
“Either Man will abolish war, or war will abolish Man.”
Fact and Fiction (1961), Part IV, Ch. 10: "Can War Be Abolished?", p. 276
1960s
1961, UN speech
Context: Today, every inhabitant of this planet must contemplate the day when this planet may no longer be habitable. Every man, woman and child lives under a nuclear sword of Damocles, hanging by the slenderest of threads, capable of being cut at any moment by accident, or miscalculation, or by madness. The weapons of war must be abolished before they abolish us.
“Either Man will abolish war, or war will abolish Man.”
Fact and Fiction (1961), Part IV, Ch. 10: "Can War Be Abolished?", p. 276
1960s
"Father Severyan", in November 1916: The Red Wheel: Knot II (1984; translation 1999).
Context: At no time has the world been without war. Not in seven or ten or twenty thousand years. Neither the wisest of leaders, nor the noblest of kings, nor yet the Church — none of them has been able to stop it. And don't succumb to the facile belief that wars will be stopped by hotheaded socialists. Or that rational and just wars can be sorted out from the rest. There will always be thousands of thousands to whom even such a war will be senseless and unjustified. Quite simply, no state can live without war, that is one of the state's essential functions. … War is the price we pay for living in a state. Before you can abolish war you will have to abolish all states. But that is unthinkable until the propensity to violence and evil is rooted out of human beings. The state was created to protect us from evil. In ordinary life thousands of bad impulses, from a thousand foci of evil, move chaotically, randomly, against the vulnerable. The state is called upon to check these impulses — but it generates others of its own, still more powerful, and this time one-directional. At times it throws them all in a single direction — and that is war.
“Child labor must be abolished by the working class.”
The Socialist Party and the Working Class (1904)
Context: The working class must be emancipated by the working class.
Woman must be given her true place in society by the working class.
Child labor must be abolished by the working class.
Society must be reconstructed by the working class.
The working class must be employed by the working class.
The fruits of labor must be enjoyed by the working class.
War, bloody war, must be ended by the working class.
Prime Minister's Questions (1 February 1983) http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/105246
First term as Prime Minister
In response to journalist for his views on the future of mankind at his 70th birthday (16 April 1959)
Source: Tower at the Edge of Time (1968), Chapter 9, “Slaves of Chan” (p. 86)
Source: The Sword or the Cross, Which Should be the Weapon of the Christian Militant? (1921), Ch.6 p. 107
Source: Isaac Herzog (2021) cited in " Iran must be stopped from obtaining a nuclear bomb, with or without deal - Herzog https://www.jpost.com/arab-israeli-conflict/article-689474" on The Jerusalem Post, 22 December 2021.
“[The world may end up] under a Sword of Damocles … on a tightrope over the abyss.”
Criticising the US Strategic Defense Initiative
Time Magazine, 11 Mar 1985 http://bartelby.org/63/54/454.html