Edward Abbey (1927–1989) American author and essayist
Misattributed
“When a war of annhilihation is surely though in point of time indefinately impending over a weaker state, the wiser, more resolute and more devoted men who would immediately prepare it for the unnavoidable struggle and thus cover their defensive policy with a strategy of offense always find themselves hampered by the indolent, cowardly mass of the money worshippers, of the aged and feeble, and the thoughtless who are minded merely to gain time to live and die in peace and to postpone and any price the final struggle.”
The History of Rome, Volume 2 Translated by W.P. Dickson
The History of Rome - Volume 2
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Theodor Mommsen65
German classical scholar, historian, jurist, journalist, po… 1817–1903Related quotes
Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist
Not by Twain, but from Edward Abbey's A Voice Crying In The Wilderness (1989).
Misattributed
“Happy the state which in times of peace is yet prepared for war.”
Felix est illa civitas quae in pace bellum cogitat.
Gerald of Wales (1146) Medieval clergyman and historian
Book 2, chapter 9, p. 271.
Compare Vegetius De Re Militari: "Qui desiderat pacem, praeparet bellum" (Let him who desires peace prepare for war).
Descriptio Cambriae (The Description of Wales) (1194)
U Thant (1909–1974) 3rd Secretary-General of the United Nations
"Buddhism and the Charter" in Religion and International Affairs (1968) edited by Jeffrey Rose and Michael Ignatieff, p. 114
Elliot Rodger (1991–2014) American spree killer
My Twisted World (2014), 19-22, UC Santa Barbara, Perspective on incelness
Richard McKenna book The Sand Pebbles
Source: The Sand Pebbles (1962), Ch. 5; speech of Lt. Collins
Context: It is said there will be no more war. We must pretend to believe that. But when war comes, it is we who will take the first shock and buy time with our lives. It is we who keep the faith. We are not honored for it. We are called mercenaries on the outposts of empire. … We serve the flag. The trade we follow is the give and take of death. It is for that purpose the American people maintain us. Any one of us who believes he has a job like any other, for which he draws a money wage, is a thief of the food he eats and a trespasser in the bunk in which he lies down to sleep!
Herman Melville book White-Jacket
Source: White-Jacket (1850), Ch. 68
Context: I let nothing slip, however small; and feel myself actuated by the same motive which has prompted many worthy old chroniclers, to set down the merest trifles concerning things that are destined to pass away entirely from the earth, and which, if not preserved in the nick of time, must infallibly perish from the memories of man. Who knows that this humble narrative may not hereafter prove the history of an obsolete barbarism? Who knows that, when men-of-war shall be no more, "White-Jacket" may not be quoted to show to the people in the Millennium what a man-of-war was? God hasten the time!