm here because of Ashley." By itself, that single moment of recognition between that young white girl and that old black man is not enough. It is not enough to give health care to the sick, or jobs to the jobless, or education to our children.
But it is where we start. It is where our union grows stronger. And as so many generations have come to realize over the course of the two-hundred and twenty one years since a band of patriots signed that document in Philadelphia, that is where the perfection begins.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2008, A More Perfect Union (March 2008)

Children, Health, Education, Girl

“For he considered that, in many cases, but especially in war, mere appearances have had all the effect of realities; and that a person, under a firm persuasion that he can command resources, virtually has them; that very prospect inspiring him with hope and boldness in his exertions.”

Livy (-59–17 BC) Roman historian

Book XXXIV, sec. 12 http://books.google.com/books?id=5f08AAAAYAAJ&q=&quot;For+he+considered+that+in+many+cases+but+especially+in+war+mere+appearances+have+had+all+the+effect+of+realities+and+that+a+person+under+a+firm+persuasion+that+he+can+command+resources+virtually+has+them+that+very+prospect+inspiring+him+with+hope+and+boldness+in+his+exertions&quot;&pg=PA443#v=onepage History of Rome

Hope, Reality, Appearance, Personality

“ISIL speaks for no religion. Their victims are overwhelmingly Muslim, and no faith teaches people to massacre innocents. No just God would stand for what they did yesterday, and for what they do every single day. ISIL has no ideology of any value to human beings. Their ideology is bankrupt. They may claim out of expediency that they are at war with the United States or the West, but the fact is they terrorize their neighbors and offer them nothing but an endless slavery to their empty vision, and the collapse of any definition of civilized behavior. And people like this ultimately fail. They fail, because the future is won by those who build and not destroy.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

Statement by the President (20 August 2014) http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2014/08/20/statement-president 2014

God, People, Faith, Religion

“That is real horror and blood. When the Second World War finished I was 23 and already I had seen enough horror to last me a lifetime. I’d seen dreadful, dreadful things, without saying a word. So seeing horror depicted on film doesn't affect me much.”

Christopher Lee (1922–2015) British actor and singer

Sir Christopher Lee interview: 'I’m softer than people think' http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/film/8316999/Interview-Christopher-Lee.html (2011)

World

“Rather in time of war the citizen must be more alert to the preservation of his right to control his government. He must be most watchful of the encroachment of the military upon the civil power. He must beware of those precedents in support of arbitrary action by administrative officials, which excused on the plea of necessity in wartime, become the fixed rule when the necessity has passed and normal conditions have been restored.”

Robert M. La Follette Sr. (1855–1925) American politician

Free Speech in Wartime (October 6, 1917)

Support, Time

“My temperament and habit had always kept me rather in the middle of the road; in politics as well as in social reform I had been for "the best possible." But now I was pushed far toward the left on the subject of the war and I became gradually convinced that in order to make the position of the pacifist clear it was perhaps necessary that at least a small number of us should be forced into an unequivocal position.”

Jane Addams (1860–1935) pioneer settlement social worker

Peace and Bread in Time of War (1922), Chapter 7 : Personal Reactions During War http://media.pfeiffer.edu/lridener/DSS/Addams/pb7.html

“The first deterrence, nuclear deterrence, is presently being superseded by the second deterrence: a type of deterrence based on what I call 'the information bomb' associated with the new weaponry of information and communications technologies. Thus, in the very near future, and I stress this important point, it will no longer be war that is the continuation of politics by other means, it will be what I have dubbed 'the integral accident' that is the continuation of politics by other means.”

Paul Virilio (1932–2018) French philosopher

From Ctheory Interview With Paul Virilio 'The Kosovo War Took Place In Orbital Space: Paul Virilio in Conversation with John Armitage' http://www.ctheory.net/text_file.asp?pick=132

Communication, Future

“If and when the war starts(WW2), no matter where or whoever you are or if you are young or old, Northner or Southner, you all have the responsibility of protecting our home and repelling the enemy, you all must have the will to achieve ultimate sacrifice.”

Chiang Kai-shek (1887–1975) Chinese politician and military leader

Original: 如果戰端一開，就是地無分南北，年無分老幼，無論何人，皆有守土抗戰之責任,皆應抱定犧牲一切之決心！
蔣介石廬山《應戰宣言》

Home

“Alexander Hamilton said, "A nation which can prefer disgrace to danger is prepared for a master, and deserves one." Let's set the record straight. There is no argument over the choice between peace and war, but there is only one guaranteed way you can have peace — and you can have it in the next second — surrender.”

Ronald Reagan (1911–2004) American politician, 40th president of the United States (in office from 1981 to 1989)

1960s, A Time for Choosing (1964)

Peace, Way

“It is in this sense that Franklin says, "war is robbery, commerce is generally cheating."”

Karl Marx (1818–1883) German philosopher, economist, sociologist, journalist and revolutionary socialist

Vol. I, Ch. 5, pg. 182 (on Benjamin Franklin)
(Buch I) (1867)

Sense, Cheating

“When the war started in Abyssinia all Negro nationalists looked with hope to Haile Selassie. They spoke for him, they prayed for him, they sung for him, they did everything to hold up his hands, as Aaron did for Moses; but whilst the Negro peoples of the world were praying for the success of Abyssinia this little Emperor was undermining the fabric of his own kingdom by playing the fool with white men, having them advising him[, ] having them telling him what to do, how to surrender, how to call off the successful thrusts of his [Race] against the Italian invaders. Yes, they were telling him how to prepare his flight, and like an imbecilic child he followed every advice and then ultimately ran away from his country to England, leaving his people to be massacred by the Italians, and leaving the serious white world to laugh at every Negro and repeat the charge and snare - "he is incompetent," "we told you so." Indeed Haile Selassie has proved the incompetence of the Negro for political authority, but thank God there are Negroes who realise that Haile Selassie did not represent the truest qualities of the Negro race. How could he, when he wanted to play white? How could he, when he surrounded himself with white influence? How could he, when in a modern world, and in a progressive civilization, he preferred a slave State of black men than a free democratic country where the black citizens could rise to the same opportunities as white citizens in their democracies?”

Marcus Garvey (1887–1940) Jamaica-born British political activist, Pan-Africanist, orator, and entrepreneur

The Failure of Haile Selassie as Emperor in The Blackman, April, 1937.

Men, God, People, World

“I know what I'm about to say now is controversial, but I have to say it. This nation cannot continue turning a blind eye and a deaf ear to the taking of some 4,000 unborn children's lives every day. That's one every 21 seconds. One every 21 seconds. We cannot pretend that America is preserving her first and highest ideal, the belief that each life is sacred, when we've permitted the deaths of 15 million helpless innocents since the Roe versus Wade decision. 15 million children who will never laugh, never sing, never know the joy of human love, will never strive to heal the sick, feed the poor, or make peace among nations. Abortion has denied them the first and most basic of human rights. We are all infinitely poorer for their loss. There's another grim truth we should face up to: Medical science doctors confirm that when the lives of the unborn are snuffed out, they often feel pain, pain that is long and agonizing. This nation fought a terrible war so that black Americans would be guaranteed their God-given rights. Abraham Lincoln recognized that we could not survive as a free land when some could decide whether others should be free or slaves. Well, today another question begs to be asked: How can we survive as a free nation when some decide that others are not fit to live and should be done away with? I believe no challenge is more important to the character of America than restoring the right to life to all human beings. Without that right, no other rights have meaning. "Suffer the little children to come unto me, and forbid them not, for such is the kingdom of God."”

Ronald Reagan (1911–2004) American politician, 40th president of the United States (in office from 1981 to 1989)

I will continue to support every effort to restore that protection including the Hyde-Jepsen respect life bill. I've asked for your all-out commitment, for the mighty power of your prayers, so that together we can convince our fellow countrymen that America should, can, and will preserve God's greatest gift. Remarks at the Annual Convention of the National Religious Broadcasters (30 January 1984) http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=40394 · YouTube - Remarks at the Annual Convention of the National Religious Broadcasters https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Elph9CfsKs 1980s, First term of office (1981–1985)

Love, Life, Death, God

“I woke up this morning and fell out of bed;
Trouble waiting to happen.
Should've quit while I was ahead;
Trouble waiting to happen.
I turned on the news to the Third World War,
Opened up the paper to World War IV.
Just when I thought it was safe to be bored,
Trouble waiting to happen.”

Warren Zevon (1947–2003) American singer-songwriter

"Trouble Waiting to Happen", written by Warren Zevon and J. D. Souther
Sentimental Hygiene (1987)

World, Waiting

“There are evils, as someone has pointed out, that have the ability to survive identification and go on for ever — money, for instance, or war.”

Saul Bellow book The Dean's December

The Dean’s December (1982) [Penguin Classics, 1998, ISBN 0-140-18913-0], ch. 13, p. 140
General sources

Money, Evil

“There are laws for peace as well as war.”

Livy (-59–17 BC) Roman historian

Book V, sec. 27
History of Rome

Peace, Law

“And raw in fields the rude militia swarms,
Mouths without hands; maintain'd at vast expense,
In peace a charge, in war a weak defence;
Stout once a month they march, a blustering band,
And ever but in times of need at hand.”

John Dryden book Fables, Ancient and Modern

Source: Fables, Ancient and Modern (1700), Cymon and Iphigenia, Line 400.

Peace, Time

“The criminal law has, from the point of view of thwarted virtue, the merit of allowing an outlet for those impulses of aggression which cowardice, disguised as morality, restrains in their more spontaneous forms. War has the same merit. You must not kill you neighbor, whom perhaps you genuinely hate, but by a little propaganda this hate can be transferred to some foreign nation, against whom all your murderous impulses become patriotic heroism.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

Part III: Man and Himself, Ch. 17: Fear, p. 175
1950s, New Hopes for a Changing World (1951)

Hate, Law

“It might also be mentioned that Hijrat is not the only way of escape to Muslims who find themselves in a Dar-ul-Harb. There is another injunction of Muslim Cannon Law called Jihad (crusade) by which it becomes “incumbent on a Muslim ruler to extend the rules of Islam until the whole world shall have been brought under its sway. The world, being divided into two camps, Dar-ul-Islam (abode of Islam), Dar-ul-Harb (abode of war), all countries come under one category or the other. Technically, it is the duty of the Muslim ruler, who is capable of doing so, to transform Dar-ul-Harb into Dar-ul-Islam. The fact remains that India, if not exclusively under Muslim rule, is a Dar-ul-Harb and the Musalmans according to the tenets of Islam are justified in proclaiming a Jihad. Not only can they proclaim Jihad but they can call the aid of a foreign Muslim power to make Jihad success, or if the foreign Muslim power intends to proclaim a Jihad, help that power in making its endeavor a success.”

Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar (1891–1956) Father of republic India, champion of human rights, father of India's Constitution, polymath, revolutionary…

295-296
Pakistan or The Partition of India (1946)

World, Law, Way, Success

“Whose side are you on?" "I don't know."
"This is a war, you've got to choose." "I don't know."
"Does your village still exist?" "I don't know."
"Are those your children?”

Wisława Szymborska (1923–2012) Polish writer

"Yes."
"Vietnam"
Poems New and Collected (1998), No End of Fun (1967)

Children

“No more thrilling challenge confronts the people of this generation than that inherent in the crusade to abolish war and to create adequate international organization.”

Kirby Page (1890–1957) American clergyman

An American Peace Policy (1925)

People

“War is elevating, because the individual disappears before the great conception of the state…. What a perversion of morality to wish to abolish heroism among men!”

Heinrich von Treitschke (1834–1896) Historian, political writer

Politics, Volume I, p. 74.

Men

“Some say that no machine conceived to kill could ever be called beautiful. Magnificent, maybe, and awesome perhaps. But not beautiful. The thing is though that in the battleship's short life of just 90 years it turned out to be a less effective killing machine than amost any other weapon of war. All they did was steam around the oceans, making the people who paid for them feel good.”

Jeremy Clarkson (1960) English broadcaster, journalist and writer

I Know You Got Soul (2004)

Life, People, Beauty, Feeling

“I don't have a trace of moral scruple, when it comes to the state I feel completely free. It's committed such terrible crimes against us all, against our generation, that we have a right to anything. I'm not worried about doing it damage, we'll just be recovering some damages for our entire battered generation. Who taught me how to steal, who made me do it, if not the state? Commandeering, that's the word they used during the war, or expropriating — Versailles called it reclamation. Who taught us how to cheat if not the state — how else would we know what money saved up by three generations could become worthless in a mere two weeks, that families could be swindled out of pastures, houses, and fields that had been theirs for a hundred years? Even if I kill someone, who trained me to do it? Six months on the drill field and then years at the front! We have an excellent case against the state, by God, we'll win in every court. It can never pay off its terrible debt, never give back what it took from us. Once there might have been a reason to have some qualms, back when the state was a good custodian, thrifty, decent, proper. Now that it's behaved like a hoodlum, we have the right to be hoodlums too.”

Stefan Zweig book The Post Office Girl

The Post Office Girl (published posthumously in 1982)

Money, God, Family, Feeling

“Of course it's tempting to close one's eyes to history, and instead speculate about the roots of war in some possible animal instinct: as if, like the tiger, we still had to kill to live, or, like the robin redbreast, to defend a nesting territory. But war, organized war, is not a human instinct. It is a highly planned and cooperative form of theft. And that form of theft began 10,000 years ago when the harvesters of wheat accumulated a surplus and the nomads rose out of the desert to rob them of what they themselves could not provide. The evidence for that, we saw, in the walled city of Jericho and its prehistoric tower… That is the beginning of war.”

Jacob Bronowski The Ascent of Man

Episode 2: "The Harvest of the Seasons"
The Ascent of Man (1973)

History, Animals

“To hold a pen is to be at war.”

Voltaire (1694–1778) French writer, historian, and philosopher

Qui plume a, guerre a.
Letter to Jeanne-Grâce Bosc du Bouchet, comtesse d'Argental (4 October 1748)
This remark also appears in a letter to Marie-Louise Denis (22 May 1752): To hold a pen is to be at war. This world is one vast temple consecrated to discord [Qui plume a, guerre a. Ce monde est un vaste temple dédié à la discorde].
Citas

“But we must be ready to face any temporary disaster - whether or not brought on by those who will war against us to the knife — if only through such disaster can we attain our goal.”

Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American politician, 26th president of the United States

1910s, The Progressives, Past and Present (1910)

“The foreign-born population of this country must be an Americanized population. No other kind can fight the battles of America either in war or peace. It must talk the language of its native-born fellow-citizens; it must possess American citizenship and American ideals. It must stand firm by its oath of allegiance in word and deed and must show that in very fact it has renounced allegiance to every prince, potentate, or foreign government. It must be maintained on an American standard of living so as to prevent labor disturbances in important plants and at critical times. None of these objects can be secured as long as we have immigrant colonies, ghettos, and immigrant sections, and above all they cannot be assured so long as we consider the immigrant only as an industrial asset. The immigrant must not be allowed to drift or to be put at the mercy of the exploiter. Our object is not to imitate one of the older racial types, but to maintain a new American type and then to secure loyalty to this type. We cannot secure such loyalty unless we make this a country where men shall feel that they have justice and also where they shall feel that they are required to perform the duties imposed upon them.”

Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American politician, 26th president of the United States

1910s, Address to the Knights of Columbus (1915)
Context: The foreign-born population of this country must be an Americanized population. No other kind can fight the battles of America either in war or peace. It must talk the language of its native-born fellow-citizens; it must possess American citizenship and American ideals. It must stand firm by its oath of allegiance in word and deed and must show that in very fact it has renounced allegiance to every prince, potentate, or foreign government. It must be maintained on an American standard of living so as to prevent labor disturbances in important plants and at critical times. None of these objects can be secured as long as we have immigrant colonies, ghettos, and immigrant sections, and above all they cannot be assured so long as we consider the immigrant only as an industrial asset. The immigrant must not be allowed to drift or to be put at the mercy of the exploiter. Our object is not to imitate one of the older racial types, but to maintain a new American type and then to secure loyalty to this type. We cannot secure such loyalty unless we make this a country where men shall feel that they have justice and also where they shall feel that they are required to perform the duties imposed upon them. The policy of 'Let alone' which we have hitherto pursued is thoroughly vicious from two standpoints. By this policy we have permitted the immigrants, and too often the native-born laborers as well, to suffer injustice. Moreover, by this policy we have failed to impress upon the immigrant and upon the native-born as well that they are expected to do justice as well as to receive justice, that they are expected to be heartily and actively and single-mindedly loyal to the flag no less than to benefit by living under it.

Men, Peace, Justice, Feeling

“Operations in Iraq and Afghanistan and the war on terrorism have reduced the pace of military transformation and have revealed our lack of preparation for defensive and stability operations. This Administration has overextended our military.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

Speech to the Chicago Council on Foreign Relations (12 July 2004)
2004

“In war, character and opinion make more than half of the reality.”

Napoleon I of France (1769–1821) French general, First Consul and later Emperor of the French

Napoleon : In His Own Words (1916)

Reality

“JB: And the practical consequences of that political reason would be then aggression against the Russians interviewer: might have been world war III. JB: Absolutely. And that's why we were querying our instruction from an American general. Fortunately, up on the radio came Gen Mike Jackson, whose exact words at the time were, 'I'm not going to have my soldiers be responsible for starting World War III”

James Blunt (1974) English singer-songwriter

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-11753050

World, Time

“Mr. Roosevelt is the most formidable disaster that has befallen the country since the Civil War—but the vast mass of the nation loves him, is frantically fond of him, even idolizes him. This is the simple truth. It sounds like a libel upon the intelligence of the human race, but it isn't; there isn't any way to libel the intelligence of the human race.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

Source: Autobiography of Mark Twain, Vol. 3 (2015), p. 136, of President Theodore Roosevelt

Love, Truth, Way, Intelligence

“It is mere illusion and pretty sentiment to expect much from mankind if he forgets how to make war. And yet no means are known which call so much into action as a great war, that rough energy born of the camp, that deep impersonality born of hatred, that conscience born of murder and cold-bloodedness, that fervor born of effort of the annihilation of the enemy, that proud indifference to loss, to one's own existence, to that of one's fellows, to that earthquake-like soul-shaking that a people needs when it is losing its vitality.”

Friedrich Nietzsche book Human, All Too Human

Human, All Too Human (1878)

People, Soul, Effort, Loss

“The so-called "peace" is an interval between wars.”

Lu Xun (1881–1936) Chinese novelist and essayist

9
"The Epigrams of Lusin"

Peace

“Where the stakes are the highest, in the war on terror, we cannot possibly succeed without extraordinary international cooperation. Effective international police actions require the highest degree of intelligence sharing, planning and collaborative enforcement.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

Speech to the Chicago Council on Foreign Relations (12 July 2004)
2004

Intelligence

“With American leadership, the international community has begun to establish a process – and timeline – to pursue ceasefires and a political resolution to the Syrian war. Doing so will allow the Syrian people and every country, including our allies, but also countries like Russia, to focus on the common goal of destroying ISIL – a group that threatens us all.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2015, Address to the Nation by the President on San Bernardino (December 2015)

People, Communication, Country

“Stop war? Impossible! There is no cure for the world's disease.”

Henri Barbusse book Under Fire

Under Fire (1916), Ch. 1 - The Vision

World, Disease

“I don't oppose all wars. What I am opposed to is a dumb war. What I am opposed to is a rash war. What I am opposed to is the cynical attempt by Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz and other armchair, weekend warriors in this administration to shove their own ideological agendas down our throats, irrespective of the costs in lives lost and in hardships borne. What I am opposed to is the attempt by political hacks like Karl Rove to distract us from a rise in the uninsured, a rise in the poverty rate, a drop in the median income, to distract us from corporate scandals and a stock market that has just gone through the worst month since the Great Depression. That’s what I’m opposed to. A dumb war. A rash war. A war based not on reason but on passion, not on principle but on politics.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

Remarks of Illinois State Sen. Barack Obama Against Going to War with Iraq (2 October 2002) http://action.barackobama.com/page/share/2002iraqfull; referencing the positions of former Pentagon policy adviser Richard Perle, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, and chief Bush political adviser Karl Rove. 2000-03

Passion

“All wars are civil ones; for it is still man spilling his own blood, tearing out his own bowels.”

François Fénelon (1651–1715) Catholic bishop

Toutes les guerres sont civiles; car c'est toujours l'homme contre l'homme qui répand son propre sang, qui déchire ses propres entrailles.
Dialogues des morts, ch. 17, cited from De l'éducation des filles, Dialogues des morts et opuscules divers (Paris: Firmin Didot, 1857) p. 149; translation from Mr. Elphingston (trans.) Dialogues of the Dead, Together with Some Fable Composed for the Education of a Prince (Glasgow: Robert and Andrew Foulis, 1754) vol. 1, p. 87. (1700).

Tear

“Wars can be prevented just as surely as they can be provoked, and we who fail to prevent them must share the guilt for the dead.”

Omar Bradley (1893–1981) United States Army field commander during World War II

As quoted in Peace Pilgrim: Her Life and Work in Her Own Words (1992) by Peace Pilgrim, p. 113.

Dead

“By the time I was twenty, I had lived through a Hungarian Fascist dictatorship, German military occupation, the Nazis' "Final Solution," the siege of Budapest by the Soviet Red Army, a period of chaotic democracy in the years immediately after the war, a variety of repressive Communist regimes, and a popular uprising that was put down at gunpoint... [where] many young people were killed; countless others were interned. Some two hundred thousand Hungarians escaped to the West. I was one of them.”

Andrew S. Grove (1936–2016) Hungarian-born American businessman, engineer, and author

Prologue: Grove summarized his first twenty years of life in Hungary in his memoirs.
New millennium, Swimming Across: a Memoir, 2001

People, Democracy, Time

“Small boys everywhere know that in a fight between Superman, James Bond and the Terminator, James Bond would win. Well, it's the same story in Star Wars. In a fight between the Enterprise, Stingray, Thunderbird 2 and the Millennium Falcon, the Falcon would reign supreme. It just would. The end.”

Jeremy Clarkson (1960) English broadcaster, journalist and writer

I Know You Got Soul (2004)

Star, Boy, Fight

“If one leaves a wooden or cardboard box containing a small glass ampulla with several centigrams of a radium salt in one’s pocket for a few hours, one will feel absolutely nothing. But 15 days afterwards a redness will appear on the epidermis, and then a sore which will be very difficult to heal. A more prolonged action could lead to paralysis and death. Radium must be transported in a thick box of lead.
It can even be thought that radium could become very dangerous in criminal hands, and here the question can be raised whether mankind benefits from knowing the secrets of Nature, whether it is ready to profit from it or whether this knowledge will not be harmful for it. The example of the discoveries of Nobel is characteristic, as powerful explosives have enabled man to do wonderful work. They are also a terrible means of destruction in the hands of great criminals who are leading the peoples towards war. I am one of those who believe with Nobel that mankind will derive more good than harm from the new discoveries.”

Pierre Curie (1859–1906) French physicist

Nobel lecture (1905)

Death, People, Secret, Feeling

“War, no matter what our intentions may be, brings suffering and tragedy.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

Obama raises human rights in Vietnam, calls for 'peaceful resolution' of South China Sea disputes http://edition.cnn.com/2016/05/24/politics/obama-vietnam-south-china-sea/, CNN (24 May 2016) 2016

Suffering

“One of the great American tragedies is to have participated in a just war. It's been possible for politicians and movie-makers to encourage us we're always good guys. The Second World War absolutely had to be fought. I wouldn't have missed it for the world. But we never talk about the people we kill. This is never spoken of.”

Kurt Vonnegut (1922–2007) American writer

Interviewed by Roger Friedman, "God Bless You, Mr. Vonnegut" http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,70164,00.html, FoxNews.com (11 November 2002) Various interviews

People, World, Guy

“The war has ended - quite differently, indeed, from how we expected. Our politicians have failed us miserably.”

Wilhelm II, German Emperor (1859–1941) German Emperor and King of Prussia

Reaction to Hindenburg and Ludendorff's advice that an armistice must be requested (29 September 1918), quoted in Fritz Fischer, Germany's Aims in the First World War (New York: W. W. Norton & Co, 1967), p. 634
1910s

“A genius is not very likely to ever discover himself; neither is he very likely to be discovered by his intimates; in fact I think I may put it in stronger words and say it is impossible that a genius—at least a literary genius—can ever be discovered by his intimates; they are so close to him that he is out of focus to them and they can't get at his proportions; they cannot perceive that there is any considerable difference between his bulk and their own. They can't get a perspective on him, and it is only by a perspective that the difference between him and the rest of their limited circle can be perceived. St. Peter's cannot be impressive for size to a person who has always seen it close at hand and has never been outside of Rome; it is only the stranger, approaching from far away in the Campania, who sees Rome as an indistinct and characterless blur, with the mighty cathedral standing up out of it all lonely and unfellowed in its majesty. Thousands of geniuses live and die undiscovered—either by themselves or by others. But for the Civil War, Lincoln and Grant and Sherman and Sheridan would not have been discovered, nor have risen into notice.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

Source: Autobiography of Mark Twain, Vol. 3 (2015), pp. 57–58

Thinking, Personality

“A 'civilization' that makes such a ridiculous fuss about alleged 'war crimes' -- acts of violence against the actual or potential enemies of one's cause -- and tolerates slaughterhouses and vivisection laboratories, and circuses and the fur industry (infliction of pain upon creatures that can never be for or against any cause), does not deserve to live. Out with it! Blessed the day it will destroy itself, so that a healthy, hard, frank and brave, nature-loving and truth-loving élite of supermen with a life-centered faith,-- a natural human aristocracy, as beautiful, on its own higher level, as the four-legged kings of the jungle -- might again rise, and rule upon its ruins, for ever!”

Savitri Devi (1905–1982) Greek–French writer

Impeachment of Man (Calcutta: Savitri Devi Mukherji, 1959, p. x, http://www.savitridevi.org/impeachment-preface.html)

Love, Life, Pain, Truth

“After all, I think Forrest was the most remarkable man our Civil War produced on either side…He had never read a military book in his life, knew nothing about tactics, could not even drill a company, but had a genius of strategy which was original, and to me incomprehensible.”

Nathan Bedford Forrest (1821–1877) Confederate Army general

Regarding Forrest's millitary genius, William T. Sherman w:The Life of General Nathan Bedford Forrest, by John Allan Wyeth, p.635.

Life, Books, Thinking, Reading

“We cannot turn against one another by letting this fight be defined as a war between America and Islam. That, too, is what groups like ISIL want. ISIL does not speak for Islam. They are thugs and killers, part of a cult of death, and they account for a tiny fraction of more than a billion Muslims around the world -- including millions of patriotic Muslim Americans who reject their hateful ideology. Moreover, the vast majority of terrorist victims around the world are Muslim. If we’re to succeed in defeating terrorism we must enlist Muslim communities as some of our strongest allies, rather than push them away through suspicion and hate.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2015, Address to the Nation by the President on San Bernardino (December 2015)

Death, Hate, World, Communication

“You can’t believe something like that is happening to you; meeting the President of Ireland and the spectacle of the parade. And everyone is so nice. They all feel like they know you. That’s the nice thing about being in something that’s as universally recognised as Star Wars. Parents normally tell kids ‘Don’t talk to strangers’, but everyone thinks they know me, wherever I go.
I embrace being the more Obi-Wan like character, because that’s the natural progression of life.
There was a period after Return of the Jedi when Star Wars had not come back. These movies are timeless, not dated by their cars or fashions. So, you have these fans who are parents with young children who have just seen Star Wars for the first time and think we made it two weeks ago. The parents say, ‘Look who it is, it’s Luke Skywalker!’ And there I am at 50, and the child is aghast. ‘What happened to this guy, he really let himself go!’ It’s natural and good to see the ageing process. So at least now, when they see me, it’s OK because they’ve seen me in the current film rather than thinking about me in my 20s.”

Mark Hamill (1951) American actor, voice actor, producer, director, and writer

6 April 2018 interview with Independent https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/features/mark-hamill-interview-star-wars-last-jedi-luke-skywalker-leaving-a8292541.html

Life, Children, Age, Cars

“OK, everybody, I got to get to Star Wars.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

"Obama cuts off press conference to go see 'Star Wars'" http://thehill.com/blogs/in-the-know/in-the-know/263757-obama-cuts-off-press-conference-to-go-see-star-wars, The Hill (18 December 2015) 2015

Star

“For decades, this vision stood in sharp contrast to life on the other side of an Iron Curtain. For decades, a contest was waged, and ultimately that contest was won -- not by tanks or missiles, but because our ideals stirred the hearts of Hungarians who sparked a revolution; Poles in their shipyards who stood in Solidarity; Czechs who waged a Velvet Revolution without firing a shot; and East Berliners who marched past the guards and finally tore down that wall. Today, what would have seemed impossible in the trenches of Flanders, the rubble of Berlin, or a dissident’s prison cell -- that reality is taken for granted. A Germany unified. The nations of Central and Eastern Europe welcomed into the family of democracies. Here in this country, once the battleground of Europe, we meet in the hub of a Union that brings together age-old adversaries in peace and cooperation. The people of Europe, hundreds of millions of citizens -- east, west, north, south -- are more secure and more prosperous because we stood together for the ideals we share. And this story of human progress was by no means limited to Europe. Indeed, the ideals that came to define our alliance also inspired movements across the globe among those very people, ironically, who had too often been denied their full rights by Western powers. After the Second World War, people from Africa to India threw off the yoke of colonialism to secure their independence. In the United States, citizens took freedom rides and endured beatings to put an end to segregation and to secure their civil rights. As the Iron Curtain fell here in Europe, the iron fist of apartheid was unclenched, and Nelson Mandela emerged upright, proud, from prison to lead a multiracial democracy. Latin American nations rejected dictatorship and built new democracies, and Asian nations showed that development and democracy could go hand in hand.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2014, Address to European Youth (March 2014)

Life, People, Age, World

“Our life is half natural and half technological. Half-and-half is good. You cannot deny that high-tech is progress. We need it for jobs. Yet if you make only high-tech, you make war. So we must have a strong human element to keep modesty and natural life.”

Nam June Paik (1932–2006) American video art pioneer

1970s Source: Douglas C. McGill, ART PEOPLE http://www.nytimes.com/1986/10/03/arts/art-people.html, New York Times, October 3, 1986

Life, Nature, Strong

“Each pursues his private interest and only his private interest; and thereby serves the private interests of all, the general interest, without willing it or knowing it. The real point is not that each individual's pursuit of his private interest promotes the totality of private interests, the general interest. One could just as well deduce from this abstract phrase that each individual reciprocally blocks the assertion of the others' interests, so that, instead of a general affirmation, this war of all against all produces a general negation.”

Karl Marx (1818–1883) German philosopher, economist, sociologist, journalist and revolutionary socialist

Grundrisse (1857-1858)
Source: Notebook I, The Chapter on Money, p. 76.

“There are two ways of coping with fear: one is to diminish the external danger, and the other is to cultivate Stoic endurance. The latter can be reinforced, except where immediate action is necessary, by turning our thoughts away from the cause of fear. The conquest of fear is of very great importance. Fear is in itself degrading; it easily becomes an obsession; it produces hate of that which is feared, and it leads headlong to excesses of cruelty. Nothing has so beneficent an effect on human beings as security. If an international system could be established which would remove the fear of war, the improvement in everyday mentality of everyday people would be enormous and very rapid. Fear, at present, overshadows the world. The atom bomb and the bacterial bomb, wielded by the wicked communist or the wicked capitalist as the case may be, make Washington and the Kremlin tremble, and drive men further along the road toward the abyss. If matters are to improve, the first and essential step is to find a way of diminishing fear.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

1950s, What Desires Are Politically Important? (1950)

Men, Hate, People, World

“If the race of armaments continues it will lead to the third world war and to the destruction of our civilization.”

Kirby Page (1890–1957) American clergyman

What Does God Want Us to Do About Russia? (1948)

World

“Many things have been said about me which are wrong, and which white and black persons here, who stood by me through the war, can contradict. I have been in the heat of battle when colored men, asked me to protect them. I have placed myself between them and the bullets of my men, and told them they should be kept unharmed. Go to work, be industrious, live honestly and act truly, and when you are oppressed I'll come to your relief. I thank you, ladies and gentlemen, for this opportunity you have afforded me to be with you, and to assure you that I am with you in heart and in hand.”

Nathan Bedford Forrest (1821–1877) Confederate Army general

1870s, Speech before the Pole-Bearers Association (1875)

Men, Color, Heart, Personality

“I am under no illusion that our present strategy of using means short of total war to achieve our ends and oppose communism is a guarantee that a world war will not be thrust upon us. But a policy of patience and determination without provoking a world war, while we improve our military power, is one which we believe we must continue to follow….
Under present circumstances, we have recommended against enlarging the war from Korea to also include Red China. The course of action often described as a limited war with Red China would increase the risk we are taking by engaging too much of our power in an area that is not the critical strategic prize.
Red China is not the powerful nation seeking to dominate the world. Frankly, in the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, this strategy would involve us in the wrong war, at the wrong place, at the wrong time, and with the wrong enemy.”

Omar Bradley (1893–1981) United States Army field commander during World War II

Testimony before the Senate Committees on Armed Services and Foreign Relations (15 May 1951), published in Military Situation in the Far East, hearings, 82d Congress, 1st session, part 2 (1951), p. 732.
Variation: "… a wrong war at the wrong place and against a wrong enemy."
Military Situation, p. 753.

World, Communication, Time, Patience

“Unless souls are saved, nothing is saved; there can be no world peace unless there is soul peace. World wars are only projections of the conflicts waged inside the souls of men and women, for nothing happens in the external world that has not first happened within a soul.”

Fulton J. Sheen (1895–1979) Catholic bishop and television presenter

Source: Peace of Soul (1949), Ch. 1, p. 1 (the opening paragraph of the book)

Women, Men, World, Peace

“A civil war occurring in a country, where foreigners reside and carry on trade under treaty stipulations is necessarily fruitful of complaints of the violation of neutral rights. All such collisions tend to excite misapprehensions, and possibly to produce mutual reclamations between nations which have a common interest in preserving peace and friendship.”

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States

1860s, Second State of the Union address (1862)

Friendship, Peace, Country

“he has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating it's most sacred rights of life & liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating & carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither. this piratical warfare, the opprobrium of infidel powers; is the warfare of the Christian king of Great Britain. determined to keep open a market where MEN should be bought & sold he has prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or to restrain this execrable commerce: and that this assemblage of horrors might want no fact of distinguished die, he is now exciting those very people to rise in arms among us, and to purchase that liberty of which he has deprived them, by murdering the people upon whom he also obtruded them: thus paying off former crimes committed against the liberties of one people, with crimes which he urges them to commit against the lives of another.”

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

Known as the "anti-slavery clause", this section drafted by Thomas Jefferson was removed from the Declaration at the behest of representatives of South Carolina http://alexpeak.com/twr/doi/draft/#ex2. 1770s, Declaration of Independence (1776), Earlier drafts

Life, Death, Men, People

“In 1933, the Jhansi Heroes decided to participate in the Beighton Cup hockey tournament. My life’s ambition was to win the Beighton Cup, as I had always regarded this competition as the blue riband of Indian hockey. In my opinion it is perhaps the best organized hokey event in the country. Calcutta is indeed lucky that it has at least three of four first class hockey grounds on the maidan, and this is a great advantage to run a tournament on schedule instituted since 1895, this tournament had a non-stop run. World Wars I and II did not affect the tournament. Threats of Japanese bombs and actual bombings in Calcutta while the hockey season was on also did not prevent from the tournament from being held. That being said, it is sad to think that the tournament had to yield to the communal frenzy, which gripped the nation in 1946-47.”

Dhyan Chand (1905–1979) Indian field hockey player

While writing on the Beighton Cup held in 1952 and he was playing for the Jhansi Heroes cited in page 35
Quote, India and the Olympics

Life, World, Sadness, Communication

“And we’re at the very beginning stages of a very brutal and bloody conflict, of which if the people in this room, the people in the church, do not bind together and really form what I feel is an aspect of the church militant, to really be able to not just stand with our beliefs, but to fight for our beliefs against this new barbarity that’s starting, that will completely eradicate everything that we’ve been bequeathed over the last 2,000, 2,500 years. … Now that call converges with something we have to face, and it’s a very unpleasant topic, but we are in an outright war against jihadist Islamic fascism. And this war is, I think, metastasizing far quicker than governments can handle it.”

Steve Bannon (1953) American media executive and former White House Chief Strategist for Donald Trump

Third International Conference on Human Dignity https://www.buzzfeed.com/lesterfeder/this-is-how-steve-bannon-sees-the-entire-world?utm_term=.ph1V8aOPJz#.vhqa3rnxpW (2014)

People, Feeling, Thinking, Fight

“You, Knights of Columbus, are particularly fitted to play a great part in the movement for national solidarity, without which there can be no real efficiency in either peace or war. During the last year and a quarter it has been brought home to us in startling fashion that many of the elements of our nation are not yet properly fused. It ought to be a literally appalling fact that members of two of the foreign embassies in this country have been discovered to be implicated in inciting their fellow-countrymen, whether naturalized American citizens or not, to the destruction of property and the crippling of American industries that are operating in accordance with internal law and international agreement. The malign activity of one of these embassies has been brought home directly to the ambassador in such shape that his recall has been forced. The activities of the other have been set forth in detail by the publication in the press of its letters in such fashion as to make it perfectly clear that they were of the same general character. Of course, the two embassies were merely carrying out the instructions of their home governments.”

Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American politician, 26th president of the United States

1910s, Address to the Knights of Columbus (1915)

Peace, Law, Home, Fashion

“He who did well in war just earns the right
To begin doing well in peace.”

Robert Browning (1812–1889) English poet and playwright of the Victorian Era

Luria, Act ii.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Peace

“One-eighth of the whole population were colored slaves, not distributed generally over the Union, but localized in the southern part of it. These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew that this interest was somehow the cause of the war. To strengthen, perpetuate, and extend this interest was the object for which the insurgents would rend the Union, even by war; while the government claimed no right to do more than to restrict the territorial enlargement of it.”

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States

1860s, Second Inaugural Address (1865)

Color, Parting

“I would like to show the German people a film with the title "Germany at the end of the war". Then perhaps people would be alarmed and would realize where we are heading. People would agree with me that the superior warlord (Hitler) must disappear. But since we cannot show this movie people will create the legend of the "stab in the back" whenever we will act against Hitler.”

Henning von Tresckow (1901–1944) German general

December 1941. Bodo Scheurig, Henning von Tresckow, ein Preusse gegen Hitler, p. 135-6.

People

“This morning at Flanders Field, I was reminded of how war between peoples sent a generation to their deaths in the trenches and gas of the First World War. And just two decades later, extreme nationalism plunged this continent into war once again -- with populations enslaved, and great cities reduced to rubble, and tens of millions slaughtered, including those lost in the Holocaust. It is in response to this tragic history that, in the aftermath of World War II, America joined with Europe to reject the darker forces of the past and build a new architecture of peace. Workers and engineers gave life to the Marshall Plan. Sentinels stood vigilant in a NATO Alliance that would become the strongest the world has ever known. And across the Atlantic, we embraced a shared vision of Europe -- a vision based on representative democracy, individual rights, and a belief that nations can meet the interests of their citizens through trade and open markets; a social safety net and respect for those of different faiths and backgrounds.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2014, Address to European Youth (March 2014)

Life, Death, People, World

“The war was a “tragic error,” but not “fundamentally wrong or immoral” (as the overwhelming majority of the American people continue to believe), and surely not criminal aggression - the judgment that would be reached at once on similar evidence if the responsible agent were not the USA, or an ally or client. Our point is not that the retrospectives fail to draw what seem to us, as to much of the population, the obvious conclusions; the more significant and instructive point is that principled objection to the war as “fundamentally wrong and immoral,” or as an outright criminal aggression - a war crime - is inexpressible. It is not part of the spectrum of discussion. The background for such a principled critique cannot be developed in the media, and the conclusions cannot be drawn. It is not present even to be refuted. Rather, the idea is unthinkable. All of this reveals with great clarity how foreign to the mobilized media is a conception of the media as a free system of information and discussion, independent of state authority and elite interests.”

Noam Chomsky book Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media

Herman and Chomsky (1988), Manufacturing Consent, p. 252.
Quotes 1960s-1980s, 1980s

People, Error, Idea, Parting

“The band at the far end of the hall, amplified to the din of an elephant charge, smashed and hewed at the tune as though in a holy war against silence.”

Kurt Vonnegut book Player Piano

Source: Player Piano (1952), Chapter 19 (p. 188)

Silence

“And then the spring of [19]'48 I toddled off to Paris on a Liberty ship... Yes, and arriving in Le Havre on that Liberty ship and seeing all those—the sun was coming up—and seeing all those ships sunk.. It was hardly... I mean, war, war, war, war…. I went to Paris, and I stayed with Zuka and Louis [Mitelberg] [her husband then, the cartoonist 'Tim']. And I looked for a place—and found it on Rue Gallande. Across the river was Notre Dame. That was all of four dollars a month, with a hole on the stairs as a toilet and a spigot with cold water and one light-bulb. That was all the electricity there was. But this view, I mean, God!... Saint Julien le Pauvre [Greek Orthodox Church, oldest in Paris] was right in front of me. And so I painted there.”

Joan Mitchell (1925–1992) American painter

first side of the first tape
1975 - 1992, Oral history interview with Joan Mitchell, 1986

God, Spring, Light, Water

“"We shall say to ourselves," says one, "'After all, why do we make war?' We don't know at all why, but we can say who we make it for. We shall be forced to see that if every nation every day brings the fresh bodies of fifteen hundred young men to the God of War to be lacerated, it's for the pleasure of a few ringleaders that we could easily count; that if whole nations go to slaughter marshaled in armies in order that the gold-striped caste may write their princely names in history, so that other gilded people of the same rank can contrive more business, and expand in the way of employees and shops — and we shall see, as soon as we open our eyes, that the divisions between mankind are not what we thought, and those one did believe in are not divisions."”

Henri Barbusse book Under Fire

Under Fire (1916), Ch. 24 - The Dawn

Men, God, People, Pleasure

“Religious wars are basically people killing each other over who has the better imaginary friend.”

Napoleon I of France (1769–1821) French general, First Consul and later Emperor of the French

There is no known basis to attribute this saying to Napoleon. It is found (unattributed) in a Usenet post from July 1999 https://groups.google.com/forum/message/raw?msg=soc.penpals/QIUrpkacWyE/FbCj7pij5WwJ. Misattributed

People

“Christianity destroyed for us the whole harvest of ancient civilization, and later it also destroyed for us the whole harvest of Mohammedan civilization. The wonderful culture of the Moors in Spain, which was fundamentally nearer to us and appealed more to our senses and tastes than that of Rome and Greece, was trampled down ( — I do not say by what sort of feet — ) Why? Because it had to thank noble and manly instincts for its origin — because it said yes to life, even to the rare and refined luxuriousness of Moorish life! The crusaders later made war on something before which it would have been more fitting for them to have grovelled in the dust — a civilization beside which even that of our nineteenth century seems very poor and very "senile." […] Intrinsically there should be no more choice between Islam and Christianity than there is between an Arab and a Jew. The decision is already reached; nobody remains at liberty to choose here. Either a man is a Chandala or he is not…. “War to the knife with Rome! Peace and friendship with Islam!”: this was the feeling, this was the act, of that great free spirit, that genius among German emperors, Frederick II.”

Friedrich Nietzsche book The Antichrist

Sec. 60
The Antichrist (1888)

Life, Friendship, Peace, Feeling

“We simply do not consider it desirable that a realm of justice and concord should be established on earth (because it would certainly be the realm of the deepest leveling and chinoiserie); we are delighted with all who love, as we do, danger, war, and adventures, who refuse to compromise, to be captured, reconciled, and castrated; we count ourselves among conquerors; we think about the necessity for new orders, also for a new slavery — for every strengthening and enhancement of the human type also involves a new kind of enslavement.”

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German philosopher, poet, composer, cultural critic, and classical philologist

The term chinoiserie indicates "unnecessary complication" and some translations point out that this passage invokes ideas in the concluding poem of Beyond Good and Evil: "nur wer sich wandelt bleibt mit mir verwandt" : Only those who keep changing remain akin to me.
The Gay Science (1882)

Love, Justice, Thinking