Ron English's Fauxlosophy: Volume 2 (2022)
“It was a time when only the dead smiled, happy in their peace.”
Source: The Bridge of San Luis Rey (1927)
Context: Soon we shall die and all memory of those five will have left earth, and we ourselves shall be loved for a while and forgotten. But the love will have been enough; all those impulses of love return to the love that made them. Even memory is not necessary for love. There is a land of the living and a land of the dead and the bridge is love, the only survival, the only meaning.
Captain Roadstrum to Bjorn, on planet Valhal, also known as Lamos, in Ch. 2
Space Chantey (1968)
Context: I do not understand your custom in this, but we do not intend to fight until all of us are dead. We desire very much that none of us be dead. And we will fight till all of you are dead only if it is absolutely necessary.
1930s, Address at San Diego Exposition (1935)
Context: This country seeks no conquest. We have no imperial designs. From day to day and year to year, we are establishing a more perfect assurance of peace with our neighbors. We rejoice especially in the prosperity, the stability and the independence of all of the American Republics. We not only earnestly desire peace, but we are moved by a stern determination to avoid those perils that will endanger our peace with the world.
The Pathway of Peace (1923)
Context: The only real progress to abiding peace is found in the friendly disposition of peoples and … facilities for maintaining peace are useful only to the extent that this friendly disposition exists and finds expression. War is not only possible, but probable, where mistrust and hatred and desire for revenge are the dominant motives. Our first duty is at home with our own opinion, by education and unceasing effort to bring to naught the mischievous exhortation of chauvinists; our next is to aid in every practicable way in promoting a better feeling among peoples, the healing of wounds, and the just settlement of differences.
“He mourns the dead who lives as they desire.”
Source: Night-Thoughts (1742–1745), Night II, Line 24.
“Only the dead have discovered what they cannot live without.”
#120
Vectors: Aphorisms and Ten Second Essays (2001)
Book II, 1267b.4
Politics
