“What the horrors of war are, no one can imagine”
they are not wounds and blood and fever, spotted and low, or dysentery, chronic and acute, cold and heat and famine — they are intoxication, drunken brutality, demoralization and disorder on the part of the inferior, jealousies, meanness, indifference, selfish brutality on the part of the superior.
Letter (5 May 1855), published in Florence Nightingale : An Introduction to Her Life and Family (2001), edited by Lynn McDonald, p. 141
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English social reformer and statistician, and the founder o… 1820–1910Related quotes

Steppin' off the Edge http://steppinofftheedge.com/podcast/philosophy-of-open-source/, Podcast Interview, January 2011

Source: Everybody’s Autobiography (1937), Ch. 3
Context: Would I if I could by pushing a button would I kill five thousand Chinamen if I could save my brother from anything. Well I was very fond of my brother and I could completely imagine his suffering and I replied that five thousand Chinamen were something I could not imagine and so it was not interesting.
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Variant: Sometimes it is the people who no one imagines anything of who do the things that no one can imagine.
Source: The Passing of an Illusion, The Idea of Communism in the Twentieth Century (1999), p.191
“It may be that we shall witness scenes surpassing in horror even those of the recent war.”
Foreword p. 9
The Sword or the Cross, Which Should be the Weapon of the Christian Militant? (1921)
Context: Struggles between nations and struggles between classes we shall surely have during the coming decades. All indications point to further wars between nations. The struggle between capital and labor is daily growing in intensity.... It may be that we shall witness scenes surpassing in horror even those of the recent war.