“Every war, when it comes, or before it comes, is represented not as a war but as an act of self-defence against a homicidal maniac.”
Help us to complete the source, original and additional information
George Orwell 473
English author and journalist 1903–1950Related quotes
“I don't care who you are when it comes to self-defence.”
Charles Eisenstein, Oral presentation in Baltimore, MD March 2012
on date rape, p. 33
Vamps and Tramps (1994), "No Law in the Arena: A Pagan Theory of Sexuality"
“I have come not to make war on the Italians, but to aid the Italians against Rome.”
Spoken to Italian soldiers of Rome captured at the Battle of Lake Trasimene (24 June 217 BC) as quoted in Hannibal : One Man Against Rome (1958) by Harold Lamb, p. 119.
“The first casualty when war comes is truth.”
Widely attributed to Johnson, but without any confirmed citations of original source: "The first casualty when war comes is truth," remarked Hiram Johnson, "and whenever an individual nation seeks to coerce by force of arms another, it always acts, and insists that it acts in self-defense" (Locomotive Engineers Journal, February 1929, p. 109). Arthur Ponsonby earlier said: "When war is declared, Truth is the first casualty", but the first recorded use seems to be by Philip Snowden in his introduction to Truth and the War, by E. D. Morel. London, July 1916: "'Truth,' it has been said, 'is the first casualty of war.'" Samuel Johnson expressed a similar idea: "Among the calamities of war may be jointly numbered the diminution of the love of truth, by the falsehoods which interest dictates and credulity encourages." Cf. Aeschylus#Misattributed.
Attributed
Cosmic Trigger II : Down to Earth (1991)
"The Next War"
Context: Oh, Death was never enemy of ours!
We laughed at him, we leagued with him, old chum.
No soldier's paid to kick against His powers.
We laughed, — knowing that better men would come,
And greater wars: when each proud fighter brags
He wars on Death, for lives; not men, for flags.
