“The only certainty in war is human suffering, uncertain costs, unintended consequences.”

Source: Frankenstein's Castle (1980), p. 89

Disarm and develop – UN expert urges win-win proposition for States and peoples.
2014

[d45qug$pc5$1@reader1.panix.com, 2005]
2000s

The Saviors of God (1923)
Context: The essence of our God is obscure. It ripens continuously; perhaps victory is strenghened with our every valorous deed, but perhaps even all these agonizing struggles toward deliverance and victory are inferior to the nature of divinity.
Whatever it might be, we fight on without certainty, and our virtue, uncertain of any rewards, acquires a profound nobility.

Source: The City of Ember

2020

Interview at Big Sur, California http://www.achievement.org/autodoc/printmember/pau0int-1 (11 November 1990).
1990s
Context: I realized that more and more I was saying, "It seems to me that we have come to the time war ought to be given up. It no longer makes sense to kill 20 million or 40 million people because of a dispute between two nations who are running things, or decisions made by the people who really are running things. It no longer makes sense. Nobody wins. Nobody benefits from destructive war of this sort and there is all of this human suffering." And Einstein was saying the same thing of course. So that is when we decided — my wife and I — that first, I was pretty effective as a speaker. Second, I better start boning up, studying these other fields so that nobody could stand up and say, "Well, the authorities say such and such "

Journals of Ayn Rand (1997)

Source: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Heartfire (1998), Chapter 2.