Don’t try to be spiritual. That is only a word in the dictionary. Make it your goal to become a normally functioning individual. Let these principles shape you according to your real nature of a simple, decent, honest, unafraid human being.
—Vernon Howard (1918–92) American Spiritual Teacher, Philosopher
War is a profession by which a man cannot live honorably; an employment by which the soldier, if he would reap any profit, is obliged to be false, rapacious, and cruel.
—Niccolo Machiavelli (1469–1527) Florentine Political Philosopher
You are free when you have no anxious thoughts about what happens to you.
—Vernon Howard (1918–92) American Spiritual Teacher, Philosopher
The desire to conquer is itself a sort of subjection.
—George Eliot (Mary Anne Evans) (1819–80) English Novelist
Moral disarmament is to safeguard the future; material disarmament is to save the present, that there may be a future to safeguard.
—Elihu Root (1845–1937) American Jurist, Statesman
The world belongs to those who don’t let anxiety about screwing up keep them from moving forward.
—Unknown
The sinews of war, a limitless supply of money.
—Cicero (106BCE–43BCE) Roman Philosopher, Orator, Politician, Lawyer
A little while ago I visited Omaha Beach for the second time in my life. In the intervening 26 years, nearly 20,000 tides had come and gone and little remains visible of the greatest military landing in man’s history of endless warring. What’s to be seen is mostly in a superb museum and a panoramic cemetery. The cemetery memorializes with dignity and grandeur the event and the dead, and moves one deeply. Before they die less precipitously and/or in lesser purpose, Americans who can should visit World War II’s Normandy Beach. Such seeing and remembering helps a man’s perspective.
—Malcolm S. Forbes (1919–1990) American Publisher, Businessperson
If you ask a member of this generation two simple questions: How do you want the world to be in fifty years? and What do you want your life to be like five years from now? the answers are quite often preceded by Provided there is still a world and Provided I am still alive. To the often-heard question, Who are they, this new generation? one is tempted to answer, Those who hear the ticking. And to the other question, Who are they who utterly deny them? the answer may well be, Those who do not know, or refuse to face, things as they really are.
—Hannah Arendt (1906–75) German-American Philosopher, Political Theorist
Only the dead have seen the end of war
—Plato (428 BCE–347 BCE) Ancient Greek Philosopher, Mathematician, Educator
Conquest is the missionary of valor, and the hard impact of military virtues beats meanness out of the world.
—Walter Bagehot (1826–77) English Economist, Journalist
I had supposed until that time that it was quite common for parents to love their children, but the war persuaded me that it is a rare exception. I had supposed that most people liked money better than almost anything else, but I discovered that they liked destruction even better. I had supposed that intellectuals frequently loved truth, but I found here again that not ten per cent of them prefer truth to popularity.
—Bertrand A. Russell (1872–1970) British Philosopher, Mathematician, Social Critic
The monk that invented gunpowder did as much to stop war as did all the sermons of his brethren.
—Austin O’Malley (1858–1932) American Aphorist, Ophthalmologist
Named must your fear be before banish it you can.
—Yoda Character In ‘Star Wars’
War-making is one of the few activities that people are not supposed to view “realistically;” that is, with an eye to expense and practical outcome. In all-out war, expenditure is all-out, unprudent—war being defined as an emergency in which no sacrifice is excessive.
—Susan Sontag (1933–2004) American Writer, Philosopher
War is a game that is played with a smile. If you can’t smile, grin. If you can’t grin, keep out of the way till you can.
—Winston Churchill (1874–1965) British Head of State, Political leader, Historian, Journalist, Author
War—what a waist of time. It’s all about great achievements for the very few but hideous losses for the very many.
—Indian Proverb
Peace is not only better than war, but infinitely more arduous.
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish Playwright
Weapons are like money; no one knows the meaning of enough.
—Martin Amis (b.1949) British Novelist, Journalist
In my experience, there’s only one thing that will always steer you toward success: That’s to have a vision and to stick with it… Once I have a vision for a new venture, I’m going to ride that vision until the wheels come off.
—Russell Simmons (b.1957) American Music Promoter
What war has always been is a puberty ceremony. It’s a very rough one, but you went away a boy and came back a man, maybe with an eye missing or whatever but godammit you were a man and people had to call you a man thereafter.
—Kurt Vonnegut (1922–2007) American Novelist, Short Story Writer
Happiness is yours in the here and now. The painful states of anxiety and loneliness are abolished permanently. Financial affairs are not financial problems. You are at ease with yourself. You are not at the mercy of unfulfilled cravings. Confusion is replaced with clarity. There is a relieving answer to every tormenting question. You possess a True Self. Something can be done about every unhappy condition. While living in the world you can be inwardly detached from its sorrows to live with personal peace and sanity.
—Vernon Howard (1918–92) American Spiritual Teacher, Philosopher
It is an unfortunate fact that we can secure peace only by preparing for war.
—John F. Kennedy (1917–63) American Head of State, Journalist
If nations could overcome the mutual fear and distrust whose somber shadow is now thrown over the world, and could meet with confidence and good will to settle their possible differences, they would easily be able to establish a lasting peace.
—Fridtjof Nansen (1861–1930) Norwegian Explorer, Biologist, Oceanographer
Then, accepting the help of God and of God’s signs, he allows his personal legend to guide him toward the tasks that life has reserved for him.
—Paulo Coelho (b.1947) Brazilian Songwriter, Novelist
Laws are commanded to hold their tongues among arms; and tribunals fall to the ground with the peace they are no longer able to uphold.
—Edmund Burke (1729–97) British Philosopher, Statesman
To be prepared for war is one of the most effectual means of preserving peace.
—George Washington (1732–99) American Head of State, Military Leader
Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children… This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.
—Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890–1969) American Head of State, Military Leader
Most of the stone a nation hammers goes toward its tomb only. It buries itself alive. As for the Pyramids, there is nothing to wander at in them so much as the fact that so many men could be found degraded enough to spend their lives constructing a tomb for some ambitious booby, whom it would have been wiser and manlier to have drowned in the Nile, and then given his body to the dogs.
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–62) American Philosopher
And such should be the outward biography of man in time, a putting off of dead circumstances day by day, as he renews his raiment day by day.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–82) American Philosopher
Genuine effort is success.
—Vernon Howard (1918–92) American Spiritual Teacher, Philosopher
You can’t say civilization isn’t advancing: in every war, they kill you in a new way.
—Will Rogers (1879–1935) American Actor, Rancher, Humorist
To delight in war is a merit in the soldier, a dangerous quality in the captain, and a positive crime in the statesman.
—George Santayana (1863–1952) Spanish-American Poet, Philosopher
We often give our enemies the means to our own destruction.
—Aesop (620–564 BCE) Greek Fabulist
Yesterday, December seventh, 1941, a date which will live in infamy, the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan.
—Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945) American Head of State, Lawyer
Taking responsibility means being aware of where and when you are NOT taking responsibility so that you can eventually change.
—Susan Jeffers (1938–2012) American Psychologist, Self-Help Author
The only reward of virtue is virtue; the only way to have a friend is to be one.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–82) American Philosopher
It is far easier to make war than to make peace.
—Georges Clemenceau (1841–1929) French Head of State, Physician, Publisher, Political leader
Wars almost never end the way starters had in mind.
—Malcolm S. Forbes (1919–1990) American Publisher, Businessperson
After a shooting spree, they always want to take the guns away from the people who didn’t do it. I sure as hell wouldn’t want to live in a society where the only people allowed guns are the police and the military.
—William S. Burroughs (1914–97) American Novelist, Poet, Short Story Writer, Painter
In war, three quarters turns on personal character and relations; the balance of manpower and materials counts only for the remaining quarter.
—Napoleon I (1769–1821) Emperor of France
War may sometimes be a necessary evil. But no matter how necessary, it is always an evil, never a good. We will not learn how to live together in peace by killing each other’s children.
—Jimmy Carter (b.1924) American Head of State, Military Leader
I’ll tell you that for me, one when someone used to say something that was true, one way I knew it was true was that I immediately felt defensive. I blocked it off, and I went to war with them in my mind and suffered all that goes with it. And they were only saying what was true.
—Byron Katie (b.1942) American Speaker, Author
War is an instrument entirely inefficient toward redressing wrong; and multiplies, instead of indemnifying losses.
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) American Head of State, Lawyer
It is a fearful thing to lead this great peaceful people into war, into the most terrible and disastrous of all wars, civilization itself seeming to be in the balance. But the right is more precious than peace, and we shall fight for the things which we have always carried nearest our hearts—for democracy, for the right of those who submit to authority to have a voice in their own governments, for the rights and liberties of small nations, for a universal dominion of right by such a concert of free peoples as shall bring peace and safety to all nations and make the world itself at last free.
—Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924) American Head of State
17. Thus we may know that there are five essentials for victory:
(1) He will win who knows when to fight and when not to fight.
(2) He will win who knows how to handle both superior and inferior forces.
(3) He will win whose army is animated by the same spirit throughout all its ranks.
(4) He will win who, prepared himself, waits to take the enemy unprepared.
(5) He will win who has military capacity and is not interfered with by the sovereign.
18. Hence the saying: If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself you will succumb in every battle.
—Sun Tzu (fl. c.544–496 BCE) Chinese General, Military Theorist
The one distinctive advance in civil society achieved by the Anglo-Saxon world is fairly betokened by the passing away of this notion of a peculiar possession in the way of honor which had to be guarded by arms.
—Norman Angell (1872–1967) English Economist, Writer, Pacifist
If we fight a war and win it with H-bombs, what history will remember is not the ideals we were fighting for but the methods we used to accomplish them. These methods will be compared to the warfare of Genghis Khan who ruthlessly killed every last inhabitant of Persia.
—Hans Bethe (1906–2005) German-American Theoretical Physicist
It is because we don’t know who we are, because we are unaware that the Kingdom of Heaven is within us, that we behave in the generally silly, the often insane, the sometimes criminal ways that are so characteristically human. We are saved, we are liberated and enlightened, by perceiving the hitherto unperceived good that is already within us, by returning to our eternal ground and remaining where, without knowing it, we have always been.
—Aldous Huxley (1894–1963) English Humanist, Pacifist, Essayist, Short Story Writer, Satirist
Slowly, and in spite of anything we Americans do or do not do, it looks a little as if you and some other good people are going to have to answer the old question of whether you want to keep your country unshackled by taking even more definite steps to do so
—Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945) American Head of State, Lawyer