“A writer who is afraid to overreach himself is as useless as a general who is afraid to be wrong.”
Source: Pearls are a Nuisance
“It is useless to try to adjudicate a long-standing animosity by asking who started it or who is the most wrong.”
Citizenship Papers (2003), The Failure of War
Context: It is useless to try to adjudicate a long-standing animosity by asking who started it or who is the most wrong. The only sufficient answer is to give up the animosity and try forgiveness, to try to love our enemies and to talk to them and (if we pray) to pray for them. If we can't do any of that, then we must begin again by trying to imagine our enemies' children who, like our children, are in mortal danger because of enmity that they did not cause.
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