Quotes about war
page 56

“While Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD) helps prevent World War III, Total Information Awareness (TIA) offers insights into some of the biggest challenges facing humanity.”

Newton Lee American computer scientist

Facebook Nation: Total Information Awareness (2nd Edition), 2014

World, Help, Madness

“Planning is undoubtedly necessary to ensure progress. If Nations and Peoples are finding it difficult to fulfil their own Plans, then who is going to be so presumptuous as to plan for the whole world? In these times of Cold Wars and Bamboo and Iron Curtains do we suppose one Nation will sit idly by and let another take the initiative in this respect? Even suppose the impossible does occur do you think the other Nations will accept the Plan of another with whom they are outwardly in peaceful contact?”

Peter de Noronha (1897–1970) Indian businessman

The Pageant of Life (1964), On Planning for a Better World

People, World, Peace, Thinking

“…freedom is never granted. It is earned by each generation… in the face of tyranny, cruelty, oppression, extremism, sometimes there is only one choice. When the world looks to America, America looks to you, and you never let her down… I have never lost faith in America's essential goodness and greatness… I have 35 years of experience, fighting for real change… the American people and our American military cannot want freedom and stability for the Iraqis more than they want it for themselves… we should have stayed focused on wiping out the Taliban and finding, killing, capturing bin Laden and his chief lieutenants… I also made a full commitment to martial American power, resources and values in the global fight against these terrorists. That begins with ensuring that America does have the world's strongest and smartest military force. We've begun to change tactics in Iraq, and in some areas, particularly in Al Anbar province, it's working… We can't be fighting the last war. We have to be preparing to fight the new war… We've got to be prepared to maintain the best fighting force in the world. I propose increasing the size of our Army by 80,000 soldiers, balancing the legacy systems with newer programs to help us keep our technological edge… I'm fighting for a Cold War medal for everyone who served our country during the Cold War, because you were on the front lines of battling communism. Well, now we're on the front lines of battling terrorism, extremism, and we have to win. Our commitment to freedom, to tolerance, to economic opportunity has inspired people around the world… American values are not just about America, but they speak to the human dignity, the God-given spark that resides in each and every person across the world… We are a good and great nation.”

Hillary Clinton (1947) American politician, senator, Secretary of State, First Lady

Remarks to the Veterans of Foreign Wars, Kansas City, Missouri, August 20, 2007 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2007/08/21/clinton-iraq-tactics-wo_n_61272.html Presidential campaign (January 20, 2007 – 2008)

God, People, World, Faith

“…the covenant people must wage war against the enemies of God, because this war is unto death. The deliberate, refined, and obscene violence of the anti-God forces permits no quarter…this warfare must continue until the Amalekites of the world are blotted out, until God's law-order prevails and His justice reigns.”

Rousas John Rushdoony (1916–2001) American theologian

Source: Writings, The Institutes of Biblical Law (1973), P. 308

Death, God, People, World

“It has sometimes been argued that in gaining Canada in the Seven Years War, Britain had undermined her position in America. Without the French threat, why should the thirteen colonies stay loyal? Yet the loss of America had the unforeseen effect of securing Canada for the Empire, thanks to the flood of English-speaking Loyalists who, together with new British settlers, would eventually reduce the French Quebecois to a beleaguered minority. The amazing thing is that so many people should have voted with their feet against American independence, choosing loyalty to King and Empire over 'life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

Niall Ferguson (1964) British historian

Empire: How Britain Made the Modern World (2003)

Life, People, Loss, Loyalty

“War is cruelty. There is no use trying to reform it; the crueler it is, the sooner it will be over.”

William T. Sherman (1820–1891) American General, businessman, educator, and author.

Retort to a lady of Confederate sympathies, who berated him for the wasting of Mississippi by the Army of the Tennessee during the Meridian Campaign ; cited in The Civil War Generation, Norman K. Risjord, Rowman & Littlefield (2002), p. 143 : ISBN 0742521699 , and in Fateful Lightning: A New History of the Civil War and Reconstruction, Allen C. Guelzo, Oxford University Press (2012), p. 439 : ISBN 0199843295
1860s, 1864

“Nine-eleven was an act of war. The villains aren’t the terrorists. The villains live in the White House.”

Jerrold Nadler (1947) American politician

quoted in The New York Times, March 6, 2007. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/06/us/politics/06hillary.html?pagewanted=1&hp

Housing

“Modern economic growth and the diffusion of knowledge have made it possible to avoid the Marxist apocalypse but have not modified the deep structures of capital and inequality—or in any case not as much as one might have imagined in the optimistic decades following World War II.”

Thomas Piketty book Capital in the Twenty-First Century

Source: Capital in the Twenty-First Century (2013), p. 1.

World, Imagination, Knowledge

“The possibility of peace, on whose behalf many are working, might perhaps become actual because the technical advances in offensive weapons make the prospect of a European war so disastrous, and because, if the nations were at grips again, even the victorious aggressor would be ruined. But there still remains open the possibility of a new war which, more dreadful than any that have preceded it would make an end of contemporary Europeans.”

Karl Jaspers (1883–1969) German psychiatrist and philosopher

Man in the Modern Age (1933)

Peace, Victory

“Violence, contrary to popular belief, is not part of the anarchist philosophy. It has repeatedly been pointed out by anarchist thinkers that the revolution can neither be won, nor the anarchist society established and maintained, by armed violence. Recourse to violence then is an indication of weakness, not of strength, and the revolution with the greatest possibilities of a successful outcome will undoubtedly be the one in which there is no violence, or in which violence is reduced to a minimum, for such a revolution would indicate the near unanimity of the population in the objectives of the revolution. … Violence as a means breeds violence; the cult of personalities as a means breeds dictators--big and small--and servile masses; government--even with the collaboration of socialists and anarchists--breeds more government. Surely then, freedom as a means breeds more freedom, possibly even the Free Society! To Those who say this condemns one to political sterility and the Ivory Tower our reply is that 'realism' and their 'circumstantialism' invariably lead to disaster. We believe there is something more real, more positive and more revolutionary to resisting war than in participation in it; that it is more civilised and more revolutionary to defend the right of a fascist to live than to support the Tribunals which have the legal power to shoot him; that it is more realistic to talk to the people from the gutter than from government benches; that in the long run it is more rewarding to influence minds by discussion than to mould them by coercion.”

Vernon Richards (1915–2001) British activist

"Anarchism and violence" in What Is Anarchism?: An Introduction by Donald Rooum, ed. (London: Freedom Press, 1992, 1995) pp. 50-51.

People, Support, Freedom, Success

“Just why are we so poor? Why can I never sleep at night? Because bombs keep dropping! Why does my mother have to torture herself like that? Why didn't anyone give my dad a break? Why is there a war? Why? Why? Why?”

Klaus Kinski (1926–1991) German actor

On his childhood. p. 40
Kinski Uncut : The Autobiography of Klaus Kinski (1996)

Sleep, Night

“Something he had heard some wise man say. About the three stages of empire, the three generations. First came the conquerors, unstoppable in war. Then came the administrators, who bound it all together into one apparently unshakable, immortal edifice. Then came the wasters, who knew no responsibility and squandered the capital of their inheritance upon whims and vices. And fell to other conquerors.”

Glen Cook book The Silver Spike

Source: The Silver Spike (1989), Chapter 58 (p. 629)

“No I didn't ban the press. The press banned me. In later years in the blossom of my career, some editors got across to me and said they wanted me in their mags because the readers wanted me. But I refused because it wasn't me who started the war.”

Amitabh Bachchan (1942) Indian actor

Quotable quotes by Amitabh Bachchan.

“The case which the French present to us with regard to the Left Bank of the Rhine is very forcible, but very one-sided. They draw a lurid picture of future Franco-German relations. They assume that the German population will always far outnumber the French; that as soon as the first shock of defeat has passed away, Germany will organise herself for revenge; that all our attempts to limit armaments will be unsuccessful; that the League of Nations will be impotent; and, consequently, that the invasion of France, which was fully accomplished in 1870, and partially accomplished in the recent War, will be renewed with every prospect of success.”

Arthur James Balfour (1848–1930) British Conservative politician and statesman

Memorandum, 'France's Fear of German Aggression' (28 March 1919) written for the Paris Peace Conference, quoted in Blanche E. C. Dugdale, Arthur James Balfour, First Earl of Balfour, K.G., O.M., F.R.S., Etc. 1906–1930 (London: Hutchinson & Co. Ltd, 1936), p. 204.

Revenge, Success, Future, Drawing

“My family and I left Yokohoma in June, 1939, in time for me to enter the Army War College in what turned out to be the last class before the school closed for World War II. As we left Japan, I would have said that war between the two countries was certainly possible but I had no premonition that it was only two years away. On the opening day of the war college, a number of senior officers from the War Department attended to welcome the new class. The first man to speak I had never seen before, but he was just as impressive at first glance as he remained in my eyes in later life- George Marshall, the new Army Chief of Staff. What he said that day I do not remember, but the way he said it, I do. General Marshall never spoke anywhere without receiving the undivided attention of every listener to the words of a man who obviously knew what he was talking about. One could never imagine questioning the accuracy of his facts or challenging the soundness of his conclusions on any subject he undertook to discuss. He did not give the impression of great brilliance of mind, as General MacArthur did, but of calm strength and unshakeable will. I was to owe much to him- my service on his staff at the outbreak of the war, later the command of a division in Europe, and assignment as the Superintendent of West Point following the war. Bu my greatest privilege was the opportunity to see General Marshall in action at close range at the outbreak of World War II.”

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

Source: Swords and Plowshares (1972), p. 37

Life, World, School, Family

“No American will think it wrong of me if I proclaim that to have the United States at our side was to me the greatest joy. I could not foretell the course of events. I do not pretend to have measured accurately the martial might of Japan, but now at this very moment I knew the United States was in the war, up to the neck and in to the death. So we had won after all! … Hitler's fate was sealed. Mussolini's fate was sealed. As for the Japanese, they would be ground to powder.”

Winston S. Churchill book The Second World War

Post-war years (1945–1955)
Source: The Second World War, Volume III : The Grand Alliance (1950) Chapter 32 (Pearl Harbor).

Death, Fate, Thinking, Joy

“The conquest of Riga is of the greatest importance not only from the military, but also form the political point of view… Our military situation was never more glorious than it is at present. Meanwhile, there is also the U-boat war, which is taking its course. The destruction of enemy tonnage that was expected of it on the basis of official predictions, has not only been achieved, but partly exceeded by more than half…Time is working for us. Britain to-day is fighting the war with a watch in her hand, and it is in this that I see the fundamentally decisive effect of the U-boat weapon for us and the approach of peace…If we are to achieve anything through compromise and understanding, then the Government must not be forced to make any statements renouncing something from the outset. For this reason the tactics by which it has been and is still being tried to make the Government declare its disinterestedness in Belgium, are wrong. Even those who share the attitude of Herr Scheidemann ought to fight for the last stone in Belgium, in order to exploit to the utmost that which possession has made into a dead pledge…However, the fact that we are going to have peace—and, we hope, soon—will in my conviction be due, apart from our military achievements, to the effects of unrestricted U-boat warfare, of which I have repeatedly said before the Main Committee that while I reject the formula that it will force Britain to her knees, I believe as firmly in the formula that it will force Britain to the conference table.”

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

Speech in the Reichstag (October 1917), quoted in W. M. Knight-Patterson, Germany. From Defeat to Conquest 1913-1933 (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1945), p. 121
1910s

Peace, Hope, Understanding, Decision

“The children of fighter pilots tell different stories than other kids do. None of our fathers can write a will or sell a life insurance policy or fill out a prescription or administer a flu shot or explain what a poet meant. We tell of fathers who land on aircraft carriers at pitch-black night with the wind howling out of the China Sea. Our fathers wiped out aircraft batteries in the Philippines and set Japanese soldiers on fire when they made the mistake of trying to overwhelm our troops on the ground. Your Dads ran the barber shops and worked at the post office and delivered the packages on time and sold the cars, while our Dads were blowing up fuel depots near Seoul, were providing extraordinarily courageous close air support to the beleaguered Marines at the Chosin Reservoir, and who once turned the Naktong River red with blood of a retreating North Korean battalion. We tell of men who made widows of the wives of our nations' enemies and who made orphans out of all their children. You don't like war or violence? Or napalm? Or rockets? Or cannons or death rained down from the sky? Then let's talk about your fathers, not ours. When we talk about the aviators who raised us and the Marines who loved us, we can look you in the eye and say "you would not like to have been American's enemies when our fathers passed overhead". We were raised by the men who made the United States of America the safest country on earth in the bloodiest century in all recorded history. Our fathers made sacred those strange, singing names of battlefields across the Pacific: Guadalcanal, Iwo Jima, Okinawa, the Chosin Reservoir, Khe Sanh and a thousand more. We grew up attending the funerals of Marines slain in these battles. Your fathers made communities like Beaufort decent and prosperous and functional; our fathers made the world safe for democracy.”

Pat Conroy (1945–2016) American novelist

Eulogy for a Fighter Pilot (1998)

Love, Life, Death, Men

“May the conscience and the common sense of the peoples be awakened, so that we may reach a new stage in the life of nations, where people will look back on war as an incomprehensible aberration of their forefathers!”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

1940s, The World As I See It (1949)

Life, People, Sense

“Léon Bloy, despite his many impressive qualities.. what a hater he was! - wild and implacable, and what power of abuse! Strange don't you think that Ernst Jünger should comment at length in his war-diaries how irresistibly Bloy reminded him of Hitler in his paroxysms of rage and his foul and ribald tongue?.. Yet Bloy was undoubtedly a man with great gifts of vision and perception, and charity, too - even in the midst of his orgies of hatred. And much of what he writes about Our Lady of La Salette in his La Salette book is very fine and often goes straight to one's heart…”

Ida Friederike Görres (1901–1971) Austrian writer and noble

Broken Lights Letters 1951-59.

Books, Thinking, Rage, Heart

“We have to make it harder for people who should not have those weapons of war. That might not stop every shooting or terrorist attack. But it will stop some and it will save lives and it will protect our first responders.”

Hillary Clinton (1947) American politician, senator, Secretary of State, First Lady

Presidential campaign (April 12, 2015 – 2016), Speech about the Orlando Shooting (June 13, 2016)

People

“Words are the currency of love and friendship, of making and marketing, of peace and war. Nations are bound and loosed by them. Three or four simple words can move waves of emotion through the hearts of multitudes like great tides of the sea: "Lest we forget."”

Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

"Patriotism is not enough."
Speech at his inauguration as Lord Rector of The University of Edinburgh (6 November 1925), quoted in On England, and Other Addresses (1926), p. 78.
1925

Love, Friendship, Peace, Heart

“[T]he struggle over slavery and racial injustice that did result in civil war. Here, too, the disputes were not merely about means, but about ends — about fundamental matters of right and wrong. And although the war, after consuming the lives of nearly three-quarters of a million people, ended after four years, the struggle went on for more than a hundred more, and we are still living with its aftershocks today.”

Robert P. George (1955) American legal scholar

2017, Interview with Matthew Bunson (2017)

People

“There really was a German resistance movement after V-E Day. It was never very effective; it got off to a very late start, as the Nazis took much longer than they might have to realize they weren't going to win the straight-up war. And it was hamstrung because the Wehrmacht, the SS, the Hitler Youth, the Luftwaffe, and the Nazi Party all tried to take charge of it- which often meant, for all practical purposes, no one took charge of it. By 1947, it had mostly petered out.”

Harry Turtledove (1949) American novelist, short story author, essayist, historian

Historical Note, p. 531
The Man With the Iron Heart (2008)

Youth

“It's a theocratic war. And I don't know if anybody fully understands that. I'm the only guy on that stage with a theology degree. I think I understand it really well.”

Mike Huckabee (1955) Arkansas politician

to Christian Broadcasting Network, quoted in * Steve
Benen
Has Huckabee Been Lying About Having a Theology Degree?
2007-12-14
The Carpetbagger Report
http://www.alternet.org/blogs/peek/70722/
2011-03-01
http://web.archive.org/web/20080111154953/http://www.alternet.org/blogs/peek/70722/
2008-01-11

Guy, Understanding, Thinking

“The surrender and succeeding jubilation was rightly American but, as Admiral Fraser appreciated, Britain and the Commonwealth had now been at war for six long years less a day. If the forenoon had been American, then the evening would be British. The last sunset ceremony had been carried out on the evening of September 2,1939. Since then the White Ensign had flown in every ship by day and night. Admiral Fraser ordered the resumption of sunset routine as from September 2, 1945 and invited all the senior officers of British ships in Tokyo, and a token number of sailors from each, to witness the ceremony in his flagship. He was dissuaded from firing a sunset gun in case some trigger-happy American or Japanese thought the war had re-started.”

Louis Le Bailly (1915–2010) Royal Navy admiral

Night, Happiness

“The great crisis facing the country was the rebellion and anybody in the North who wanted to preserve the Union now found the principal enemy to be those Southern slave owners who had broken up the country. The institution which sustained them and the institution they went to war to defend was slavery. And more and more northerners became convinced of that. As a consequence, a lot of them went the whole way over, from being conservative, pro-Southern, pro-slavery Democrats to becoming radical Republicans. Benjamin Butler is a good example, and Edwin M. Stanton is another one.”

James M. McPherson (1936) American historian

1990s, An Exchange With a Civil War Historian (June 1995)

Way, Country

“Islam's jihad is a struggle against idolatry, sexual deviations, plunder, repression, and cruelty. The war waged by [non-Muslim] conquerors, however, aims at promoting lust and animal pleasures. They care not if whole countries are wiped out and many families left homeless. But those who study jihad will understand why Islam wants to conquer the whole world. All the countries conquered by Islam or to be conquered in the future will be marked for everlasting salvation. For they shall live under”

Ruhollah Khomeini (1902–1989) Religious leader, politician

God's law
As quoted in Anti-American Terrorism and the Middle East (2002) by Barry Rubin and Judith Colp Rubin, pp. 29, 32-36
Disputed

God, Pleasure, World, Family

“Did I tell you that I had quite a nice letter from Winston [Churchill]? I thought I ought to send him a line but I wasn't sure whether I should get an acknowledgement! I think he is the right man at the moment and I always did feel that war would be his opportunity. He thrives in that environment.”

Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Letter to J. C. C. Davidson (22 June 1940), quoted in Robert Rhodes James (ed.), Memoirs of a Conservative: J. C. C. Davidson's Memoirs and Papers, 1910-1937 (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1969), p. 427.
1940s

Feeling, Thinking

“Certainly with the enslavement of their parents and grandparents less than seventy years behind them, the odds of successfully utilizing black culture to better refine the application of democracy in America was against them. Yet the planners and participants in this would-be renaissance moved forward with all the faith and visionary certainty of Betsy Ross stitching the American flag or General William T. Sherman blazing a trail of victory through the Civil War South.”

Aberjhani (1957) author

(Author’s Note, p. xvi).
Book Sources, Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance (2003)

Faith, Democracy, Parent, Victory

“The multicultural policy has, at times, tended to emphasize the rights of ethnic minorities at the expense of the majority of Australians, thus unnecessarily encouraging divisions and weakening social cohesion. It has tended to be anti-British, and yet the people from the United Kingdom and Ireland form the dominant class of pre-war immigrants and the largest single group of post-war immigrants.”

Geoffrey Blainey book All for Australia

All for Australia (1984)

People, Time

“Even when there is a struggle between nations it cannot be turned into a war of religions.”

Shlomo Amar (1948) Sephardi Chief Rabbi of Jerusalem

In a letter to Sheikh Yusuf Qaradawi criticizing the pope Benedict XVI for his remarks on Islam. http://web.archive.org/web/20081201181916/http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/763616.html (17/09/2006)

Religion

“There's a sense that the drug war has proven its failure. Five or six years ago, people would say, "Well, we haven't really tried it." It's hard to say that with credibility any more. People tend to get bored with old ideas. and the war on drugs is becoming an old idea. There's a kind of natural pendulum or circularity, where people begin to think that change is inevitable. And that's going to happen in the drug area.”

Ethan Nadelmann (1957) American writer; campaigner for the legalization of marijuana

Mind Alteration, http://www.reason.com/news/show/32215.html an article published in Reason Magazine in July 1994. The War on Drugs

People, Idea, Failure, Nature

“No country of people's democracy has so many nationalities as this country has. Only in Czechoslovakia do there exist two kindred nationalities, while in some of the other countries there are only minorities. Consequently in these countries of people's democracy there has been no need to settle such serious problems as we have had to settle here. With them the road to socialism is less complicated than is the case here. With them the basic factor is the class issue, with us it is both the nationalities and the class issue. The reason why we were able to settle the nationalities question so thoroughly is to be found in the fact that it had begun to be settled in a revolutionary way in the course of the Liberation War, in which all the nationalities in the country participated, in which every national group made its contribution to the general effort of liberation from the occupier according to its capabilities. Neither the Macedonians nor any other national group which until then had been oppressed obtained their national liberation by decree. They fought for their national liberation with rifle in hand. The role of the Communist Party lay in the first place in the fact that it led that struggle, which was a guarantee that after the war the national question would be settled decisively in the way the communists had conceived long before the war and during the war. The role of the Communist Party in this respect today, in the phase of building socialism, lies in making the positive national factors a stimulus to, not a brake on, the development of socialism in our country. The role of the Communist Party today lies in the necessity for keeping a sharp lookout to see that national chauvinism does not appear and develop among any of the nationalities. The Communist Party must always endeavour, and does endeavour, to ensure that all the negative phenomena of nationalism disappear and that people are educated in the spirit of internationalism. What are the phenomena of nationalism? Here are some of them: 1) National egoism, from which many other negative traits of nationalism are derived, as for example — a desire for foreign conquest, a desire to oppress other nations, a desire to impose economic exploitation upon other nations, and so on; 2) national-chauvinism which is also a source of many other negative traits of nationalism, as for example national hatred, the disparagement of other nations, the disparagement of their history, culture, and scientific activities and scientific achievements, and so on, the glorification of developments in their own history that were negative and which from our Marxist point of view are considered negative. And what are these negative things? Wars of conquest are negative, the subjugation and oppression of other nations is negative, economic exploitation is negative, colonial enslavement is negative, and so on. All these things are accounted negative by Marxism and condemned. All these phenomena of the past can, it is true, be explained, but from our point of view they can never be justified. In a socialist society such phenomena must and will disappear. In the old Yugoslavia national oppression by the great-Serb capitalist clique meant strengthening the economic exploitation of the oppressed peoples. This is the inevitable fate of all who suffer from national oppression. In the new, socialist Yugoslavia the existing equality of rights for all nationalities has made it impossible for one national group to impose economic exploitation upon another. That is because hegemony of one national group over another no longer exists in this country. Any such hegemony must inevitably bring with it, to some degree or other, in one form or another, economic exploitation; and that would be contrary to the principles upon which socialism rests. Only economic, political, cultural, and universal equality of rights can make it possible for us to grow in strength in these tremendous endeavours of our community.”

Josip Broz Tito (1892–1980) Yugoslav revolutionary and statesman

Concerning the National Question and Social Patriotism http://www.marxists.org/archive/tito/1948/11/26.htm Speech held at the Slovene Academy of Arts and Sciences, November 26, 1948, Ljubljana Speeches

Fate, People, Education, Way

“My grandfather for example only died twice, once during the war and once in the 1980s.”

James Nicoll (1961) Canadian fiction reviewer

[bqia5r$49o$1@panix1.panix.com, 2003]
2000s

“When we look at the progress made since the end of the Second World War, it is hard to argue that economically, European cooperation has been anything other than a great success. Of course, since 2008, this has not been the whole story. In Southern Europe particularly, talk of economic success would be met with confusion and anger.”

Justin Welby (1956) British Anglican bishop; the 105th Archbishop of Canterbury

Address to the Catholic Institute of Paris (November 19, 2016)

World, Success, Anger

“Cursed is the man, and void of law and right,
Unworthy property, unworthy light,
Unfit for public rule, or private care,
That wretch, that monster, that delights in war:
Whose lust is murder, and whose horrid joy
To tear his country, and his kind destroy!”

Homér Iliad

IX. 63–64 (tr. Alexander Pope).
Iliad (c. 750 BC)

Law, Tear, Light, Joy

“After this with kingly energy and determination, he girded up his loins for a war of religion, and invaded Hindustãn, and carried away many prisoners of war and other plunder; and in every country, which he conquered, he founded mosques, and he endeavoured to ruin and desolate the territories of Rãjã Jaipãl who, at that time, was the ruler of Hindustãn.”

Nizamuddin Ahmad (1551–1594) historian

About Amîr Subuktigîn (AD 977-997) The Tabqãt-i-Akbarî translated by B. De, Calcutta, 1973, Vol. I, p. 3.
Tabqãt-i-Akharî

Religion, Time, Country

“Regarding the Galilee, Mr. [Moshe] Sharett already told you that about 100,000 Arabs still now live in the pocket of Galilee. Let us assume that a war breaks out. Then we will be able to cleanse the entire area of Central Galilee, including all its refugees, in one stroke. In this context let me mention some mediators who offered to give us the Galilee without war. What they meant was the populated Galilee. They didn’t offer us the empty Galilee, which we could have only by means of a war. Therefore if a war is extended to cover the whole of Palestine, our greatest gain will be the Galilee. It is because without any special military effort which might imperil other fronts, only by using the troops already assigned for the task, we could accomplish our aim of cleansing the Galilee.”

David Ben-Gurion (1886–1973) Israeli politician, Zionist leader, prime minister of Israel

From a protocol of the Government of Israel, translated from Hebrew by Israel Shahak, in "Truth or Myth about Israel? Read between Quotation Marks" by Charley Reese in The Orlando Sentinel (13 June 1999); later published as "What Israeli Historians Say About 1948 Ethnic Cleansing" in Washington Report on Middle East Affairs (September 1999) http://www.wrmea.com/backissues/0999/9909042.html

Effort

“Universities are good at producing engineers, doctors, lawyers, and such, but they often gloss over difficult moral and philosophical subjects such as the meaning of life, love, prejudice, war, and peace.”

Newton Lee American computer scientist

Counterterrorism and Cybersecurity: Total Information Awareness (2nd Edition), 2015

Love, Life, Peace, Universe

“As far as casualties were concerned I think there were more casualties in the first attack on Tokyo with incendiaries than there were with the first use of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. The fact that it's done instantaneously, maybe that's more humane than incendiary attacks, if you can call any war act humane. I don't, particularly, so to me there wasn't much difference. A weapon is a weapon and it really doesn't make much difference how you kill a man. If you have to kill him, well, that's the evil to start with and how you do it becomes pretty secondary. I think your choice should be which weapon is the most efficient and most likely to get the whole mess over with as early as possible.”

Curtis LeMay (1906–1990) American general and politician

The World at War: the Landmark Oral History from the Classic TV Series, p. 574

Thinking, Evil

“We simply gow up. In Florence, at age fifty-four, I was a brash youth. Had I known the Duse was there her poet chap might have found dangerous competition, ha-ha. The only trouble is that now, nearing eighty, I keep discovering that damned war has made the world older than I. The world frowns now on youth in a vacuum, it insists youth be turned-to, utilized, exploited. No time for pranks. No more Vheissus.”

Thomas Pynchon book V.

Source: V. (1963), Chapter Nine, Part II, Godolphin

Youth, Age, World, Time

“The sudden change [Wotruba and his wife returned to Vienna in December 1945, at the end of the war; there he started to direct a class for advanced students on the Akademie der Bildenden Künste of Vienna] has had a shock effect on me and on my work. The almost sensual excitement caused by the destruction around me wears off rather quickly. It is not my duty to give this past [of Nazism and the war-years, fh] more significance than it has already been given in literature, on the stage and in the cinema. I am concerned with the figure, with the statuary, i. e., with statics, measurement, equilibrium, and with unity.”

Fritz Wotruba (1907–1975) Austrian sculptor (23 April 1907, Vienna – 28 August 1975, Vienna)

Source: The Human Form: Sculpture, Prints, and Drawings, 1977, p. 22.

Literature, Change, Past

“30th [June 1841]. Morning visit from John Ross, chief of the Cherokee Nation, with Vann and Benn, two others of the delegation. Ross had written to request an interview with me for them on my appointment as Chairman of the Committee on Indian Affairs. I was excused from that service at my own request, from a full conviction that its only result would be to keep a perpetual harrow upon my feelings, with a total impotence to render any useful service. The policy, from Washington to myself, of all the Presidents of the United States had been justice and kindness to the Indian tribes—to civilize and preserve them. With the Creeks and Cherokees it had been eminently successful. Its success was their misfortune. The States within whose borders their settlements were took the alarm, broke down all the treaties which had pledged the faith of the nation. Georgia extended her jurisdiction over them, took possession of their lands, houses, cattle, furniture, negroes, and drove them out from their own dwellings. All the Southern States supported Georgia in this utter prostration of faith and justice; and Andrew Jackson, by the simultaneous operation of fraudulent treaties and brutal force, consummated the work. The Florida War is one of the fruits of this policy, the conduct of which exhibits one (un)interrupted scene of the most profligate corruption. All resistance against this abomination is vain. It is among the heinous sins of this nation, for which I believe God will one day bring them to judgement—but as His own time and by His own means.”

John Quincy Adams (1767–1848) American politician, 6th president of the United States (in office from 1825 to 1829)

Diary entry (30 June 1841)

God, Faith, Justice, Feeling

“When the army was mustered, it was found to amount to "fifty thousand mounted men clad in armour and coats of mail," with which they advanced to fight against the Rai of Benares… The Rai of Benares, Jai Chand, the chief of idolatry and perdition, advanced to oppose the royal troops with an army… The Rai of Benares, who prided himself on the number of his forces and war elephants," seated on a lofty howdah, received a deadly wound from an arrow, and "fell from his exalted seat to the earth." His head was carried on the point of a spear to the commander, and " his body was thrown to the dust of contempt." "The impurities of idolatry were purged by the water of the sword from that land, and the country of Hind was freed from vice and superstition."… From that place the royal army proceeded towards Benares 'which is the centre of the country of Hind, and here they destroyed nearly one thousand temples, and raised mosques on their foundations; and the knowledge of the law became promulgated, and the foundations of religion were established.”

Muhammad of Ghor (1160–1206) Ghurid Sultan

About the fight with the Rai of Banares and capture of Asni and of Benares. Hasan Nizami: Taju’l-Ma’sir, in Elliot and Dowson, Vol. II : Elliot and Dowson, History of India as told by its own Historians, 8 Volumes, Allahabad Reprint, 1964. pp. 222-223 Also quoted in Jain, Meenakshi (2011). The India they saw: Foreign accounts.

Men, Religion, Law, Knowledge

“Then came the great days of the became historic. The sleepless nights, the permanent sessions. And, finally, the stirring declarations. "The Soviets take power!" "The Soviets address an appeal to the peoples of the world to put an end to the war." "The land is socialized and belongs to the peasants!"”

Alexandra Kollontai (1872–1952) Soviet diplomat

The Autobiography of a Sexually Emancipated Communist Woman (1926)

People, World, Night

“It will not benefit the world if we succeed in banishing the old-fashioned wars of nations only to clear the board for social and doctrinal wars of even greater ferocity and destructiveness. This, indeed, is a growing danger. We were told that the old wars of religion had ended, but that is not much comfort if the wars of various kinds of secular religions or non-God religions are to begin and are to make Europe the arena of their hideous conflict, and if all that makes life worth living to the mass of the people is to be destroyed in the process.”

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

I Ask You—What Price Freedom? Answers, 24 October 1936.
Reproduced in The Collected Essays of Sir Winston Churchill, Vol I, Churchill at War, Centenary Edition (1976), Library of Imperial History, p. 364. ISBN 0903988429
The 1930s

Life, God, People, World

“Listen, the weather is just like Hillary's explanation for her war vote: we just don't know, do we?”

Dennis Miller (1953) American stand-up comedian, television host, and actor

The Buck Starts Here (17 June 2007)

Weather

“No, my friend, Germany will not declare war on us [at this moment]. But in my opinion the European situation is such that a great armed conflict is inevitable at some time which I cannot foresee, and our duty is to prepare for the worst.”

Georges Clemenceau (1841–1929) French politician

Letter to Georg Brandes (9 January 1906), quoted in David Robin Watson, Georges Clemenceau: A Political Biography (London: Eyre Methuen, 1974), pp. 220-221.

Time

“Members of the international community, first of all our Western partners, have chosen the path of supporting one of the sides in the civil war – probably the party that represented the Libyan people's legitimate aspirations, but this still increased the number of casualties among the civilian population.”

Sergey Lavrov (1950) Russian politician and Foreign Minister

Saying that NATO's interference in Libya caused more casualties {December 2011) http://rt.com/politics/lavrov-nato-libya-victims-201/

People, Communication, Support

“The war may present or force a subject; it may bring out a poet, or shock him onto a sensibility of silence. It may kill him. Or germinate the best war poems for exfoliation years after the event.”

Richard Eberhart (1904–2005) American poet

The War Poets ed. Oscar Williams. New York 1945
The War Poets

Silence

“[I]f ever there was a holy war, it was that which saved our liberties and gave us independence.”

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

Letter to John W. Eppes (6 November 1813). Reported in Albert Ellery Bergh, The Writings of Thomas Jefferson (1907), p. 430
1810s

“Over the last 30 odd years, Democrats have moved to the right and the right has moved into a mental hospital. So what we have is one perfectly good party for hedge fund managers, credit card companies, banks, defense contractors, big agriculture and the pharmaceutical lobby… That's the Democrats. And they sit across the aisle from a small group of religious lunatics, flat-earthers and civil war re-enactors who mostly communicate by AM radio and call themselves the Republicans and who actually worry that Obama is a socialist. Socialist? He's not even a liberal.”

Bill Maher (1956) American stand-up comedian

"From Elites to Jesus" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b0sNJhphi7U Real Time with Bill Maher

Communication

“If war breaks out, I will fight for Hitler since such a war would be against Jewry.”

William Joyce (1906–1946) British fascist and propaganda broadcaster

National Socialism Now.

Fight

“[W]hat good to us is the gods' knowledge if we can't get it from them? How could one communicate with the gods? Our ancestors (while they were alive!) stumbled on an extremely ingenious solution: divination.

We all know how hard it is to make the major decisions of life: should I hang tough or admit my transgression, should I move or stay in my present position, should I go to war or not, should I follow my heart or my head? We still haven't figured out any satisfactory systematic way of deciding these things. Anything that can relieve the burden of figuring out how to make these hard calls is bound to be an attractive idea.

Consider flipping a coin, for instance. Why do we do it? To take away the burden of having to find a reason for choosing A over B. We like to have reasons for what we do, but sometimes nothing sufficiently persuasive comes to mind, and we recognize that we have to decide soon, so we concoct a little gadget, an external thing that will make the decision for us. But if the decision is about something momentous, like whether to go to war, or marry, or confess, anything like flipping a coin would be just too, well, flippant.

In such a case, choosing for no good reason would be too obviously a sign of incompetence, and, besides, if the decision is really that important, once the coin has landed you'll have to confront the further choice: should you honor your just-avowed commitment to be bound by the flip of the coin, or should you reconsider? Faced with such quandaries, we recognize the need for some treatment stronger than a coin flip. Something more ceremonial, more impressive, like divination, which not only tells you what to do, but gives you a reason (if you squint just right and use your imagination).

Scholars have uncovered a comically variegated profusion of ancient ways of delegating important decisions to uncontrollable externalities. Instead of flipping a coin, you can flip arrows (belomancy) or rods (rhabdomancy) or bones or cards (sortilege), and instead of looking at tea leaves (tasseography), you can examine the livers of sacrificed animals (hepatoscopy) or other entrails (haruspicy) or melted wax poured into water (ceroscopy). Then there is moleosophy (divination by blemishes), myomancy (divination by rodent behavior), nephomancy (divination by clouds), and of course the old favorites, numerology and astrology, among dozens of others.”

Daniel Dennett book Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon

Breaking the Spell (2006)

Idea, Life, God, Way

“In the Vietnam War, the leaders of the White House claimed at the time that it was a necessary and crucial war, and during it, Donald Rumsfeld and his aides murdered two million villagers. And when Kennedy took over the presidency and deviated from the general line of policy drawn up for the White House and wanted to stop this unjust war, that angered the owners of the major corporations who were benefiting from its continuation. And so Kennedy was killed, and al-Qaida wasn't present at that time, but rather, those corporations were the primary beneficiary from his killing. And the war continued after that for approximately one decade. But after it became clear to you that it was an unjust and unnecessary war, you made one of your greatest mistakes, in that you neither brought to account nor punished those who waged this war, not even the most violent of its murderers, Rumsfeld.”

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

As quoted in The Washington Post http://voices.washingtonpost.com/fact-checker/2007/09/bin_laden_rumsfeld_responsible.html, Osama bin Laden, video, September 2007.

Time, Housing, Anger

“I’d gotten involved in the Women’s Movement, and there were a lot of songs on the radio about being weak and being dainty and all those sort of things. All the women in my family, they were strong women. They worked. They lived through the Depression and a world war, and they were just strong women. I certainly didn’t see myself as being dainty.”

Helen Reddy (1941) Australian actress

On her motivation to write a renowned song, "I Am Woman"
Chicago Tribune interview (March 2013)

Women, World, Family, Strong

“During the war the congregation was largely broken up […] and it was never really reconstituted after the war. […] Before the war my parents (I, too) had known almost every shop and shopkeeper in Cricklewood […] and I would see them all in their places in shul. But all this was shattered with the impact of the war, and then with the rapid postwar social changes in our corner of London. I myself, traumatized at Braefield, had lost touch with, lost interest in, the religion of my childhood. I regret that I was to lose it as early and as abruptly as I did, and this feeling of sadness or nostalgia was strangely admixed with a raging atheism, a sort of fury with God for not existing, not taking care, not preventing the war, but allowing it, and all its horrors, to occur.”

Oliver Sacks book Uncle Tungsten

Source: Uncle Tungsten (2001), pp. 178–179

God, Sadness, Religion, Feeling

“Scientologists are at war with a member of their own family - the outspoken niece of the church's powerful leader, David Miscavige. Jenna Hill Miscavige, 24, the daughter of David's older brother Ron, recently came out in support of Andrew Morton's "Tom Cruise: An Unauthorized Biography," and slammed the star for "supporting a religion that tears apart families, both in the media and monetarily."”

David Miscavige (1960) leader of the Church of Scientology

Since then, Jenna claims she's been subjected to harassment.
[Richard Johnson, Paula Froelich, Bill Hoffmann, Corynne Steindler, Marianne Garvey, http://www.nypost.com/p/pagesix/item_cTEbjaLicw7fDz7Gu2jFoK;jsessionid=A8156F120CCA0D16F233E470F02315D7, Family Feud In Tom's Church, New York Post, NYP Holdings, Inc, February 6, 2008, 2010-07-03].
About

Family, Religion, Star, Support

“On Christmas night, I danced with all kinds of fellows with pimples and all kinds of sores. I suddenly felt, ‘What is this being shy? I have to give myself, I just felt I didn't want to be shy, I didn't want to draw away, but give myself, I mean, not physically, but be there. It was a great lesson also for me, this tour through Africa and Italy during the war.”

Luise Rainer (1910–2014) German-born Austrian and American film actress

Being on Ascension Island in 1944 Article in Movie Maker http://www.moviemaker.com/directing/article/luise_rainer_3324/

Christmas, Dance, Drawing, Night

“Timothy looked at the deep ocean sky, trying to see Earth and the war and the ruined cities and the men killing each other since the day he was born. But he saw nothing. The war was as removed and far off as two flies battling to the death in the arch of a great high and silent cathedral. And just as senseless…
“What are you looking at so hard, Dad?”
“I was looking for Earthian logic, common sense, good government, peace, and responsibility.”
“All that up there?”
“No. I didn’t find it. It’s not there any more. Maybe it’ll never be there again. Maybe we fooled ourselves that it was ever there.””

Ray Bradbury book The Martian Chronicles

The Million-Year Picnic (1946)
The Martian Chronicles (1950)

Death, Men, Peace, Fools

“To say that war is madness is like saying that sex is madness: true enough, from the standpoint of a stateless eunuch, but merely a provocative epigram for those who must make their arrangements in the world as given.”

John Updike (1932–2009) American novelist, poet, short story writer, art critic, and literary critic

Source: Self-Consciousness : Memoirs (1989), Ch. 4

World, Sex, Madness

“Abolitionism proposes to destroy the right and extinguish the principle of self-government for which our forefathers waged a seven years' bloody war, and upon which our system of free government is founded.”

Stephen A. Douglas (1813–1861) American politician

Speech in the Senate (3 March 1854)
1850s

“If the war goes on-and it will, it will-what else can we do but go on? It is the same question forever, what else can we do? If they fight, we will fight with them. And does it matter after all who wins? Was that ever really the question? Will God ask that question, in the end?”

Michael Shaara book The Killer Angels

General Robert E. Lee, Part IV, CH 5: Longsteet, p.360
The Killer Angels (1974)

God, Question, Fight

“It doesn’t matter what our out-dated, hate-filled, prejudicial doctrines and man-made mythologies might have said. There is no such thing as a ‘religion of peace’. Religion only knows how to react violently because they don’t understand reason and have never practiced tolerance. That’s why secular humanist diplomats will be necessary in order to end wars and other violations of human rights.”

Aron Ra (1962) Aron Ra is an atheist activist and the host of the Ra-Men Podcast

Patheos, How is secular humanist governance better than theocracy? http://www.patheos.com/blogs/reasonadvocates/2013/09/07/how-is-secular-humanist-governance-better-than-theocracy/ (September 7, 2013)

Hate, Peace, Religion, Understanding

“The whole reason of this War is because the Germans have no sense of humor.”

André Maurois (1885–1967) French writer

Les silences du colonel Bramble (The Silence of Colonel Bramble)

Sense

“Germany is already well on her way to become, and must become incomparably, the most heavily armed nation in the world and the nation most completely ready for war. There is the dominant factor; there is the factor which dwarfs all others, the factor which we find affecting the movements of politics and diplomacy in every country throughout Europe…we cannot have any anxieties comparable to the anxiety caused by German re-armament. The House will pardon me if I continue to press that anxiety upon it.”

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

Speech https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1935/oct/24/international-situation in the House of Commons (24 October 1935) The 1930s

World, Way, Housing, Country

“The victor of the war in Iraq is Iran.”

Madeleine K. Albright (1937–2022) Former U.S. Secretary of State

Speech at a Harvard Institute of Politics/Harvard Divinity School forum (April 11, 2007), quoted in the Harvard Crimson http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2007/4/12/albright-calls-for-diplomacy-in-iraq/ 2000s

“"Why must there be war?" "Oh Lavinia, what a woman's question that is! Because men are men."”

Ursula K. Le Guin book Lavinia

Source: Lavinia (2008), p. 87

Men, Question

“This country desperately needs a God-centered president, senators and congressmen. America's intellectual establishment is liberal, godless, secular, humanistic, and anti-religious. We are declaring war against three main enemies: godless communism, Christ-less American liberalism, and secular-humanistic morality. They are the enemies of God, the True Parents, the Unification Church, all of Christianity, and all religions. We are working to mobilize a united front against them.”

Sun Myung Moon (1920–2012) Korean religious leader

CAUSA Seminar Speech http://www.unification.net/1985/850829.html 1985-08-29

God, Religion, Communication, Parent

“Robin Day: So you would say, would you – I hope I am not misrepresenting you – that the question of parliamentary sovereignty and national sovereignty as affected by our membership of the EEC, is the issue on which you would like to see most people have as their reason for voting one way or the other?
Enoch Powell: Yes, for – in peace as in war, it is the great, the ultimate, question for any nation. If we still are a nation. So really I am inviting the British people and have been these many years, to say whether or not they intend still to be a nation.”

Enoch Powell (1912–1998) British politician

The Parliamentarians, BBC TV (4 February 1979), from Reflections of a Statesman. The Writings and Speeches of Enoch Powell (London: Bellew, 1991), p. 263
1970s

People, Peace, Hope, Way

“What the Democrats are suggesting, basically, about a withdrawal — you can call it redeployment, whatever you want to call it. Basically, it in effect validates the terrorists' strategy. You've got to remember that the Osama bin Laden-types, the al Qaeda-types, the Zarqawi-types that have been active in Iraq are betting that ultimately they can break the United States' will. There's no way they can defeat us militarily. Their whole strategy, if you look at what bin Laden's been saying for 10 years, is they believe they can, in fact, force us to quit, that ultimately we'll get tired of the fight, that we don't have the stomach for a long, tough battle and that we'll pack it in and go home. If we were to do that it would be devastating from the standpoint of the global war on terror. It would affect what happens in Afghanistan. It would make it difficult for us to persuade the Iranians to give up their aspirations for nuclear weapons. It would threaten the stability of regimes like Musharraf in Pakistan and the Saudis in Saudi Arabia. It is absolutely the worst possible thing we could do at this point. It would be to validate and encourage the terrorists by doing exactly what they want us to do.”

Dick Cheney (1941) American politician and businessman

2000s, 2006

Way, Home, Fight

“Thus, the historical circumstance of the half century preceding the Second World War gave rise to the essence of fascism: a synthesis of organic nationalism and anti-Marxist socialism, a revolutionary ideology based on a simultaneous rejection of liberalism, Marxism, and democracy.”

Zeev Sternhell (1935) Israeli historian

Source: Neither Left nor Right: Fascist Ideology in France, 1996, p. 27

World, Democracy

“p>Ye living lamps, by whose dear light
The nightingale does sit so late
And studying all the summer night
Her matchless songs does meditate;Ye country comets, that portend
No war, nor prince's funeral,
Shining unto no higher end
Than to presage the grasses's fall;Ye glow-worms whose officious flame
To wandering mowers shows the way,
That in the night have lost their aim
And after foolish fires do stray;Your courteous lights in vain you waste,
Since juliana here is come,
For she my mind hath so displaced
That I shall never find my home.”

Andrew Marvell (1621–1678) English metaphysical poet and politician

The Mover to the Glow-worms

Way, Home, Study, Light

“Such was Gods Poem, this Worlds new Essay;
So wild and rude in its first draught it lay;
Th' ungovern'd parts no Correspondence knew,
An artless war from thwarting Motions grew;
Till they to Number and fixt Rules were brought
By the eternal Minds Poetique Thought.
Water and Air he for the Tenor chose,
Earth made the Base, the Treble Flame arose,
To th' active Moon a quick brisk stroke he gave,
To Saturns string a touch more soft and grave.
The motions Strait, and Round, and Swift, and Slow,
And Short, and Long, were mixt and woven so,
Did in such artful Figures smoothly fall,
As made this decent measur'd Dance of All.”

Abraham Cowley (1618–1667) British writer

Book I, lines 451-464
Davideis (1656)

God, World, Art, Water

“For he was a merciful man, who loved not slaughter, although his fierce faith drove him from war to war.”

H. Rider Haggard book The Brethren

The Brethren (1904), PROLOGUE

Love, Faith

“Living financially and economically on American charity, selling up the house to the Yanks when he won't pay any more charity out. Are you content to be occupied and protected by American aeroplanes? Are you content to be in the position of an old woman, jipped by her young relations? You who were the greatest power on earth fifty years ago, and still can be! Why do I say, 'you still can be'? Because, my friends, I know you, I know the British people! I know that twice in my lifetime in the world war I fought in, in the world war the younger men fought in. We the British have put our effort, our energy of valor, of heroism, unequalled in the history of mankind.”

Oswald Mosley (1896–1980) British politician; founder of the British Union of Fascists

Speech on 21 Novembver, 1960. http://www.oswaldmosley.com/audio/300million.m3u

Men, People, World, History

“Vietnam vet: We haven't heard why you voted against your colleagues' proposals to increase health care funding in 2004, '05, '06, and '07, when we had troops coming back from two wars.
Madow: Instead of the answer the questioner is looking for, McCain now takes credit for the GI bill and takes a political shot at Jim Webb.
McCain: On the issue of the GI bill, I was disappointed that Senator Webb didn't support making it permanent. Senator Graham, other veterans and I will be looking to extend that to all veterans, not just 2001. I hope you'll urge Senator Webb to agree with that.
McCain: I received every award from every major veterans' organization in America. The reason is I have a perfect voting record from organizations like Veterans of Foreign Wars, the American Legion, and all the other veterans service organizations because of my support of them.
Vietnam vet: You do not have a perfect voting record by the DIV and the VFW. That's where these votes [of yours against increasing vet health care] are recorded. The votes were proposals by your colleagues in the Senate to increase health care funding of the VA in 2003, '04, '05, and '06 for troops returning from Iraq and Afghanistan, and you voted against those proposals. I can give you specific Senate votes, the numbers of those Senate votes right now.
McCain: I thank you, and I'll examine your version of what my voting record is, but again, I've been endorsed in every election by all of the veterans' organizations that do that. I've been supported by them, and I've received their highest rewards, from all of those organizations, so I guess they don't know something you know.
Rieckoff: [McCain's] voting record is not very strong. The Disabled American Veterans gave him a 20% rating out of 100. Our organization, the IAVA, gave him a D rating in the last voting session. He does not have a perfect voting record from the VFW. He's consistently voted against increased funding of the VA, and he's been a major opponent of the new GI bill.”

John McCain (1936–2018) politician from the United States

Paul Rieckhoff of Iraq & Afghanistan Veterans for America and author of Chasing Ghosts, on Countdown, discussing a town hall exchange between McCain and another Vietnam vet; 9 July 2008; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OnyEMLXvgV8 IAVA ratings: McCain: D; Obama: B+ http://www.iava.org/full-ratings-list; DAV: McCain: 20%; Obama: 80%; the AL and VFW don't perform such voting record ratings http://www.factcheck.org/askfactcheck/does_mccain_have_a_perfect_voting_record.html http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OnyEMLXvgV8 2000s, 2008

Health, Hope, Disappointment, Question

“The war has revealed an overpowering national instinct. The conflicting theories of the exact nature and limitations of our government had blinded the shrewdest minds to the fact that we were a nation, with all the feelings and instincts of a nation, and that our quarrels must be settled inside and not outside of the Union.”

George William Curtis (1824–1892) American writer

1860s, The Good Fight (1865)

Feeling, Nature

“All the wars and strifes between tribes, races, nations, from the beginning until now, have been the result of man's effort to govern himself and the world, rather than to submit to the government of God.”

David Lipscomb (1831–1917) Leader, American Restoration Movement

Source: Civil Government : Its Origin, Mission, and Destiny (1889), p. 10

God, World, Effort

“There is no draft in Canada. The last time they tried it was World War Two, when tens of thousands of Canadians refused to register. Faded "Oppose Conscription" signs can still be seen along the Toronto waterfront. The mayor of Montreal was jailed for urging Canadians to resist – and was re-elected from jail. No one expects a draft again. It's a different country, Canada.”

Mark Satin (1946) American political theorist, author, and newsletter publisher

Page 5.
Manual for Draft-Age Immigrants to Canada (1968)

World, Time, Country

“We cannot have another world war. War is the wrong word. We should ban the term ‘World War III’ and say instead apocalypse or holocaust.”

Golo Mann (1909–1994) German historian

Hamburg’s Die Zeit, August 30, 1985. cited in: The Watchtower, 2/15 1986.

World

“The Internal Revenue Code of 1954, a document longer than "War and Peace", is phrased -inevitably, perhaps- in the sort of jargon that stuns the mind and disheartens the spirit.”

John Brooks (writer) (1920–1993) American writer

Business Adventures: Twelve Classic Tales from the World of Wall Street

Peace

“Wherever we turn we find that the real obstacles to peace are human will and feeling, human convictions, prejudices, opinions. If we want to get rid of war we must get rid first of all of its psychological causes. Only when this has been done will the rulers of the nations even desire to get rid of the economic and political causes.”

Aldous Huxley book Ends and Means

Ends and Means (1937)

Peace, Feeling

“Hillary causes the greatest refugee crisis since World War II. Now she wants a 25% gun tax to make sure you can't defend yourself from the onslaught. Did I catch your attention yet?”

Michael Savage book The Savage Nation

The Savage Nation
The Savage Nation (1995- ), 2015-09-09
Radio, 46:45
2015

World

“They know of no solutions to the paradoxes of the Middle East and Europe, the Far East and Africa except the landing of Marines. Being baffled, and also being very tired of being baffled, they have come to believe that there is no way out—except war—which would remove all the bewildering paradoxes of their tedious and now misguided attempts to construct peace. In place of these paradoxes they prefer the bright, clear problems of war—as they used to be. For they still believe that "winning" means something, although they never tell us what.”

C. Wright Mills (1916–1962) American sociologist

The Causes of World War Three (1960)

Peace, Way, Problem

“From the viewpoint of my general purpose, I had come to believe that one way to achieve the education which leads to understanding and compassion is to take some period of the past and to immerse oneself in it so thoroughly that one could think its thoughts and speak its language. The object would be to take this chapter of vanished experience and learn to know it in three if not four dimensions. That would mean coming to understand why certain actions which in the light of retrospect appear madly irrational appeared at that time the indisputable mandate of reason; why things which had been created with pain and care were cast quickly on the gaming table of war; why men who had sat in the senate chamber and debated with syllogism and enthymeme stepped out of it to buckle on the sword against one another. Almost any book of history will give you the form of such a time, but what will give you the pressure of it? That is what I particularly wished to discover.”

Richard M. Weaver (1910–1963) American scholar

"Up from Liberalism” Modern Age Vol. 3, No. 1 (Winter 1958-1959), pp. 24, col. 2-25, col. 1.

Men, Pain, Books, Education

“We believe as Democrats, that a society as blessed as ours, the most affluent democracy in the world's history, one that can spend trillions on instruments of destruction, ought to be able to help the middle class in its struggle, ought to be able to find work for all who can do it, room at the table, shelter for the homeless, care for the elderly and infirm, and hope for the destitute. And we proclaim as loudly as we can the utter insanity of nuclear proliferation and the need for a nuclear freeze, if only to affirm the simple truth that peace is better than war because life is better than death.”

Mario Cuomo (1932–2015) American politician, Governor of New York

Democratic National Convention Address (1984)

Life, Death, Truth, World

“Two world wars have destroyed in a few years the material and spiritual capital accumulated by centuries of work. The nineteenth century had hoped to turn man, by virtue of education, into a reasoning being: a half-century of ferocity has proved that a cruel, primitive beast still resides in him.”

André Maurois (1885–1967) French writer

Un Art de Vivre (The Art of Living) (1939), The Art of Loving

World, Education, Hope

“No war, or battle's sound
Was heard the world around.
The idle spear and shield were high up hung.”

John Milton On the Morning of Christ's Nativity

Hymn, stanza 4, line 53
On the Morning of Christ's Nativity (1629)

World

“In 1919 I was the sole person who saw war in the form it would be; yet saw it only as an acorn and not as an oak.”

J. F. C. Fuller (1878–1966) British Army general

Quoted in Men Against Fire. S.L.A. Marshall (1947), p. 27.

Personality

“Mr. Grey said, that he was prepared to defend the country, not only against an invasion of a foreign enemy, wishing to inculcate their own dangerous principles, which were clearly most subversive of civil society, but he would defend it, at the risk of his life, against the subjects of any government, if it was the best that human wisdom could devise; he did not however think it was candid, or by any means conciliatory, in the right hon. gentleman, on every occasion that presented itself to introduce the words "just and necessary" war. He declared he was much obliged to an hon. gentleman who had done him the honour to remember his words. He had declared, and he would declare again, that he would rather live under the most despotic monarchy, nay, even under that of the king of Prussia, or the empress of Russia, than under the present government of France. He wished the chancellor of the exchequer had descended a little from his high and haughty tone of prerogative, and had informed the House, in plain, simple, intelligible language his real opinion of the legality of the measure which ministers had thought to pursue with respect to voluntary subscriptions. As for himself, he would insist, that to raise money without the authority of parliament, for any public purpose whatsoever, was illegal; and if right hon. gentleman should insist on contrary, it would give a deeper wound the constitution than any that it had received even from that right hon. gentleman.”

Charles Grey, 2nd Earl Grey (1764–1845) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland

Speech in the House of Commons (26 March 1794), reported in The Parliamentary History of England, from the Earliest Period to the Year 1803. Vol. XXXI (London: 1818), pp. 94-95.
1790s

Life, Wisdom, Money, Intelligence