
Imperialism, The Highest Stage of Capitalism (1917)
Interviewed by the Agence France Presse (AFP), in Cairo (30 January 1953), quoted in an article in Le Monde, entitled "Les Condamnations de Nuremberg seront responsible de l'horreur de la prochaine guerre, affirme Otto Skorzeny."
Context: War is inevitable, and this time, it will be truly world wide. It will unravel everywhere and there will be no limit to its battlefields. The condemnations of Nuremberg will be one of the main reasons, which will cause this war to be a conflict whose horror will be unparalleled. These condemnations gave birth, in fact, to a new conception which makes the victor a hero and the vanquished an odious criminal. By this fact, each leader will wage war like a demon in order not to be the loser and become, consequently, a criminal. All the atrocities that can be imagined by man, will be committed during this next war, in order to prevent the enemy from acquiring victory. What I have just said, I have repeated to the American representatives and I have warned them that all of the mothers of the entire world will one day curse America.
Imperialism, The Highest Stage of Capitalism (1917)
Source: Last and First Men (1930), Chapter VII: The Rise of the Second Men; Section 3, “The Zenith of the Second Men” (p. 110)
“The world has only a limited time to change its custom of resolving conflicts violently.”
"Body Pleasure and the Origins of Violence" (1975)
Context: The world has only a limited time to change its custom of resolving conflicts violently. It is uncertain... how many future generations it will take to transform out psychobiology of violence into one of peace.
“Logic pervades the world: the limits of the world are also its limits.”
Original German:Die Logik erfüllt die Welt; die Grenzen der Welt sind auch ihre Grenzen. Wir können also in der Logik nicht sagen: Das und das gibt es in der Welt, jenes nicht.Das würde nämlich scheinbar voraussetzen, dass wir gewisse Möglichkeiten ausschließen, und dies kann nicht der Fall sein, da sonst die Logik über die Grenzen der Welt hinaus müsste; wenn sie nämlich diese Grenzen auch von der anderen Seite betrachten könnte. Was wir nicht denken können, das können wir nicht denken; wir können also auch nicht sagen, was wir nicht denken können.
1920s, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1922)
Context: Logic pervades the world: the limits of the world are also its limits. So we cannot say in logic, "The world has this in it, and this, but not that." For that would appear to presuppose that we were excluding certain possibilities, and this cannot be the case, since it would require that logic should go beyond the limits of the world; for only in that way could it view those limits from the other side as well. We cannot think what we cannot think; so what we cannot think we cannot say either. (5.61)
“I have a need to ask questions that unravel the world.”
wooden egg lying
Gnomon (2017)
2010s, 2013, In defense of Obama’s drone war (2013)
Clyfford Still in an interview with Ti Grace Sharpless, 1963; as quoted in Abstract Expressionism Creators and Critics, edited by Clifford Ross, Abrams Publishers New York 1990, p. 201
1960s