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9b1c9f4 Do I understand, sir, that you mean the Cause for which our heroes have died is not sacred?' If you were run over by a railroad train your death wouldn't sanctify the railroad company, would it?' asked Rhett and his voice sounded as if he were humbly seeking information. war Margaret Mitchell
852e402 Major Major never sees anyone in his office while he's in his office. war Joseph Heller
7c0713b In researching this volume, I interviewed veterans who had been at the front during World War II. I read countless books, examined film footage, and listened to many detailed and intense stories firsthand, but the one comment that affected me the most came from a former soldier who lowered his gaze to the tabletop and said, 'I never watch war movies. war Hiromu Arakawa
333170e the worst calamities that befall an army arise from hesitation strategy war Sun Tzu
e2d4922 "1. Bangladesh.... In 1971 ... Kissinger overrode all advice in order to support the Pakistani generals in both their civilian massacre policy in East Bengal and their armed attack on India from West Pakistan.... This led to a moral and political catastrophe the effects of which are still sorely felt. Kissinger's undisclosed reason for the 'tilt' was the supposed but never materialised 'brokerage' offered by the dictator Yahya Khan in the course of secret diplomacy between Nixon and China.... Of the new state of Bangladesh, Kissinger remarked coldly that it was 'a basket case' before turning his unsolicited expertise elsewhere. 2. Chile.... Kissinger had direct personal knowledge of the CIA's plan to kidnap and murder General Rene Schneider, the head of the Chilean Armed Forces ... who refused to countenance military intervention in politics. In his hatred for the Allende Government, Kissinger even outdid Richard Helms ... who warned him that a coup in such a stable democracy would be hard to procure. The murder of Schneider nonetheless went ahead, at Kissinger's urging and with American financing, just between Allende's election and his confirmation.... This was one of the relatively few times that Mr Kissinger (his success in getting people to call him 'Doctor' is greater than that of most PhDs) involved himself in the assassination of a single named individual rather than the slaughter of anonymous thousands. His jocular remark on this occasion--'I don't see why we have to let a country go Marxist just because its people are irresponsible'--suggests he may have been having the best of times.... 3. Cyprus.... Kissinger approved of the preparations by Greek Cypriot fascists for the murder of President Makarios, and sanctioned the coup which tried to extend the rule of the Athens junta (a favoured client of his) to the island. When despite great waste of life this coup failed in its objective, which was also Kissinger's, of enforced partition, Kissinger promiscuously switched sides to support an even bloodier intervention by Turkey. Thomas Boyatt ... went to Kissinger in advance of the anti-Makarios putsch and warned him that it could lead to a civil war. 'Spare me the civics lecture,' replied Kissinger, who as you can readily see had an aphorism for all occasions. 4. Kurdistan. Having endorsed the covert policy of supporting a Kurdish revolt in northern Iraq between 1974 and 1975, with 'deniable' assistance also provided by Israel and the Shah of Iran, Kissinger made it plain to his subordinates that the Kurds were not to be allowed to win, but were to be employed for their nuisance value alone. They were not to be told that this was the case, but soon found out when the Shah and Saddam Hussein composed their differences, and American aid to Kurdistan was cut off. Hardened CIA hands went to Kissinger ... for an aid programme for the many thousands of Kurdish refugees who were thus abruptly created.... The of the day was: 'foreign policy should not he confused with missionary work.' Saddam Hussein heartily concurred. 1971-bangladesh-atrocities 1972-nixon-visit-to-china 1973-chilean-coup-d-etat 1974 1975 assassination athens bangladesh bangladesh-liberation-war central-intelligence-agency chile china china-pakistan-relations civil-war coup-d-état cyprus democracy diplomacy doctors doctors-of-philosophy east-timor ecclesiastical-coup fascism foreign-policy foreign-policy-of-the-us greece greek-cypriots henry-kissinger india indo-pakistani-war-of-1971 indonesia indonesian-national-armed-forces international-law iran iran-iraq-war iraq iraqi-kurdistan israel israeli-lebanese-conflict jakarta junta kurdish-iraqi-conflict kurdish-people kurdistan lebanon makarios-iii marxism military-of-chile missionaries mohammad-reza-pahlavi monroe-leigh morality murder news-leaks pakistan pakistan-united-states-relations partition politics portugual portuguese-empire refugees rene-schneider richard-nixon saddam-hussein salvador-allende schneider-doctrine second-kurdish-iraqi-war shah sino-american-relations slaughter thomas-d-boyatt turkey turkish-invasion-of-cyprus united-states walter-isaacson war war-crimes yahya-khan Christopher Hitchens
f65ebad If there is disturbance in the camp, the general's authority is weak. strategy war Sun Tzu
6fc0df9 Foreknowledge cannot be gotten from ghosts and spirits, cannot be had by analogy, cannot be found out by calculation. It must be obtained from people, people who know the conditions of the enemy. empiricism epistemology military-philosophy philosophy war Sun Tzu
aac407e Therefore, just as water retains no constant shape, so in warfare there are no constant conditions. constant shape strategy war water Sun Tzu
643ade0 "Are you a communist?" "No I am an anti-fascist" "For a long time?" "Since I have understood fascism." communism fascism spain war Ernest Hemingway
e38d236 "Alek said, "Do you think I'm being a fool?" "I think you're trying to do something good. But doing good is rarely easy, and no weapon has ever stopped a war." war weapon Scott Westerfeld
655fe19 if you fight with all your might, there is a chance of life; where as death is certain if you cling to your corner strategy war Sun Tzu
3a340de do many calculations lead to victory, and few calculations to defeat strategy war Sun Tzu
c8ec58b This is an orchestration for an event. For a dance in fact. The participants will be apprised of their roles at the proper time. For now it is enough that they have arrived. As the dance is the thing with which we are concerned and contains complete within itself its own arrangement and history and finale there is no necessity that the dancers contain these things within themselves as well. In any event the history of all is not the history of each nor indeed the sum of those histories and none here can finally comprehend the reason for his presence for he has no way of knowing even in what the event consists. In fact, were he to know he might well absent himself and you can see that that cannot be any part of the plan if plan there be. destiny fate history war Cormac McCarthy
35e08c4 After the thing went off, after it was a sure thing that America could wipe out a city with just one bomb, a scientist turned to Father and said, 'Science has now known sin.' And do you know what Father said? He said, 'What is sin? man-made-disaster war Kurt Vonnegut
5fc73cd You never kill anyone you want to kill in a war, he said to himself. war Ernest Hemingway
8a63487 Wars come and go; politics endure. war Jacqueline Carey
2b1da81 Success in warfare is gained by carefully accommodating ourselves to the enemy's purpose. strategy war Sun Tzu
432f153 At one time I had given much thought to why men were so very rarely capable of living for an ideal. Now I saw that many, no, all men were capable of dying for one. hermann-hesse ideals war Hermann Hesse
9ee3607 "War as a moral metaphor is limited, limiting, and dangerous. By reducing the choices of action to "a war against" whatever-it-is, you divide the world into Me or Us (good) and Them or It (bad) and reduce the ethical complexity and moral richness of our life to Yes/No, On/Off. This is puerile, misleading, and degrading. In stories, it evades any solution but violence and offers the reader mere infantile reassurance. All too often the heroes of such fantasies behave exactly as the villains do, acting with mindless violence, but the hero is on the "right" side and therefore will win. Right makes might." morality morals right-and-wrong war Ursula K. Le Guin
d3385d3 Some allies are more dangerous than enemies. enemies war George R.R. Martin
bfcc184 "Killing people is easier than it should be." Dad put on his beret. "Staying alive is harder." -- killing veterans war Laurie Halse Anderson
f9fde6a Conceal your dispositions, and your condition will remain secret, which leads to victory; show your dispositions, and your condition will become patent, which leads to defeat. strategy war Sun Tzu
36df218 the opportunity of defeating the enemy is provided by the enemy himself. enemy opportunity strategy war Sun Tzu
afa1957 What sparks wars? The will to power, the backbone of human nature. The threat of violence, the fear of violence, or actual violence, is the instrument of this dreadful will. You can see the will to power in bedrooms, kitchens, factories, unions and the borders of states. Listen to this and remember it. The nation state is merely human nature inflated to monstrous proportions. QED, nations are entities whose laws are written by violence. Thus it ever was, so ever shall it be. violence war David Mitchell
8582b55 I'm skimming across the surface of my own history, moving fast, riding the melt beneath the blades, doing loops and spins, and when I take a high leap into the dark and come down thirty years later, I realize it is as Tim trying to save Timmy's life with a story. vietnam war Tim O'Brien
bb57dc7 Long before it was known to me as a place where my ancestry was even remotely involved, the idea of a state for Jews (or a Jewish state; not quite the same thing, as I failed at first to see) had been 'sold' to me as an essentially secular and democratic one. The idea was a haven for the persecuted and the survivors, a democracy in a region where the idea was poorly understood, and a place where--as Philip Roth had put it in a one-handed novel that I read when I was about nineteen--even the traffic cops and soldiers were Jews. This, like the other emphases of that novel, I could grasp. Indeed, my first visit was sponsored by a group in London called the Friends of Israel. They offered to pay my expenses, that is, if on my return I would come and speak to one of their meetings. I still haven't submitted that expenses claim. The misgivings I had were of two types, both of them ineradicable. The first and the simplest was the encounter with everyday injustice: by all means the traffic cops were Jews but so, it turned out, were the colonists and ethnic cleansers and even the torturers. It was Jewish leftist friends who insisted that I go and see towns and villages under occupation, and sit down with Palestinian Arabs who were living under house arrest--if they were lucky--or who were squatting in the ruins of their demolished homes if they were less fortunate. In Ramallah I spent the day with the beguiling Raimonda Tawil, confined to her home for committing no known crime save that of expressing her opinions. (For some reason, what I most remember is a sudden exclamation from her very restrained and respectable husband, a manager of the local bank: 'I would prefer living under a Bedouin to another day of Israeli rule!' He had obviously spent some time thinking about the most revolting possible Arab alternative.) In Jerusalem I visited the Tutungi family, who could produce title deeds going back generations but who were being evicted from their apartment in the old city to make way for an expansion of the Jewish quarter. Jerusalem: that place of blood since remote antiquity. Jerusalem, over which the British and French and Russians had fought a foul war in the Crimea, , on the matter of which Christian Church could command the keys to some 'holy sepulcher.' Jerusalem, where the anti-Semite Balfour had tried to bribe the Jews with the territory of another people in order to seduce them from Bolshevism and continue the diplomacy of the Great War. Jerusalem: that pest-house in whose environs all zealots hope that an even greater and final war can be provoked. It certainly made a warped appeal to my sense of history. ancestry antisemitism arabs armageddon arthur-balfour bedouin bolshevism britain christianity colonialism crimea crimean-war democracy diplomacy ethnic-cleansing fanaticism france free-speech history house-arrest israel jerusalem jews leftism london oppression palestine palestinians persecution philip-roth raimonda-tawil ramallah religious-extremism russia secularism territory torture war world-war-i zealotry Christopher Hitchens
0c01b37 When the outlook is bright, bring it before their eyes; but tell them nothing when the situation is gloomy. strategy war Sun Tzu
d1158be July 24, 6:03 A.M. The laundry was warm and the rafters were firm, and Michael Holzapfel jumped from the chair as if it were a cliff... Michael Holzapfel knew what he was doing. He killed himself for wanting to live. war Markus Zusak
1034221 I did not say anything. I was always embarrassed by the words sacred, glorious, and sacrifice and the expression in vain. We had heard them, sometimes standing in the rain almost out of earshot, so that only the shouted words came through, and had read them on proclamations that were slapped up by billposters over other proclamations, now for a long time, and I had seen nothing sacred, and the things that were glorious had no glory and the sacrifices were like the stock yards at Chicago if nothing was done with the meat except to bury it. honor propaganda sacrifice war Ernest Hemingway
bb3855b Do not swallow bait offered by the enemy. Do not interfere with an army that is returning home. bait enemies home strategy war Sun Tzu
fdfde06 You can be sure of succeeding in your attacks if you only attack places which are undefended. strategy war Sun Tzu
2b765d4 "And since a novel has this correspondence to real life, its values are to some extent those of real life. But it is obvious that the values of women differ very often from the values which have been made by the other sex; naturally this is so. Yet is it the masculine values that prevail. Speaking crudely, football and sport are "important"; the worship of fashion, the buying of clothes "trivial." And these values are inevitably transferred from life to fiction. This is an important book, the critic assumes, because it deals with war. This is an insignificant book because it deals with the feelings of women in a drawing-room." literature war women Virginia Woolf
add03c7 What good the prophet in the wilderness may do is incremental and personal. It's good for us to hear someone speak the irrational truth. It's good for us when, in spite of all of the sober, pragmatic, and even correct arguments that war is sometimes necessary someone says: war is large-scale murder, us at our worst, the stupidest guy doing the cruelest thing to the weakest being. page-82 slaughterhouse-five war George Saunders
5b5cee6 The spot where we intend to fight must not be made known; for then the enemy will have to prepare against a possible attack at several different points; strategy war Sun Tzu
1f802c3 If any honor existed in war, it was in fighting to protect others from harm protect war Christopher Paolini
ed04671 If those who are sent to draw water begin by drinking themselves, the army is suffering from thirst. [One may know the condition of a whole army from the behavior of a single man.] strategy war Sun Tzu
d4afc79 Damned Beaver/Jeremy the War, he is every assertion the fucking War has ever made--that we are meant for work and government, for austerity: and these shall take priority over love, dreams, the spirit, the senses and the other second-class trivia that are found among the idle and mindless hours of the day....Damn them, they are wrong. They are insane. government rebellion status-quo war Thomas Pynchon
fb71209 "The battle fever. He had never thought to experience it himself, though Jamie had told him of it often enough. How time seemed to blur and slow and evenstop, how the past and the future vanished until there was nothing but the instant, how fear fled, and thought fled, and even you body. "You don't feel your wounds then, or the ache in your back from the weight of the armor, or the sweat running down into your eyes. You stop feeling you stop thinking, you stop being you, there is only the fight , the foe, this man and then the next and the next and the next, and you know they are afraid and tired but you're not, you're alive, and death is all around you but their swords move so slowly, you can dance through them laughing." Battle fever. I am half a man and drunk with slaughter, let them kill me if they can!" tyrion-lannister war George R.R. Martin
3b64cbe And do you know another thing, Arthur? Life is too bitter already, without territories and wars and noble feuds. life merlin nobility pacifism peace war T.H. White
010e7da We cannot enter into alliances until we are acquainted with the designs of our neighbors. strategy war Sun Tzu
48df226 Just above our terror, the stars painted this story in perfect silver calligraphy. And our souls, too often abused by ignorance, covered our eyes with mercy. classic-quotes faith grace hope ignorance inspiration marvelousmonday-quotes mercy nanowrimo national-novel-writing-month peace peacism quotes-by-famous-authors quotes-by-famous-poets silver souls spirituality stars survival terrorism the-soul war world-suicide-prevention-day Aberjhani
7df3fb8 This world's anguish is no different from the love we insist on holding back. agape-love anguish casualties-of-war child-victims-of-war children-killed-in-war conflict-resolution faith fear grief gun-laws gun-violence hope love nonviolent-conflict-resolution pain peace peace-movement peacemaking police-reform police-shootings russia-and-ukraine-conflict spiritual-love syrian-civil-war tragedy unconditional-love violence war world-suicide-prevention-day Aberjhani
5dd5061 You can ensure the safety of your defense if you only hold positions that cannot be attacked. strategy war Sun Tzu
811ca20 Can'ttrustpeople. Won'tdoanygood. They'llkillyoueverytime. They'llkilleachother. They'llkilleveryone. kill people the-sheep-man trust war Haruki Murakami
5cff4f8 I will tell you what war is. War is a psychosis caused by an inability to see relationships. Our relationship with our fellowmen. Our relationship with our economic and historical situation. And above all our relationship to nothingness, to death. war John Fowles
256a7e9 On the journey towards the beloved, you live by dying at every step history war Nadeem Aslam
17cb684 "Anyway, why would you trust anything written down? She certainly didn't trust "Mothers of Borogravia!" and that was from the government. And if you couldn't trust the government, who could you trust? Very nearly everyone, come to think of it..." humor lies propaganda war Terry Pratchett
d1ed90e Whether in an advantageous position or a disadvantageous one, the opposite state should be always present to your mind. strategy war Sun Tzu
79c3b68 There are not more than five primary colors (blue, yellow, red, white, and black), yet in combination they produce more hues than can ever been seen. strategy war Sun Tzu
6111b91 There are seasons of our lives when nothing seems to be happening, when no smoke betrays a burned town or homestead and few tears are shed for the newly dead. I have learned not to trust those times, because if the world is at peace then it means someone is planning war. peace war Bernard Cornwell
28cd5cc "He thinks Goliath can end the war," Alek managed at last. "The man wants peace!" "As do we all," Count Volger said. "But there are many ways to end a war. Some are more peaceful than others." peace war Scott Westerfeld
8b04cfa It has to be admitted that starving nations never seem to be quite so starving that they cannot afford to have far more expensive armaments than anybody else. nations starvation war weaponry T.H. White
5c6e259 [W]hat makes patriotic and religious fanatics such dangerous opponents is not the deaths of the fanatics themselves, but their willingness to accept the deaths of a fraction of their number in order to annihilate or crush their infidel enemy. death fanaticism radicalism war Jared Diamond
961d00f Angry men with pointy things sent to secure a foreign city are pretty much alike anywhere. That's what I've heard. So far nothing's convinced me different. war Sherwood Smith
3415664 When the common soldiers are too strong and their officers too weak, the result is INSUBORDINATION. strategy war Sun Tzu
1e3820d Whoever is first in the field and awaits the coming of the enemy, will be fresh for the fight; whoever is second in the field and has to hasten to battle will arrive exhausted. field fighting strategy war Sun Tzu
5795b37 In peace there's nothing so becomes a man as modest stillness and humility; but when the blast of war blows in our ears, then imitate the action of the tiger; stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood, disguise fair nature with hard-favor'd rage. war William Shakespeare
eededd0 When weak, act strong. war Rick Riordan
d833a65 All you have to do [to win a Pulitzer Prize] is spend your life running from one awful place to another, write about every horrible thing you see. The civilized world reads about it, then forgets it, but pats you on the head for doing it and gives you a reward as appreciation for changing nothing. change civilization detachment journalism mankind poverty pulitzer-prize war war-reporting David Baldacci
5738d8d It's always good to be underestimated. power smarts strentgh-and-weakness war Melissa de la Cruz
34706ff The good fighters of old first put themselves beyond the possibility of defeat, and then waited for an opportunity of defeating the enemy. strategy war Sun Tzu
4119c35 The Homunculi may have started the war, but we were the ones who carried it out. guilt war Hiromu Arakawa
ac75ed1 When the officers are too strong and the common soldiers too weak, the result is COLLAPSE. strategy war Sun Tzu
bb871bb Unhappy is the fate of one who tries to win his battles and succeed in his attacks without cultivating the spirit of enterprise; for the result is waste of time and general stagnation. strategy war Sun Tzu
31e5319 "This is a war," Lemas replied. "It's graphic and unpleasant because it's fought on a tiny scale, at close range; fought with a wastage of innocent life sometimes, I admit. But it's nothing, nothing at all besides other wars - the last or the next." -- spy war John le Carré
f2def9a That is what death is like. It doesn't matter what uniforms the soldiers are wearing. It doesn't matter how good the weapons are. I thought if everyone could see what I saw, we would never have war anymore. soldiers war weapons Jonathan Safran Foer
cb0318b Intelligence won wars, not brute force. war Rick Riordan
cd54264 Within Easy Company they had made the best friends they had ever had, or would ever have. They were prepared to die for each other; more important, they were prepared to kill for each other. prepared to-die-for war Stephen E. Ambrose
2b4bc48 In our new age of terrifying, lethal gadgets, which supplanted so swiftly the old one, the first great aggressive war, if it should come, will be launched by suicidal little madmen pressing an electronic button. Such a war will not last long and none will ever follow it. There will be no conquerors and no conquests, but only the charred bones of the dead on and uninhabited planet. nuclear-weapons war weaponry William L. Shirer
4a546b4 Sometime, somewhere, life always comes to a fight, and peace always comes to an end. caine fighting life morganville morganville-vampires peace vampires war Rachel Caine
a6932e8 As for the general view that the Church was discredited by the War--they might as well say that the Ark was discredited by the Flood. When the world goes wrong, it proves rather that the Church is right. The Church is justified, not because her children do not sin, but because they do. war G.K. Chesterton
582a0a4 How in hell did those bombers get up there every single second of our lives! Why doesn't someone want to talk about it! We've started and won two atomic wars since 2022! Is it because we're having so much fun at home we've forgotten the world? Is it because we're so rich and the rest of the world's so poor and we just don't care if they are? I've heard rumors; the world is starving, but we're well fed. Is it true, the world works hard and we play? Is that why we're hated so much? I've heard the rumors about hate too, once in a long while, over the years. Do you know why? I don't, that's sure! Maybe the books can get us half out of the cave. They just might stop us from making the same damn insane mistakes! bombs books cave classism forgotten fun hate history history-repeating-itself ignorance mistakes poor rich starving uncaring war Ray Bradbury
d03bb8f "God, there must be a meaning. Fiercely he was certain that there must be a meaning. Surely, while we live we are not lost. death fiction hope last-lines the-long-green-shore war wwii John Hepworth
dd4b26e "War, Nobby. Huh! What is it good for?" he said. "Dunno, Sarge. Freeing slaves, maybe?" "Absol--well, okay." "Defending yourself against a totalitarian aggressor?" "All right, I'll grant you that, but--" "Saving civilization from a horde of--" "It doesn't do any good in the long run is what I'm saying, Nobby, if you'd listen for five seconds together," said Fred Colon sharply. "Yeah, but in the long run, what does, Sarge?" good long-run slavery totalitarianism war Terry Pratchett
345669d Every November of my boyhood, we put on red poppies and attended highly patriotic services in remembrance of those who had 'given' their lives. But on what assurance did we know that these gifts had really been made? Only the survivors--the living--could attest to it. In order to know that a person had truly laid down his life for his friends, or comrades, one would have to hear it from his own lips, or at least have heard it promised in advance. And that presented another difficulty. Many brave and now dead soldiers had nonetheless been conscripts. The known martyrs--those who actually, voluntarily sought death and rejoiced in the fact--had been the kamikaze pilots, immolating themselves to propitiate a 'divine' emperor who looked (as Orwell once phrased it) like a monkey on a stick. Their Christian predecessors had endured torture and death (as well as inflicted it) in order to set up a theocracy. Their modern equivalents would be the suicide murderers, who mostly have the same aim in mind. About people who set out to lose their lives, then, there seems to hang an air of fanaticism: a gigantic sense of self-importance unattractively fused with a masochistic tendency to self-abnegation. Not wholesome. The better and more realistic test would therefore seem to be: In what cause, or on what principle, would you your life? causes childhood christian-martyrs christianity comrades conscription death fanaticism friends kamikaze martyrdom martyrs masochism memorials november orwell patriotism poppies principles religion sacrifice self-abnegation self-importance soldiers suicide suicide-attack theocracy torture ugliness war Christopher Hitchens
3761e05 "War as a moral metaphor is limited, limiting, and dangerous. By reducing the choices of action to "a war against" whatever-it-is, you divide the world into Me or Us (good) and Them or It (bad) and reduce the ethical complexity and moral richness of our life to Yes/No, On/Off." ethics good-and-evil life morals war Ursula K. Le Guin
5424f34 No one gets left behind, remember? five-people-you-meet-in-heaven left-behind war Mitch Albom
3995595 I used to think it was possible for an artist to alter the inner life of the culture. Now bomb-makers and gunmen have taken that territory. culture guns war Don DeLillo
51fef0e The only teacher that's worth anything to you is your enemy. ender learning mentor strategy war Orson Scott Card
e3f2963 The day will come when you need them to respect you, even fear you a little. Laughter is poison to fear. fantasy game-of-thrones grimdark middle-ages war George R.R. Martin
f2d1ce1 All through the night, men looked at the sky and were saddened by the stars. humor stars war Joseph Heller
0cb9c11 War--war was coming. And they might not all survive it. survivors war Sarah J. Maas
8027085 "All war is based in deception (cfr. Sun Tzu, "The Art of War"). Definition of deception: "The practice of deliberately making somebody believe things that are not true. An act, a trick or device entended to deceive somebody". Thus, all war is based in metaphor. All war necessarily perfects itself in poetry. Poetry (since indefinable) is the sense of seduction. Therefore, all war is the storytelling of seduction, and seduction is the nature of war." poetry seduction war Pola Oloixarac
fa5b4cb Wars are never cured, they just go into remission for a few years. war David Mitchell
8b0e4c3 "That summer, Titanic fever gripped Kabul. People smuggled pirated copies of the film from Pakistan- sometimes in their underwear. After curfew, everyone locked their doors, turned out the lights, turned down the volume, and reaped tears for Jack and Rose and the passengers of the doomed ship. If there was electrical power, Mariam, Laila, and the children watched it too. A dozen times or more, they unearthed the TV from behind the tool-shed, late at night, with the lights out and quilts pinned over the windows. At the Kabul River, vendors moved into the parched riverbed. Soon, from the river's sunbaked hollows, it was possible to buy Titanic carpets, and Titanic cloth, from bolts arranged in wheelbarrows. There was Titanic deodorant, Titanic toothpaste, Titanic perfume, Titanic pakora, even Titanic burqas. A particularly persistent beggar began calling himself "Titanic Beggar." "Titanic City" was born. It's the song, they said. No, the sea. The luxury. The ship. It's the sex, they whispered. Leo, said Aziza sheepishly. It's all about Leo. "Everybody wants Jack," Laila said to Mariam. "That's what it is. Everybody wants Jack to rescue them from disaster. But there is no Jack. Jack is not coming back. Jack is dead." misery war Khaled Hosseini
2c42f9e On either side of a potentially violent conflict, an opportunity exists to exercise compassion and diminish fear based on recognition of each other's humanity. Without such recognition, fear fueled by uninformed assumptions, cultural prejudice, desperation to meet basic human needs, or the panicked uncertainty of the moment explodes into violence. antiracism assumptions charter-for-compassion compassion compassion-action-network compassion-heals-lives cultural-differences cultural-diversity desperation fear global-community humanity militarization military-conflict nonviolence nonviolent-conflict-resolution opportunity-quotes overcoming-fear panic peacism polarization police-reform police-shootings political-philosophy prejudice slpendid-literarium stop-killing-each-other terrorism terrorists trust uncertainty waging-peace war xenophobia Aberjhani
7f09c29 "So does nobody care about Ireland?" "Nobody. Neither King Louis, nor King Billie, nor King James." He nodded thoughtfully. "The fate of Ireland will be decided by men not a single one of whom gives a damn about her. That is her tragedy." england ireland war Edward Rutherfurd
f959192 Eastward and westward storms are breaking,--great, ugly whirlwinds of hatred and blood and cruelty. I will not believe them inevitable. bigotry black-history-month civil-unrest crimean-war cruelty diplomacy faith faith-in-humanity hate-crimes hope-for-the-future intolerance national-history-day nonviolent-conflict-resolution peace peace-movement peacism political-aggression political-turmoil prophecy russia syrian-civil-war ukraine violence war war-crimes we-can-do-better wisdom W.E.B. Du Bois
0a21afb "A DEAD STATESMAN I could not dig: I dared not rob: Therefore I lied to please the mob. Now all my lies are proved untrue And I must face the men I slew. What tale shall serve me here among deceit dishonesty irony lies politics truth war youth Rudyard Kipling
dbb9c8c A battle is won by the side that is absolutely determined to win. Why did we lose the battle of Austerlitz? Our casualties were about the same as those of the French, but we had told ourselves early in the day that the battle was lost, so it was lost. defeat defeatism victory war win Leo Tolstoy
05dbe97 Always attack. Even in defense, attack. The attacking arm possesses the initiative and thus commands the action. To attack makes men brave; to defend makes them timorous. moving-forward progress war Steven Pressfield
eaf1470 Ares always reemerges from the chaos. It will never go away. Athenian civilization defends itself from the forces of Ares with metis, or technology. Technology is built on science. Science is like the alchemists' uroburos, continually eating its own tail. The process of science doesn't work unless young scientists have the freedom to attack and tear down old dogmas, to engage in an ongoing Titanomachia. Science flourishes where art and free speech flourish. society war Neal Stephenson
0a24e45 War, not peace, produces virtue. War, not peace, purges vice. War, and preparation for war, call forth all that is noble and honorable in a man. It unites him with his brothers and binds them in selfless love, eradicating in the crucible of necessity all which is base and ignoble. There in the holy mill of murder the meanest of men may seek and find that part of himself, concealed beneath the corrupt, which shines forth brilliant and virtuous, worthy of honor before the gods. Do not despise war, my young friend, nor delude yourself that mercy and compassion are virtues superior to andreia, to manly valor. virtue war warrior warrior-ethos Steven Pressfield
b58466c Adolf Hitler is probably the last of the great adventurer-conquerors in the tradition of Alexander, Caesar and Napoleon, and the Third Reich the last of the empires which set out on the path taken earlier by France, Rome and Macedonia. The curtain was rung down on that phase of history, at least, by the sudden invention of the hydrogen bomb, of the ballistic missile and of rockets that can be aimed to hit the moon. history hitler third-reich war weapons William L. Shirer
5e4ecc6 Unreal City, Under the brown fog of a winter dawn, A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many, I had not thought death had undone so many. Sighs, short and infrequent, were exhaled, And each man fixed his eyes before his feet. Flowed up the hill and down King William Street, To where St Mary Woolnoth kept the hours With a dead sound on the final stock of nine. There I saw one I knew, and stopped him crying: 'Stetson! You, who were with me in the ships at Mylae! That corpse you planted last year in your garden, Has it begun to sprout? Will it bloom this year? Or has the sudden frost disturbed its bed? Oh keep the Dog far hence, that's friend to men, Or with his nails he'll dig it up again! You! hypocrite lecteur!-mon semblable,-mon frere! fear humanity london the-wasteland war T.S. Eliot
dd85300 I told you once before that there were two times for making big money, one in the up-building of a country and the other in its destruction. Slow money on the up-building, fast money in the crack-up. Remember my words. Perhaps they may be of use to you some day. (Rhett Butler) gone-with-the-wind margaret-mitchell money rhett-butler war Margaret Mitchell
442f631 As for the new world war that's waiting in the womb of time, a healthily developed foetus, who can say what will spark it, how destructive it will be? We've already played at this war in film and fiction, indicating that there's a part of us that desperately wants it. What nonsense writers and filmmakers talk when they say that their terrible visions are meant as a warning. [...] It's sheer wish fulfillment. War... is a culture pattern. It's a legitimate mode of cultural transmission.... war war-fiction world-war Anthony Burgess
ebe6705 You felt, in spite of all bureaucracy and inefficiency and party strife something that was like the feeling you expected to have and did not have when you made your first communion. It was a feeling of consecration to a duty toward all of the oppressed of the world which would be as difficult and embarrasing to speak about as religious experience and yet it was as authentic as the feeling you had when you heard Bach, or stood in Chartres Cathedral or the Cathedral at Leon and saw the light coming through the great windows; or when you saw Mantegna and Greco and Brueghel in the Prado. It gave you a part in something that you could believe in wholly and completely and in which you felt an absolute brotherhood with the others who were engaged in it. It was something that you had never known before but that you had experienced now and you gave such importance to it and the reasons for it that you own death seemed of complete unimportance; only a thing to be avoided because it would interfere with the performance of your duty. But the best thing was that there was something you could do about this feeling and this necessity too. You could fight. politics rebellion religion revolution war Ernest Hemingway
c4aa68e I would say that since the war, our methods-out and those of the opposition-have become much the same. I mean you can't be less ruthless than the opposition simply because your government's 'policy' is benevolent, can you now? politics war John le Carré
3352b65 But Mariam hardly noticed, hardly cared...the future did not matter. And the past held only this wisdom: that Love was a damaging mistake and its accomplice, Hope, a treacherous illusion. war Khaled Hosseini
22d5c73 Some of us, perhaps all of us, believe that it is legitimate to kill enemy soldiers in a war, as if war were a special circumstance that shrinks the sizes of enemy souls. kill soul war Douglas R. Hofstadter
636ca96 There are thousands who are opposed to slavery and to the war, who yet in effect do nothing to put an end to them; who, esteeming themselves children of Washington and Franklin, sit down with their hands in their pockets, and say that they know not what to do, and do nothing.... beliefs citizenship justice slavery war Henry David Thoreau
ec51993 Those of us who are most genuinely repelled by war and violence are also those who are most likely to decide that some things, after all, are worth fighting for. war Christopher Hitchens
de90221 At 8:23 there seemed every chance of a lasting alliance starting between Florin and Guilder. At 8:24 the two nations were very close to war. humor the-princess-bride war William Goldman
26bed7c These memories sustained him, but not so easily. Too often they reminded him of where he was when he last summoned them. They lay on the far side of a great divide in time, as significant as B.C. and A.D. Before prison, before the war, before the sight of a corpse became a banality. pain war Ian McEwan
e28f900 Despite all my public misconduct, in the past year, I had learned the Elemental spells, the Doppelschlaferin, and the preparation and flying of a magic broom; I had survived two months as prisoner of war, saving the life of captain Johanne in the process; I had escaped the dungeons of Fortress Drachensbett, and after an arduous journey successfully reunited with my double, so preserving her, and all Montagne, from Prince Flonian's rapacity, I would somehow master the despicable art of being a princess. medicine princess war Catherine Gilbert Murdock
c74a442 "To the eyes of the American soldiers who drove past, I looked no different from the women around me; and as I thought of it, who could say I was any different? If you no longer have leaves, or bark, or roots, can you go on calling yourself a tree? "I am a peasant," I said to myself, "and not a geisha at all any longer." It was a frightening feeling to look at my hands and see their roughness. To draw my mind away from my fears, I turned my attention again to the truckloads of soldiers driving past. Weren't these the very American soldiers we'd been taught to hate, who had bombed our cities with such horrifying weapons? Now they rode through our neighborhood, throwing pieces of candy to the children." war Arthur Golden
0a0f351 We are tiny flames, Helikaon, and we flicker alone in the great dark for no more than a heartbeat. When we strive for wealth, glory and fame, it is meaningless. The nations we fight for will one day cease to be. Even the mountains we gaze upon will crumble to dust. To truly live we must yearn for that which does not die. life love war wealth David Gemmell
ca44a85 We know how to win wars. We must learn now to win peace... war win Stephen E. Ambrose
b2cf558 People looking for easy answers to big problems. People that blame the Jews or colored folks for all the bad things that happen to 'em. People that can't realize that a heck of a lot of things are bound to go wrong in a world as big as this one. And if there is any answer to why it's that way - and there ain't always - why, it's probably not just one answer by itself, but thousands of answers. But that's the way my daddy was - like those people. They buy some books by a fella that don't know a god-danged thing more than they do (or he wouldn't be having to write books). And that's supposed to set 'em straight about everything. Or they buy themselves a bottle of pills. Or they say the whole trouble is with other folks, and the only thing to do is to get rid of 'em. Or they claim we got to war with another country. easy-answers pills war Jim Thompson
f7033ca "America is especially sensitive to war weariness, and nothing brings backlash like the perception of defeat. I say "perception" because America is a very all-or-nothing society... We like to know, and for everyone else to know, that our victory wasn't uncontested, it was positively devastating." americans victory war Max Brooks
c5bf46f Every time we killed a thousand Bugs at a cost of one M.I. it was a net victory for the Bugs. We were learning, expensively, just how efficient a total communism can be when used by a people actually adapted to it by evolution; the Bug commisars didn't care any more about expending soldiers than we cared about expending ammo. Perhaps we could have figured this out about the Bugs by noting the grief the Chinese Hegemony gave the Russo-Anglo-American Alliance; however the trouble with 'lessons from history' is that we usually read them best after falling flat on our chins. heinlein history starship-troopers war Robert A. Heinlein
c67fb01 "Fortune favours the brave, sir," said Carrot cheerfully. "Good. Good. Pleased to hear it, captain. What is her position vis a vis heavily armed, well prepared and excessively manned armies?" "Oh, no-one's ever heard of Fortune favouring them, sir." "According to General Tacticus, it's because they favour themselves," said Vimes. He opened the battered book. Bits of paper and string indicated his many bookmarks. "In fact, men, the general has this to say about ensuring against defeat when outnumbered, out-weaponed and outpositioned. It is..." he turned the page, "'Don't Have a Battle.'" "Sounds like a clever man," said Jenkins. He pointed to the yellow horizon. "See all that stuff in the air?" he said. "What do you think that is?" "Mist?" said Vimes. "Hah, yes. Klatchian mist! It's a sandstorm! The sand blows about all the time. Vicious stuff. If you want to sharpen your sword, just hold it up in the air." "Oh." "And it's just as well because otherwise you'd see Mount Gebra. And below it is what they call the Fist of Gebra. It's a town but there's a bloody great fort, walls thirty feet thick. 's like a big city all by itself. 's got room inside for thousands of armed men, war elephants, battle camels, everything. And if you saw that, you'd want me to turn round right now. Whats your famous general got to say about it, eh?" "I think I saw something..." said Vimes. He flicked to another page. "Ah, yes, he says, 'After the first battle of Sto Lat, I formulated a policy which has stood me in good stead in other battles. It is this: if the enemy has an impregnable stronghold, see he stays there.'" "That's a lot of help," said Jenkins. Vimes slipped the book into a pocket. "So, Constable Visit, there's a god on our side, is there?" "Certainly, sir." "But probably also a god on their side as well?" "Very likely, sir. There's a god on every side." "Let's hope they balance out, then." invasion luck war Terry Pratchett
e8923ca Men died as she watched, and they didn't care about what they had fought for. war Tamora Pierce
0be09be Battle for the sake of honor may be a fine thing for bards to sing of, but it is no way to preserve one's homeland homeland poets sing war Jacqueline Carey
bd96290 ...Obama said, 'I welcome debate among my team, but I won't tolerate division. bob-woodward government military obama-s-war war Bob Woodward
dcf0fa6 I have watched them all day and they are the same men that we are. I believe that I could walk up to the mill and knock on the door and I would be welcome except that they have orders to challenge all travelers and ask to see their papers. It is only orders that come between us. Those men are not fascists. I call them so, but they are not. They are poor men as we are. They should never be fighting against us and I do not like to think of the killing. for-whom-the-bell-tolls soldiers war Ernest Hemingway
bf8f139 No matter how far from the war we run, it always catches up with us. leviathan war Scott Westerfeld
8d9338d "Without war there are no heroes." "What harm would that be?" "Oh, Lavinia, what a woman's question that is." war women Ursula K. Le Guin
b06bda3 "It is precisely that requirement of worship that has been the principal source of suffering for individual man and the human race since the beginning of history. In their efforts to impose universal worship, men have unsheathed their swords and killed one another. They have invented gods and challenged each other: "Discard your gods and worship mine or I will destroy both your gods and you!" fanaticism freedom-of-religion war worship Fyodor Dostoyevsky
8861aa3 This isn't champagne anymore. We went through the champagne a long time ago. This is serious stuff. The days of champagne are long gone. war Sam Shepard
1a34f1d Every war, every revolution, demands the sacrifice of a generation, of a collectivity, by those who undertake it. war Simone de Beauvoir
cf99604 War does not answer war, war does not finish war. The only ending is peace. peace war Philippa Gregory
f9a164c They plot, they plot, sleeping or afoot they never let up. war Thomas Pynchon
eef3cb2 "You said that you thought Queen Orlagh was waiting for an advantage to declare war. Instead, I think she is trying a new ruler--one she hopes she can trick or replace with another indebted to her. She thinks me young and feckless and means to take my measure." "So what?" I ask. "Our choice is to endure her games, no matter how deadly, or engage in a war we cannot win?" Cardan shakes his head and drinks another cup of tea. "We show her that I am no feckless High King." "And how do we do that?" I ask. "With great difficulty," he says. "Since I fear she is right." game replace right trick war young Holly Black
0e182e7 "There were usually not nearly as many sick people inside the hospital as Yossarian saw outside the hospital, and there were generally fewer people inside the hospital who were seriously sick. There was a much lower death rate inside the hospital than outside the hospital, and a much healthier death rate. Few people died unnecessarily. People knew a lot more about dying inside the hospital and made a much neater job of it. They couldn't dominate Death inside the hospital, but they certainly made her behave. They had taught her manners. They couldn't keep Death out, but while she was there she had to act like a lady. People gave up the ghost with delicacy and taste inside the hospital. There was none of that crude, ugly ostentation about dying that was so common outside of the hospital. They did not blow-up in mid-air like Kraft or the dead man in Yossarian's tent, or freeze to death in the blazing summertime the way Snowden had frozen to death after spilling his secret to Yossarian in the back of the plane. "I'm cold," Snowden had whimpered. "I'm cold." "There, there," Yossarian had tried to comfort him. "There, there." They didn't take it on the lam weirdly inside a cloud the way Clevinger had done. They didn't explode into blood and clotted matter. They didn't drown or get struck by lightning, mangled by machinery or crushed in landslides. They didn't get shot to death in hold-ups, strangled to death in rapes, stabbed to death in saloons, blugeoned to death with axes by parents or children, or die summarily by some other act of God. Nobody choked to death. People bled to death like gentlemen in an operating room or expired without comment in an oxygen tent. There was none of that tricky now-you-see-me-now-you-don't business so much in vogue outside the hospital, none of that now-I-am-and-now-I-ain't. There were no famines or floods. Children didn't suffocate in cradles or iceboxes or fall under trucks. No one was beaten to death. People didn't stick their heads into ovens with the gas on, jump in front of subway trains or come plummeting like dead weights out of hotel windows with a whoosh!, accelerating at the rate of thirty-two feet per second to land with a hideous plop! on the sidewalk and die disgustingly there in public like an alpaca sack full of hairy strawberry ice cream, bleeding, pink toes awry." disease health hospital war Joseph Heller
2a1afac Before you leave here, Sir, you're going to learn that one of the most brutal things in the world is your average nineteen-year-old American boy. boys brutal brutality cruel teenage teenagers war Philip Caputo
4664cdc That's something that tends to happen with new technologies generally: The most interesting applications turn up on a battlefield, or in a gallery. technology war William Gibson
e0808f3 History was full of the bones of good men who'd followed bad orders in the hope that they could soften the blow. Oh, yes, there were worse things they could do, but most of them began right where they started following bad orders. sam-vimes war Terry Pratchett
9139cf6 "Have you noticed," said John, "how countries call theirs 'sovereign nuclear deterrents,' but call the other countries' ones 'weapons of mass destruction'?" -- nuclear war weapons-of-mass-destruction wmd David Mitchell
6fc7eff To us, it is incomprehensible that millions of Christian men killed and tortured each other because Napoleon was ambitious or Alexander was firm, or because England's policy was astute or the Duke of Oldenburg was wronged. We cannot grasp what connection such circumstances have the with the actual fact of slaughter and violence: why because the Duke was wronged, thousands of men from the other side of Europe killed and ruined the people of Smolensk and Moscow and were killed by them. reason war Leo Tolstoy
f78837b "Have you noticed," said John, "how countries call theirs 'sovereign nuclear deterrents,' but call the other countries' ones 'weapons of mass destruction'?" nuclear war weapons-of-mass-destruction wmd David Mitchell
7fc4882 I see this as the central issue of our time: how to find a substitute for war in human ingenuity, imagination, courage, sacrifice, patience... War is not inevitable, however persistent it is, however long a history it has in human affairs. It does not come out of some instinctive human need. It is manufactured by political leaders, who then must make a tremendous effort--by enticement, by propaganda, by coercion--to mobilize a normally reluctant population to go to war. creativity ingenuity peace political-propaganda war Howard Zinn
5aa0d54 Do you understand economics? I mean big-time, prewar, global capitalism. Do you get how it worked? I don't, and anyone who says they do is full of shit. economics economy war Max Brooks
dd8bc4b Her maternal instinct told her Natasha had too much of something, and because of this she would not be happy war Leo Tolstoy
740894f Violence is not the answer. Terrorism is the most dangerous of answers. violence war Elie Wiesel
e81b7b7 "Four times during the first six days they were assembled and briefed and then sent back. Once, they took off and were flying in formation when the control tower summoned them down. The more it rained, the worse they suffered. The worse they suffered, the more they prayed that it would continue raining. All through the night, men looked at the sky and were saddened by the stars. All through the day, they looked at the bomb line on the big, wobbling easel map of Italy that blew over in the wind and was dragged in under the awning of the intelligence tent every time the rain began. The bomb line was a scarlet band of narrow satin ribbon that delineated the forward most position of the Allied ground forces in every sector of the Italian mainland. For hours they stared relentlessly at the scarlet ribbon on the map and hated it because it would not move up high enough to encompass the city. When night fell, they congregated in the darkness with flashlights, continuing their macabre vigil at the bomb line in brooding entreaty as though hoping to move the ribbon up by the collective weight of their sullen prayers. "I really can't believe it," Clevinger exclaimed to Yossarian in a voice rising and falling in protest and wonder. "It's a complete reversion to primitive superstition. They're confusing cause and effect. It makes as much sense as knocking on wood or crossing your fingers. They really believe that we wouldn't have to fly that mission tomorrow if someone would only tiptoe up to the map in the middle of the night and move the bomb line over Bologna. Can you imagine? You and I must be the only rational ones left." In the middle of the night Yossarian knocked on wood, crossed his fingers, and tiptoed out of his tent to move the bomb line up over Bologna." bologna catch-22 funny hope humor inspiration meditation prayer rational superstition war yossarian Joseph Heller
553e1c9 Displaced Person's Song If you see a train this evening, Far away, against the sky, Lie down in your woolen blanket, Sleep and let the train go by. Trains have called us, every midnight, From a thousand miles away, Trains that pass through empty cities, Trains that have no place to stay. No one drives the locomotive, No one tends the staring light, Trains have never needed riders, Trains belong to bitter night. Railway stations stand deserted, Rights-of-way lie clear and cold, What we left them, trains inherit, Trains go on, and we grow old. Let them cry like cheated lovers, Let their cries find only wind, Trains are meant for night and ruin, And we are meant for song and sin. train war Thomas Pynchon
49cfacd Men have been pacifists for every reason under the sun except to avoid danger and fighting. men pacifism pacifists war William Faulkner
2ed0672 No man is a man until he has been a soldier. soldiers war Louis de Bernières
d48b656 It was harder for the ones who were waiting, Annemarie knew. Less danger, perhaps, but more fear. fear inspirational war world-war-2 Lois Lowry
d0e966a For my love, I will wade through an ocean of blood, even if it destroys me war Christopher Paolini
fcc3eda I detested their blind, thoughtless, automatic acquiescence to it all, their simpleminded patriotism, their prideful ignorance, their love-it-or-leave-it platitudes, how they were sending me off to a war they didn't understand and didn't want to understand. I held them responsible. By God, yes, I did. All of them - I held them personally and individually responsible - the polyestered Kiwanis boys, the merchants and the farmers, the pious churchgoers, the chatty housewives, the PTA and the Lions club and the Veterans of Foreign Wars and the fine outstanding gentry out at the country club. They didn't know Bao Dai from the man in the moon. They didn't know history. They didn't know the first thing about Diem's tyranny, or the nature of Vietnamese nationalist, or the long colonialism of the French - this was all too damn complicated, it required some reading - but no matter, it was a war to stop the Communists, plain and simple, which was how they liked things, and you were a treasonous pussy if you had second thoughts about killing or dying for plain and simple reasons. vietnam war Tim O'Brien
f85fcba War is being reminded that you are completely at the mercy of death at every moment, without the illusion that you are not. Without the distractions that make life worth living. distractions illusions life war Francesca Lia Block
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