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War
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*The affairs of war are,
above all others, subject to continual change.
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-Don Quixote, a character in Miguel de
Cervantes Saavedra's
Don Quixote of La Mancha, 1605
Part I, Ch. VIII, "Of the valiant Don Quixote's success in the terrifying
and never-before-imagined adventure of the windmills, with other events
worthy of happy remembrance"
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War . . . is an act of violence intended
to compel our opponent to fulfill our will.
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-Carl von Clausewitz
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Seeing an enemy wounded and helpless is a
different thing from seeing him in health and power. The first time I saw
one in this condition every feeling of enmity vanished at once.
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-Kate Cumming
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The faithful is told that the sword is the key
to heaven and hell. One drop of blood spilled on the battlefield, one night
spent under arms, will count for more than two months of fasting and prayer.
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-Gustave E. von Grunebaum
Medieval Islam, 1961
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Never completely encircle your enemy. Leave
him some escape, for he will fight even more desperately if trapped.
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-Alex Haley
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Total pacifism might be a good principle if
everyone were to follow it. But not everyone does, so it isn't.
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-Gilbert Harman
The Nature of Morality
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The profoundest truth of war is that the
issue of battle is usually decided in the minds of the opposing commanders,
not in the bodies of their men.
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-B. H. Liddell Hart
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Outlawing all atomic weapons could be a
magnificent gesture. However, it should be remembered that Gettysburg
had a local ordinance forbidding the discharge of firearms.
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-Homer D. King
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~16 years old when I went to
war,
To fight for a land fit for heroes,
God on my side, and a gun in my hand,
Chasing my days down to zero,
And I marched and I fought and I bled and I died,
And I never did get any older,
But I knew at the time that a year in the line,
Is a long enough life for a soldier,
We all volunteered, and we wrote down our names,
And we added two years to our ages,
Eager for life and ahead of the game,
Ready for history's pages,
And we brawled and we fought and we whored 'til we stood,
Ten thousand shoulder to shoulder,
A thirst for the Hun, we were food for the gun,
And that's what you are when you're soldiers,
I heard my friend cry, and he sank to his knees,
Coughing blood as he screamed for his mother,
And I fell by his side, and that's how we died,
Clinging like kids to each other,
And I lay in the mud and the guts and the blood,
And I wept as his body grew colder,
And I called for my mother and she never came,
Though it wasn't my fault and I wasn't to blame,
The day not half over and ten thousand slain,
And now there's nobody remembers our names,
And that's how it is for a soldier.
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-Motorhead (Lemmy, Wurzel, Philip Campbell,
Phil Taylor)
1916, 1991
"1916"
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The object of war is not to die for your
country but to make the other bastard die for his.
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-George S. Patton
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*[T]he origin of all wars
is the pursuit of wealth.
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-The character Socrates, in Plato's
Phaedo
66d
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*"Every government that
prepares for war paints its adversaries as monsters," she said. "They
don't want you thinking of the other side as human. If the enemy can think
and feel, you might hesitate to kill them. And killing is very important.
Better to see them as monsters."
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-Eleanor Arroway, the hero in Carl Sagan's
Contact, 1985
Part I : The Message, Ch. 9, "The Numinous"
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*If we like them, they're
freedom fighters . . . If we don't like them, they're terrorists.
In the unlikely case we can't make up our minds, they're temporarily only
guerrillas.
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-Carl Sagan
Contact, 1985
Part I : The Message, Ch. 2, "Coherent Light"
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*An extraterrestrial
visitor, looking at the differences among human beings and their societies,
would find those differences [between "us" humans and "those" humans]
trivial compared to the similarities. The Cosmos may be densely populated
with intelligent beings. But the Darwinian lesson is clear: There will be
no humans elsewhere. Only here. Only on this small planet. We are a rare
as well as an endangered species. Every one of us, in the cosmic
perspective, precious. If a human disagrees with you, let him live. In a
hundred billion galaxies, you will not find another.
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-Carl Sagan
Cosmos, 1980
Chapter XIII, "Who Speaks For Earth?"
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*The conventional bombs
of World War II were called blockbusters. Filled with twenty tons of TNT,
they could destroy a city block. All the bombs dropped on all the cities
in World War II amounted to some two million tons, two megatons, of TNT---
Coventry and Rotterdam, Dresden and Tokyo, all the death that rained from
the skies between 1939 and 1945: a hundred thousand blockbusters, two
megatons. By the late twentieth century, two megatons was the energy
released in the explosion of a single more or less humdrum thermonuclear
bomb: one bomb with the destructive force of the Second World War. But
there are tens of thousands of nuclear weapons. By the ninth decade of
the twentieth century the strategic missile and bomber forces of the Soviet
Union and the United States were aiming warheads at over 15,000 designated
targets. No place on the planet was safe. The energy contained in these
weapons, genies of death patiently awaiting the rubbing of the lamps, was
far more than 10,000 megatons---but with the destruction concentrated
efficiently, not over six years but over a few hours, a blockbuster for
every family on the planet, a World War II every second for the length of
a lazy afternoon.
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-Carl Sagan
Cosmos, 1980
Chapter XIII, "Who Speaks For Earth?"
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War is hell.
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-William Tecumseh Sherman
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Military tactics are like unto water; for
water in its natural course runs away from high places and hastens
downwards. So in war, the way is to avoid what is strong and to strike
what is weak. Like water, taking the line of least resistance.
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-Sun Tzu
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In all history there is no war which was
not hatched by the governments, the governments alone, independent of the
interests of the people, to whom war is always pernicious even when
successful.
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-Leo Tolstoy
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Alone upon the battle ground, beneath a
dying star,
Rodrigo stood in bleak despair, his hosts were scattered far;
Eight battle had they bravely fought against the Moorish band,
No hope remained within their hearts to save their native land.
Rodrigo sadly turned away, forspent with grief and pain,
And journeyed in the trackless night across the barren plain.
The king descended from his steed, for now 'twas lame and blind,
Alone he staggered faint and sick, no shelter could he find.
His sword was stained with blood and dust, as though from darkest hell
It had been plucked, its scarlet hue a tale of gore did tell.
His coat of mail, that set with jewels, had glistened in the sun,
Now seemed to him a mourning cloth that some dark fate had spun.
At dawn he climbed a hill that towered above that dark terrain,
Beneath him lay his banners torn, his noble soldiers slain,
And as the king in sorrow gazed upon that cheerless morn,
He heard a cry of victory: the Arab shout of scorn!
He searched for the brave captains that led the hosts of Spain,
But he beheld their lifeless forms upon that gory plain.
Rodrigo could no longer bear the burden of his woe,
These words he spoke as from his eyes the bitter tears did flow:
"Last night I was the king of Spain, today no fief command,
Last night fair castles held my train, today bereft I stand,
The sun shall set forever on my kingdom and my reign,
The dawn will find no trace of me throughout this vast domain.
Oh hapless day when first I bore my scepter and my sword!
Accursed hour that I was named Hispania's ruling lord
Oh fate most cruel that I should see the sun go down this night!
Oh, death, thou art victorious! Why fearest thou to smite?"
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-(Unknown) Traditional Spanish ballad,
as translated by Katharine E. Strathdee
Qtd. in Horace Sutton, "Democracy in Spain"
Saturday Review, October 29, 1997
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