Quotes about warfare

page 3

Aphorism 129
Novum Organum (1620), Book I

Source: Life, the Truth, and Being Free (2010), p. 73

Winston Churchill's shocking use of chemical weapons https://www.theguardian.com/world/shortcuts/2013/sep/01/winston-churchill-shocking-use-chemical-weapons (1 September 2013), .

Column, January 1, 2010, &quot;Obama’s dangerous denial&quot; http://www.jewishworldreview.com/cols/krauthammer010110.php3#.U35UucJOWUk at jewishworldreview.com. <br class="br">2010s, 2010

&quot;Cavuto: &#x27;Folks are rising up&#x27; against &#x27;class warfare crap&#x27;, we&#x27;re &#x27;at war against the government, not each other&#x27;&quot; http://mediamatters.org/mmtv/201011040031, mediamatters.org, (November 4, 2010).

interviewed by Paul Jay, “The Pathology of the Super-Rich” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EfmiCLYweTQ

Source: Where There's a Will: Thoughts on the Good Life (2003), Ch. 28 : Inventions and the Decline of Language

Source: At a 2010 fundraiser https://www.forbes.com/sites/ryanmac/2012/05/10/obama-minded-billionaires-mostly-quiet-on-same-sex-marriage/ for the American Foundation for Equal Rights (September 22, 2010)

The Canton, Ohio Speech, Anti-War Speech (1918)

Letter V
The Screwtape Letters (1942)

The War in the Air (1907), Ch. VIII, §1

2010s, 2016, August, Speech in Jackson, Mississippi (August 24, 2016)

Interview with Thomas Schelling http://openvault.wgbh.org/catalog/wpna-ebd606-interview-with-thomas-schelling-1986 (1986).

Dedication
The Thin Red Line (1962)

Source: Medieval castles (2005), Ch. 2 : The Castle as Fortress : The Castle and Siege Warfare

Source: Guide for the Perplexed (c. 1190), Part III, Ch.33

Source: Medieval castles (2005), Ch. 2 : The Castle as Fortress : The Castle and Siege Warfare

Source: Writings, The Institutes of Biblical Law (1973), P. 308

Speech in the Reichstag (October 1917), quoted in W. M. Knight-Patterson, Germany. From Defeat to Conquest 1913-1933 (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1945), p. 121
1910s

Paul Ryan, "Cybernetic Guerilla Warfare," Radical Software 3 (Spring 1971): 1

Sound Socialist Tactics (1912)

From an interview with Andrew Denton on Enough Rope screened 18th October 2004 on ABC Australia http://www.abc.net.au/tv/enoughrope/transcripts/s1219838.htm <br class="br">Interviews

In response to a question during a congressional hearing about whether the U.S. should modify its Afghan strategy in response to six U.S. soldiers being killed by Afghan soldiers between Feb. 23 and March 1. As quoted in Key commanders have their say on Afghanistan http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/key-commanders-have-their-say-on-afghanistan/2012/03/07/gIQAOukuxR_story.html (2012) by Walter Pincus, The Washington Post

It won&#x27;t even be an interesting debate, getting killed by shrapnel, in my opinion is a lot more gruesome and a lot worse. <br class="br"> John Mearsheimer on America Unhinged https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jwqqzh59sVo provided by the Center for the National Interest. The bold text is Mearsheimer speaking about B. H. Liddell Hart&#x27;s experience with chemical warfare, and the rest is of his opinion of it.

Hindu Society under Siege (1981, revised 1992)

Junagadh (Gujarat) Mirat-i-Ahmdi, translated into English by M.F. Lokhandwala, Baroda, 1965,pp 47-52

&quot;Praying to the Military Moloch,&quot; http://www.economicpolicyjournal.com/2014/06/praying-to-military-moloch.html Economic Policy Journal, June 6, 2014. <br class="br">2010s, 2014

Gettysburg Oration (1863)

The Bonobo in All of Us (2007)
Context: If you look at human society, it is very easy, of course, to compare our warfare and territoriality with the chimpanzee. But that's only one side of what we do. We also trade, we intermarry, we allow each other to travel through our territory. There's an enormous amount of cooperation. Indeed, among hunter-gatherers, peace is common 90 percent of the time, and war takes place only a small part of the time. Chimps cannot tell us anything about peaceful relations, because chimps have only different degrees of hostility between communities. Whereas bonobos do tell us something; they tell us about the possibility of having peaceful relationships.

1920s, Ways to Peace (1926)
Context: Our experience in that respect ought not to lead us too hastily to assume that we have been therefore better than other people, but certainly we have been more fortunate. We came on the stage at a later time, so that this country had presented to it, already attained, a civilization that other countries had secured only as a result of a long and painful struggle. Of the various races of which we are composed, substantially all have a history for making warfare which is oftentimes hard to justify, as they have come up through various degrees of development. They bore this burden in ages past in order that this country might be freed from it. Under the circumstances it behooves us to look on their record of advance through great difficulties with much compassion and be thankful that we have been spared from a like experience, and out of our compassion and our thankfulness constantly to remember that because of greater advantages and opportunities we are charged with superior duties and obligations. Perhaps no country on earth has greater responsibilities than America.

The God-Seeker (1949), Ch. 41

Interview by John Veit in High Times, April 1998 http://www.hightimes.com/ht/entertainment/content.php?bid=175&amp;aid=2 <br class="br">Quotes 1990s, 1995-1999 <br class="br">Context: If you look into the history of what is called the CIA, which means the US White House, its secret wars, clandestine warfare, the trail of drug production just follows. It started in France after the Second World War when the United States was essentially trying to reinstitute the traditional social order, to rehabilitate Fascist collaborators, wipe out the Resistance and destroy the unions and so on. The first thing they did was reconstitute the Mafia, as strikebreakers or for other such useful services. And the Mafia doesn&#x27;t do it for fun, so there was a tradeoff: Essentially, they allowed them to reinstitute the heroin production system, which had been destroyed by the Fascists. The Fascists tended to run a pretty tight ship; they didn&#x27;t want any competition, so they wiped out the Mafia. But the US reconstituted it, first in southern Italy, and then in southern France with the Corsican Mafia. That&#x27;s where the famous French Connection comes from. That was the main heroin center for many years. Then US terrorist activities shifted over to Southeast Asia. If you want to carry out terrorist activities, you need local people to do it for you, and you also need secret money to pay for it, clandestine hidden money. Well, if you need to hire thugs and murderers with secret money, there aren&#x27;t many options. One of them is the drug connection. The so-called Golden Triangle around Burma, Laos and Thailand became a big drug producing area with the help of the United States, as part of the secret wars against those populations.

Prayer to Saint Michael (1888)
Context: O Glorious Archangel St. Michael, Prince of the heavenly host, be our defense in the terrible warfare which we carry on against principalities and Powers, against the rulers of this world of darkness, spirits of evil. Come to the aid of man, whom God created immortal, made in His own image and likeness, and redeemed at a great price from the tyranny of the devil.
Fight this day the battle of the Lord, together with the holy angels, as already thou hast fought the leader of the proud angels, Lucifer, and his apostate host, who were powerless to resist thee, nor was there place for them any longer in Heaven.

NOW interview (2004)
Context: I wasn't gonna paint. And I wasn't gonna do ostentatious drawings. I wasn't gonna have gallery pictures. I was gonna hide somewhere where nobody would find me and express myself entirely. I'm like a guerrilla warfare in my best books.

Introduction to Shatterday (1980), p. 2
Context: I don't know how you perceive my mission as a writer, but for me it is not a responsibility to reaffirm your concretized myths and provincial prejudices. It is not my job to lull you with a false sense of the rightness of the universe. This wonderful and terrible occupation of recreating the world in a different way, each time fresh and strange, is an act of revolutionary guerrilla warfare. I stir the soup. I inconvenience you. I make your nose run and your eyeballs water.

"The True Modernism"
Foundations of World Unity
Context: From every standpoint the world of humanity is undergoing a re-formation. The laws of former governments and civilizations are in process of revision, scientific ideas and theories are developing and advancing to meet a new range of phenomena, invention and discovery are penetrating hitherto unknown fields revealing new wonders and hidden secrets of the material universe; industries have vastly wider scope and production; everywhere the world of mankind is in the throes of evolutionary activity indicating the passing of the old conditions and advent of the new age of re-formation. Old trees yield no fruitage; old ideas and methods are obsolete and worthless now. Old standards of ethics, moral codes and methods of living in the past will not suffice for the present age of advancement and progress.
This is the cycle of maturity and re-formation in religion as well. Dogmatic imitations of ancestral beliefs are passing. They have been the axis around which religion revolved but now are no longer fruitful; on the contrary, in this day they have become the cause of human degradation and hindrance. Bigotry and dogmatic adherence to ancient beliefs have become the central and fundamental source of animosity among men, the obstacle to human progress, the cause of warfare and strife, the destroyer of peace, composure and welfare in the world.

1950s, Atoms for Peace (1953)
Context: I feel impelled to speak today in a language that in a sense is new--one which I, who have spent so much of my life in the military profession, would have preferred never to use. That new language is the language of atomic warfare. The atomic age has moved forward at such a pace that every citizen of the world should have some comprehension, at least in comparative terms, of the extent of this development of the utmost significance to every one of us. Clearly, if the people of the world are to conduct an intelligent search for peace, they must be armed with the significant facts of today's existence.

Commencement address at Lindsey Wilson College (14 May 2005) http://www.lindsey.edu/index.cgi?id=10379. <br class="br">Context: The line that connects the bombing of civilian populations to the mountain removed by strip mining … to the tortured prisoner seems to run pretty straight. We&#x27;re living, it seems, in the culmination of a long warfare — warfare against human beings, other creatures and the Earth itself.

Individual Liberty (1926), Passive Resistance
Context: It is not wise warfare to throw your ammunition to the enemy unless you throw it from the cannon's mouth. But if you can compel the enemy to waste his ammunition by drawing his fire on some thoroughly protected spot; if you can, by annoying and goading and harassing him in all possible ways, drive him to the last resort of stripping bare his tyrannous and invasive purposes and put him in the attitude of a designing villain assailing honest men for purposes of plunder; there is no better strategy.

Budget speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1909/apr/29/final-balance-sheet in the House of Commons (29 April 1909) <br class="br">Chancellor of the Exchequer <br class="br">Context: This, Mr. Emmot, is a war Budget. It is for raising money to wage implacable warfare against poverty and squalidness. I cannot help hoping and believing that before this generation has passed away, we shall have advanced a great step towards that good time, when poverty, and the wretchedness and human degradation which always follows in its camp, will be as remote to the people of this country as the wolves which once infested its forests.

Kalki : or The Future of Civilization (1929)
Context: War with its devastated fields and ruined cities, with its millions of dead and more millions of maimed and wounded, its broken-hearted and defiled women and its starved children bereft of their natural protection, its hate and atmosphere of lies and intrigue, is an outrage on all that is human. So long as this devil-dance does not disgust us, we cannot pretend to be civilized. It is no good preventing cruelty to animals and building hospitals for the sick and poor houses for the destitute so long as we willing to mow down masses of men by machine-guns and poison non-combatants, including the aged and the infirm, women and children — and all for what? For the glory of God and the honour of the nation!
It is quite true that we attempt to regulate war, as we cannot suppress it; but the attempt cannot succeed. For war symbolizes the spirit of strife between two opposing national units which is to be settled by force. When we allow the use of force as the only argument to put down opposition, we cannot rightly discriminate between one kind of force and another. We must put down opposition by mobilizing all the forces at our disposal. There is no real difference between a stick and a sword, or gunpowder and poison gas. So long as it is the recognized method of putting down opposition, every nation will endeavour to make its destructive weapons more and more efficient. War is its only law add the highest virtue is to win, and every nation has to tread this terrific and deadly road. To approve of warfare but criticize its methods, it has been well said is like approving of the wolf eating the lamb but criticizing the table-manners. War is war and not a game of sport to be played according to rules.

Quotes 1990s, 1995-1999 <br class="br">Context: As the most powerful state, the U. S. makes its own laws, using force and conducting economic warfare at will. It also threatens sanctions against countries that do not abide by its conveniently flexible notions of &quot;free trade.&quot; In one important case, Washington has employed such threats with great effectiveness (and GATT approval) to force open Asian markets for U. S. tobacco exports and advertising, aimed primarily at the growing markets of women and children. The U. S. Agriculture Department has provided grants to tobacco firms to promote smoking overseas. Asian countries have attempted to conduct educational anti-smoking campaigns, but they are overwhelmed by the miracles of the market, reinforced by U. S. state power through the sanctions threat. Philip Morris, with an advertising and promotion budget of close to $9 billion in 1992, became China&#x27;s largest advertiser. The effect of Reaganite sanction threats was to increase advertising and promotion of cigarette smoking (particularly U. S. brands) quite sharply in Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea, along with the use of these lethal substances. In South Korea, for example, the rate of growth in smoking more than tripled when markets for U. S. lethal drugs were opened in 1988. The Bush Administration extended the threats to Thailand, at exactly the same time that the &quot;war on drugs&quot; was declared; the media were kind enough to overlook the coincidence, even suppressing the outraged denunciations by the very conservative Surgeon-General. Oxford University epidemiologist Richard Peto estimates that among Chinese children under 20 today, 50 million will die of cigarette-related diseases, an achievement that ranks high even by 20th century standards.<br><br>In Tony Evans (ed.), Human Rights Fifty Years on: A Reappraisal, 1997 http://www.zmag.org/chomsky/articles/9708-UD-relativity.html

Comment mentioning his work on The Thin Red Line.
The Paris Review interview (1958)
Context: I am at the moment trying to write a novel, a combat novel, which, in addition to being a work which tells the truth about warfare as I saw it, would free all these young men from the horseshit which has been engrained in them by my generation. I don't think that combat has ever been written about truthfully; it has always been described in terms of bravery and cowardice. I won't even accept these words as terms of human reference any more. And anyway, hell, they don't even apply to what, in actual fact, modern warfare has become.

Interview (28 October 2003) http://www.buzzflash.com/interviews/03/10/int03281.html <br class="br">Context: The corporate right and the political right declared class warfare on working people a quarter of a century ago and they&#x27;ve won … Take the paradox of Rush Limbaugh, ensconced in a Palm Beach mansion massaging the resentments across the country of white-knuckled wage earners, who are barely making ends meet in no small part because of the corporate and ideological forces for whom Rush has been a hero.

Speech to the Peace Society (31 October 1935), quoted in This Torch of Freedom (1935), p. 322.
1935
Context: We live under the shadow of the last War and its memories still sicken us. We remember what modern warfare is, with no glory in it but the heroism of man.

Oration at Plymouth (1802)
Context: Religious discord has lost her sting; the cumbrous weapons of theological warfare are antiquated: the field of politics supplies the alchymists of our times with materials of more fatal explosion, and the butchers of mankind no longer travel to another world for instruments of cruelty and destruction. Our age is too enlightened to contend upon topics, which concern only the interests of eternity; and men who hold in proper contempt all controversies about trifles, except such as inflame their own passions, have made it a common-place censure against your ancestors, that their zeal was enkindled by subjects of trivial importance; and that however aggrieved by the intolerance of others, they were alike intolerant themselves. Against these objections, your candid judgment will not require an unqualified justification; but your respect and gratitude for the founders of the State may boldly claim an ample apology. The original grounds of their separation from the church of England, were not objects of a magnitude to dissolve the bonds of communion; much less those of charity, between Christian brethren of the same essential principles.

Also quoted in &quot;Warrior for Peace&quot; by David Talbot, in TIME (2 July 2007), p. 50 http://www.time.com/time/specials/2007/article/0,28804,1635958_1635999_1634954-6,00.html <br class="br">1961, Address at the University of Washington <br class="br">Context: We increase our arms at a heavy cost, primarily to make certain that we will not have to use them. We must face up to the chance of war, if we are to maintain the peace. We must work with certain countries lacking in freedom in order to strengthen the cause of freedom. We find some who call themselves neutral who are our friends and sympathetic to us, and others who call themselves neutral who are unremittingly hostile to us. And as the most powerful defender of freedom on earth, we find ourselves unable to escape the responsibilities of freedom, and yet unable to exercise it without restraints imposed by the very freedoms we seek to protect. We cannot, as a free nation, compete with our adversaries in tactics of terror, assassination, false promises, counterfeit mobs and crises. We cannot, under the scrutiny of a free press and public, tell different stories to different audiences, foreign and domestic, friendly and hostile. We cannot abandon the slow processes of consulting with our allies to match the swift expediencies of those who merely dictate to their satellites. We can neither abandon nor control the international organization in which we now cast less than 1 percent of the vote in the General Assembly. We possess weapons of tremendous power — but they are least effective in combating the weapons most often used by freedom&#x27;s foes: subversion, infiltration, guerrilla warfare, civil disorder. We send arms to other peoples — just as we send them the ideals of democracy in which we believe — but we cannot send them the will to use those arms or to abide by those ideals. And while we believe not only in the force of arms but in the force of right and reason, we have learned that reason does not always appeal to unreasonable men — that it is not always true that &quot;a soft answer turneth away wrath&quot; — and that right does not always make might. In short, we must face problems which do not lend themselves to easy or quick or permanent solutions. And we must face the fact that the United States is neither omnipotent or omniscient — that we are only 6 percent of the world&#x27;s population — that we cannot impose our will upon the other 94 percent of mankind — that we cannot right every wrong or reverse each adversity — and that therefore there cannot be an American solution to every world problem.

Source: The Outline of History (1920), chapter no. 25.4 (Buddhism and Ashoka) page no 365-366
Context: Ashoka (264 to 227 B. C.), one of the great monarchs of history, whose dominions extended from Afghanistan to Madras... is the only military monarch on record who abandoned warfare] after [[victory. He had invaded Kalinga (255 B. C.), a country along the east coast of Madras, perhaps with some intention of completing the conquest of the tip of the Indian peninsula. The expedition was successful, but he was disgusted by what be saw of the cruelties and horrors of war. He declared, in certain inscriptions that still exist, that he would no longer seek conquest by war, but by religion, and the rest of his life was devoted to the spreading of Buddhism throughout the world. He seems to have ruled his vast empire in peace and with great ability. He was no mere religious fanatic. For eight and twenty years Asoka worked sanely for the real needs of men. Amidst the tens of thousands of names of monarchs that crowd the columns of history, their majesties and graciousnesses and serenities and royal highnesses and the like, the name of Asoka shines, and shines, almost alone, a star. From the Volga to Japan his name is still honoured. China, Tibet, and even India, though it has left his doctrine, preserve the tradition of his greatness. More living men cherish his memory to-day than have ever heard the names of Constantine or Charlemagne.

p. viii
Context: War has changed little in principle from the beginning of recorded history. The mechanized warfare of today is only an evolution of the time when men fought with clubs and stones, and its machines are as nothing without the men who invent them, man them and give them life. War is force- force to the utmost- force to make the enemy yield to our own will- to yield because they see their comrades killed and wounded- to yield because their own will to fight is broken. War is men against men. Mechanized war is still men against men, for machines are masses of inert metal without the men who control them- or destroy them.

Source: Defeat Into Victory (1961), p. 447

Speech to a lunch of the English-Speaking Union in the Criterion Restaurant (11 October 1918) after the sinking of the RMS Leinster, quoted in The Times (12 October 1918), p. 2
Foreign Secretary

Quoted in CornwallLive. Cornwall and Devon European MP Molly Scott Cato arrested after breaking into US air base in Belgium https://www.cornwalllive.com/news/cornwall-news/cornwall-devon-european-mp-molly-2564421 (20 February 2019) <br class="br">2019

Preface to the First Edition
The Grammar of Science (1900)

Introduction, p. viii

Source: U.S. Navy at War, 1941-1945: Official Reports to the Secretary of the Navy (1946), p. 77

Cooperation, Terrorism, UK & USA, President Trump, Resolving Conflict, Defense, Crimea, The Media, Nuclear Weapons Policy: 15th Plenary Session (18 October 2018)

CH 10
"Left-Wing" Communism: An Infantile Disorder (1920)

"Vestigial Customs and Institutions, pp. 190–191
Savage Survivals (1916), Savage Survivals in Higher Peoples (Continued)

Speech at the at the 74th UN General Assembly. Statement by Mr. Jair Messias Bolsonaro, President of the Federative Republic of Brazil http://statements.unmeetings.org/GA74/BR_EN.pdf. United Nations PaperSmart (24 September 2019).

Epistulae Morales ad Lucilium (Moral Letters to Lucilius), Letter CIV: On Care of Health and Peace of Mind

Source: Guerrilla Warfare (1961), Ch. II: 1. The Guerrilla Fighter: Social Reformer

Source: Guerrilla Warfare (1961), Ch. I: 5. Warfare on Unfavorable Ground

Source: Guerrilla Warfare (1961), Ch. I: 3. Guerrilla Tactics

Source: Guerrilla Warfare (1961), Ch. I: 1. Essence of Guerrilla Warfare

Source: Guerrilla Warfare (1961), Ch. I: 1. Essence of Guerrilla Warfare

Winston Groom [citation needed]

2000s, God Bless America (2008), Slavery and the Human Story

Source: I Was There (1950), p. 442

Senator Sanders was speaking to the Iowa AFL-CIO convention summer 2019<br><br>Quoted by Norman Solomon in The Escalating Class War Against Bernie Sanders https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/02/18/the-escalating-class-war-against-bernie-sanders/ (18 Feb 2020) <br class="br">2020

Chap. 4 : The Live-and-Let-Live System in World War I
The Evolution of Cooperation (1984; 2006)

Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II, Chapter 30. Cuba 1959 to 1980s: The unforgivable revolution

In one important case, Washington has employed such threats with great effectiveness (and GATT approval) to force open Asian markets for U.S. tobacco exports and advertising, aimed primarily at the growing markets of women and children. The U.S. Agriculture Department has provided grants to tobacco firms to promote smoking overseas. Asian countries have attempted to conduct educational anti-smoking campaigns, but they are overwhelmed by the miracles of the market, reinforced by U.S. state power through the sanctions threat. Philip Morris, with an advertising and promotion budget of close to $9 billion in 1992, became China&#x27;s largest advertiser. The effect of Reaganite sanction threats was to increase advertising and promotion of cigarette smoking (particularly U.S. brands) quite sharply in Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea, along with the use of these lethal substances. In South Korea, for example, the rate of growth in smoking more than tripled when markets for U.S. lethal drugs were opened in 1988. The Bush Administration extended the threats to Thailand, at exactly the same time that the &quot;war on drugs&quot; was declared; the media were kind enough to overlook the coincidence, even suppressing the outraged denunciations by the very conservative Surgeon-General. Oxford University epidemiologist Richard Peto estimates that among Chinese children under 20 today, 50 million will die of cigarette-related diseases, an achievement that ranks high even by 20th century standards.<br><br>In Tony Evans (ed.), Human Rights Fifty Years on: A Reappraisal, 1997 https://chomsky.info/199811__/ <br class="br">Quotes 1990s, 1995–1999

Commencement address at Lindsey Wilson College (14 May 2005) http://www.lindsey.edu/index.cgi?id=10379

Dorothy Thompson’s Political Guide: A Study of American Liberalism and its Relationship to Modern Totalitarian States (1938)
Source: A Study of American Liberalism and its Relationship to Modern Totalitarian States (1938)
p. 34-35

Source: 1961, Speech to Special Joint Session of Congress

Here, clearly, the old pagan joy of life is gone, and an almost exotic spirit touches a broken lyre. History, which is nothing if not humorous, was never to facetious as when she gave to this abstemious and epic pessimist the name of Epicurean.
The Story of Philosophy (1926)

Source: [Lorde, Audre, A Burst of Light : Living with Cancer, A burst of light : essays, 125, Firebrand Books, 1988, 0932379400]

“The strategy is the same everywhere,” she muttered. “Kill.”
Source: Saga of the Skolian Empire, Skyfall (2003), Chapter 11, “Warlords of the Snow” (p. 134)