Words to Ponder

Thoughts to ponder

Quotes to ponder as we all search for wisdom along the way to war

[10-9-02]

WebWeaver's note: This collection came to us from Witherspooner Bill Knox, and has obviously been circulating on the Web. So I have no idea who gets the credit for this collection, nor can I vouch for the authenticity of every quotation. But they're worth pondering - and quoting.

Do you have thoughts about any of these thoughts?
Or quotes of your own to share?
Please send a note!

The United States has the power to destroy the world, but not the power to save it alone.

Margaret Mead

The only security for the American people today, or for any people, is to be found through the control of force rather than the pursuit of force.

Norman Cousins

We are citizens of the world; and the tragedy of our times is that we do not know this.

Woodrow Wilson

To be persuasive, we must be believable,/To be believable, we must be credible,/To be credible, we must be truthful.

Edward R. Murrow

The tyranny of legislators is at present, and will be for many years, out most formidable danger. The tyranny of the executive will arise in its turn, but at a more distant period.

Thomas Jefferson (1743 - 1826)

The credibility gap is so wide that our suspicions are confirmed by any official denial.

Laurence J. Peter

There are no necessary evils in government. Its evils exist only in its abuses.

Andrew Jackson 1823

In the long-run, every government is the exact symbol of its people, with their wisdom and unwisdom.

Thomas Carlyle 1843

The guilt of a government is the crime of a whole country.

Thomas Paine

Governments are best classified by considering who are the "somebodies" they are in fact endeavoring to satisfy.

Alfred North Whitehead

"Terrorism" is what we call the violence of the weak, and we condemn it; "war" is what we call the violence of the strong, and we glorify it.

Sydney J. Harris 1986

There is nothing so subject to the inconstancy of fortune as war. Cervantes Every war has its own excuse. That's why they're all surrounded with ideals. That's why they're all crusades.

Karl Shapiro 1964

War is the province of chance. In not other sphere of human activity must such a margin be left for this intruder. It increases the uncertainty of every circumstance and deranges the course of events.

Karl Von Clausewitz 1962

I don't know with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.

Albert Einstein

For what are the triumphs of war, planned by ambition, executed by violence, and consummated by devastation? The means are the sacrifice of many, the end, the bloated aggrandizement of the few.

Charles Caleb Colton, 1925

There was never a good war or a bad peace.

Benjamin Franklin

What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty or democracy?

Mohandas K. Gandhi

It is easier to lead men to combat and to stir up their passions than to temper them and urge them to the patient labors of peace.

Andre Gide

Older man declare war. But it is youth that must fight and die.

Herbert Hoover

The most shocking fact about war is that its victims and its instruments are individual human beings, and that these individual beings are condemned by the monstrous conventions of politics to murder or be murdered in quarrels not their own.

Aldous Huxley

It is seldom that any one overt act produces hostilities between two nations; there exists, more commonly, a previous jealousy and ill will, a predisposition to take offense.

Washington Irving

Small wars are always teetering on the brink of becoming big ones.

Max Lerner

How different the new order would be if we could consult the veteran instead of the politician.

Henry Miller

War is both the product of an earlier corruption and a producer of new corruptions.

Lewis Mumford

Against war it may be said that it makes the victor stupid and the vanquished revengeful.

Neitzche

All wars are civil wars, because all men are brothers? Each one owes infinitely more to the human race than to the particular country in which he was born

Francois Fenelon (1651 - 1715)

How good bad music and bad reasons sound when one marches against an enemy!

Nietzsche

He who is the author of a war lets loose the whole contagion of hell and opens a vein that bleeds a nation to death.

Thomas Paine

War involves in its progress such a train of unforeseen and unsupposed circumstance that no human wisdom can calculate the end. It has but one thing certain, and that is to increase taxes.

Thomas Paine

Can anything be more ridiculous that that a man should have the right to kill me because he lives on the other side of the water, and because his ruler has a quarrel with mine, though I have none with him.

Pascal

The grim fact is that we prepare for war like precocious giants and for peace like retarded pygmies.

Lester Pearson 1955

I find war detestable but those who praise it without participating in it even more so.

Romain Rolland 1914

I have seen children starving. I have seen the agony of mothers and wives. I hate war.

Franklin D. Roosevelt

No matter how noble the objectives of a government, if it blurs decency and kindness, cheapens human life, and breeds ill will and suspicion-it is an evil government.

Eric Hoffer (1954)

To call war the soil of courage and virtue is like calling debauchery the soil of love.

George Santayana

Though we talk peace, we wage war. Sometimes we even wage war in the name of peace. Does that seem paradoxical? Well, war is not afraid of paradoxes.

Elie Wiesel 1990

In our complex world, there cannot be fruitful initiative without government, but unfortunately there can be government without initiative.

Bertrand Russell

Do you have thoughts about any of these thoughts?
Or quotes of your own to share?
Please send a note!