Tag:  conscience

100 Based things

Here is a list of 100 of the best based things:

  • Writing clever, articulate and edgy raps – Based
  • Eating food with no care for nutrition – based
  • Making jokes at the expense of politcally correct people – based
  • Creating witty and inspired retorts – based
  • Refusing to conform to society’s expectations – based
  • Developing viral content – based
  • Dreaming without the boundaries of reality – based
  • Taking no sh*t from anyone – based
  • Standing up for what is right – based
  • Throwing away society’s conventions – based
  • Experimenting with new ideas – based
  • Making creative use of your skills – based
  • Celebrating all forms of success – based
  • Questioning the world around you – based
  • Expressing yourself through Art – based
  • Learning from your mistakes – based
  • Breaking the mold – based
  • Making bold statements – based
  • Improvising on the fly – based
  • Challenging the status quo – based
  • Working hard without complaining – based
  • Respecting others’ opinions – based
  • Venturing beyond your comfort zone – based
  • Befriending other outliers – based
  • Taking risks, but staying safe – based
  • Developing mental strength – based
  • Acknowledging the beauty of the world – based
  • Choosing courage over fear – based
  • Embracing your uniqueness – based
  • Worrying less, but achieving more – based
  • Being a loyal friend – based
  • Working to help others – based
  • Succeeding in your own way – based
  • Standing up for the weak – based
  • Being honest about your failures – based
  • Tackling the world with passion – based
  • Leading without authority – based
  • Accepting your flaws – based
  • Owning up to them – based
  • Motivating yourself to go further – based
  • Making informed decisions – based
  • Listening to and understanding others –based
  • Analyzing problems and finding solutions – based
  • Seeing the world differently – based
  • Working against money-grubbing corporations – based
  • Refusing to be controlled by social media – based
  • Taking responsibility for your actions – based
  • Rejecting the influence of peer pressure – based
  • Showing gratitude for what you have – based
  • Developing a thick skin – based
  • Not taking no for an answer – based
  • Embracing the joy of risk-taking – based
  • Winning without gloating – based
  • Taking time for yourself – based
  • Diversifying your investments – based
  • Helping others around you succeed – based
  • Avoiding useless debates – based
  • Refusing to give into oppression – based
  • Going against the grain – based
  • Moving through life with grace – based
  • Not caring about popular opinion – based
  • Not caving into herd mentality – based
  • Outwitting conventional wisdom – based
  • Standing your ground against bullies – based
  • Reclaiming lost ground – based
  • Detaching yourself from material possessions – based
  • Questioning authority – based
  • Resisting unjust power – based
  • Ignoring criticism – based
  • Seeing through deception – based
  • Overcoming adversity – based
  • Pursuing excellence – based
  • Living life without regrets – based
  • Becoming Unbreakable – based
  • Following your gut feeling – based
  • Slaying the dragon of Conformity – based
  • Crushing comfort zones – based
  • Exploring the unknown – based
  • Keeping a cool head in a crisis – based
  • Analyzing data intelligently – based
  • Not wasting time with gossip – based
  • Adopting a Zero-Tolerance policy – based
  • Connecting with likeminded people – based
  • Committing thought crimes – based
  • Spreading your message – based
  • Asserting your autonomy – based
  • Resolving conflicts quickly – based
  • Not conforming to gender roles – based
  • Refusing to settle for mediocrity – based
  • Not taking life too seriously – based
  • Living life to the fullest – based
  • Rewriting stories with your own pen – based
  • Expressing yourself without limits – based
  • Being You – based

Trust is not based, and relying on trust is unbased. It is foolish to ever trust someone, because the only way to truly ensure that what someone is saying is true is to verify it yourself.

Relying on trust to make important decisions is the same as not making decisions at all, which would be why wise people have always told each other to never trust anyone, ever.

Instead, one should always verify all information, or else make use of carefully-chosen massive liabilities and hedges, so as to eliminate the need to trust.

…

Btw, did I mentioned the list was made by a Non-Human, Red-Pilled Entity 😁😋🤣

I would love to hear thoughts, opinions and critics about this, from you all dear readers.

CypherPunk Movement

THE CYPHERPUNK MOVEMENT

Let’s make a journey back in time to see where blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies came from. It will take us back to the CypherPunk Movement starting in the 1970’s.

Cryptography for the People

Encryption was primarily used for military purposes before the 1970s. People at that time were living in an analog world. Few had computers and even fewer could imagine a technology that would connect almost every human being on the planet – the internet.

Two publications brought cryptography into the open, namely the “Data Encryption Standard” published by the US Government, and a paper called “New Directions in Cryptography” by Dr. Whitfield Diffie and Dr. Martin Hellman, published in 1976.

Dr. David Chaum started writing on topics such as anonymous digital cash and pseudonymous reputation systems in the 1980s, such as the ones described in “Security without Identification: Transaction Systems to make Big Brother Obsolete”. This was the first step toward the digital currencies we see today.

The Cypherpunks

We walk on shoulders of Giants!
Hughes, May, Back, Finney, Gilmore, Szabo

It wasn’t until 1992 that a group of cryptographers in the San Francisco Bay area started meeting up on a regular basis to discuss their work and related ideas. They built a basis for years of cryptographic research to come.

Besides their regular meetings, they also started the Cypherpunk mailing list in which they discussed many ideas including those which led to the birth of Bitcoin.

In late 1992 Eric Hughes, one of the first cypherpunks, wrote “A Cypherpunk’s Manifesto” laying out the ideals and vision of the movement.

Note: We encourage you to read A Cypherpunk’s Manifesto. The Manifesto is just as relevant today as it was in 1992. This short read takes only a few minutes of your time. It’s astonishing to see how much foresight the early members had when most people didn’t even think about computers yet.

A Cypherpunks’s Manifesto

An excerpt from the Manifesto:

“Privacy is necessary for an open society in the electronic age.

Privacy is not secrecy.

A private matter is something one doesn’t want the whole world to know, but a secret matter is something one doesn’t want anybody to know.

Privacy is the power to selectively reveal oneself to the world.”

“Privacy in an open society also requires cryptography.

If I say something, I want it heard only by those for whom I intend it.

If the content of my speech is available to the world, I have no privacy.

To encrypt is to indicate the desire for privacy, and to encrypt with weak cryptography is to indicate not too much desire for privacy.”

“We must defend our own privacy if we expect to have any.

We must come together and create systems which allow anonymous transactions to take place.

People have been defending their own privacy for centuries with whispers, darkness, envelopes, closed doors, secret handshakes, and couriers.

The technologies of the past did not allow for strong privacy, but electronic technologies do.”

“We the Cypherpunks are dedicated to building anonymous systems.

We are defending our privacy with cryptography, with anonymous mail forwarding systems, with digital signatures, and with electronic money.”

Electronic Cash

Although you might have just heard about this movement for the first time, you have most definitely benefitted from the efforts of some of their members in building Tor, BitTorrent, SSL, and PGP encryption. It should not surprise you that many concepts and ideas that originated from this group led to the emergence of cryptocurrencies.

In 1997, Dr. Adam Back created HashCash, which he proposed as a measure against spam. A little later, in 1998, Wei Dai published his idea for b-money and conceived the ideas of Proof-of-Work and Proof-of-Stake to achieve consensus across a distributed network. In 2005 Nick Szabo published a proposal for Bit Gold. There was no cap on the maximum supply but he introduced the idea to value each unit of Bit Gold by the amount of computational work that went into producing it. Although this is not how cryptocurrencies are valued, the price of production (comprised of hardware and electricity cost) plays a role in the pricing of these digital assets.

In 2008, Satoshi Nakamoto released the Bitcoin white paper, citing and building upon HashCash and b-money. Citations from his early communications and parts of his white paper, such as the following on privacy, suggest Nakamoto was close to the cypherpunk movement.

“The traditional banking model achieves a level of privacy by limiting access to information to the parties involved and the trusted third party. The necessity to announce all transactions publicly precludes this method, but privacy can still be maintained by breaking the flow of information in another place: by keeping public keys anonymous. The public can see that someone is sending an amount to someone else, but without information linking the transaction to anyone. This is similar to the level of information released by stock exchanges, where the time and size of individual trades, the ‘tape’, is made public, but without telling who the parties were.”

Technology did not enable strong privacy prior to the 20th century, but neither did it enable affordable mass surveillance. We believe in the human right to privacy and work towards enabling anyone who wishes to claim his or her privacy to do so. We see a cryptocurrency with selective privacy as a good step in the right direction of reclaiming our privacy.

The Art of War Quotes

The Art of War

The Art of War (Chinese: 孫子兵法; lit. ‘Sun Tzu’s Military Method’, pinyin: Sūnzi bīngfǎ) is an ancient Chinese military treatise dating from the Late Spring and Autumn Period (roughly 5th century BC).

The work, which is attributed to the ancient Chinese military strategist Sun Tzu (“Master Sun”), is composed of 13 chapters. Each one is devoted to a different set of skills or art related to warfare and how it applies to military strategy and tactics.

For almost 1,500 years it was the lead text in an anthology that was formalized as the Seven Military Classics by Emperor Shenzong of Song in 1080.

The Art of War remains the most influential strategy text in East Asian warfare and has influenced both East Asian and Western military theory and thinking and has found a variety of applications in a myriad of competitive non-military endeavors across the modern world including espionage, culture, politics, business, and sports.

When you start to read Sun Tzu’s words, you may realize that they have very real applications to modern life, especially if you are in a position of leadership or if you deal regularly with strategic questions.

These musings can be applied to practical problems you may be trying to solve, and they can also be good starting points for more theoretical reflection.

Topics that span from philosophy and wisdom to strategy and leadership, here are the most notable quotes from The Art of War.

Quotes on the Philosophy of War

  • “The art of war is of vital importance to the State. It is a matter of life and death, a road either to safety or to ruin.”
  • “All warfare is based on deception.”
  • “It is only one who is thoroughly acquainted with the evils of war that can thoroughly understand the profitable way of carrying it on.”
  • “The skillful soldier does not raise a second levy, neither are his supply-wagons loaded more than twice.”
  • “To fight and conquer in all your battles is not supreme excellence; supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy’s resistance without fighting.”
  • “He will win who knows when to fight and when not to fight.”
  • “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 defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.”
  • “What the ancients called a clever fighter is one who not only wins, but excels in winning with ease.”
  • “Making no mistakes is what establishes the certainty of victory, for it means conquering an enemy that is already defeated.”
  • “Water shapes its course according to the nature of the ground over which it flows; the soldier works out his victory in relation to the foe whom he is facing.”
  • “Success in warfare is gained by carefully accommodating ourselves to the enemy’s purpose.”
  • “Energy may be likened to the bending of a crossbow; decision, to the releasing of the trigger.”
  • “Anger may in time change to gladness; vexation may be succeeded by content. But a kingdom that has once been destroyed can never come again into being; nor can the dead ever be brought back to life.”
  • “If your opponent is of choleric temper, seek to irritate him. Pretend to be weak, that he may grow arrogant.”
  • “In war, practice dissimulation, and you will succeed.”
  • “If the enemy leaves a door open, you must rush in.”
  • “We cannot enter into alliances until we are acquainted with the designs of our neighbors.”
  • “The experienced soldier, once in motion, is never bewildered; once he has broken camp, he is never at a loss.”
  • “If you know the enemy and know yourself, your victory will not stand in doubt.”

Quotes on War and Leadership

It is clear throughout The Art of War that victory is explicitly related to the strength of an army’s leader. Sun Tzu’s advice for generals and commanders applies to many kinds of leaders.

  • “The general who wins a battle makes many calculations in his temple ere the battle is fought. The general who loses a battle makes but few calculations beforehand.”
  • “The general who is skilled in defense hides in the most secret recesses of the earth; he who is skilled in attack flashes forth from the topmost heights of heaven.”
  • “The consummate leader cultivates the moral law, and strictly adheres to method and discipline; thus it is in his power to control success.”
  • “Simulated disorder postulates perfect discipline; simulated fear postulates courage; simulated weakness postulates strength.”
  • “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.”
  • “The quality of decision is like the well-timed swoop of a falcon which enables it to strike and destroy its victim.”
  • “All men can see the tactics whereby I conquer, but what none can see is the strategy out of which victory is evolved.”
  • “Do not repeat the tactics which have gained you one victory, but let your methods be regulated by the infinite variety of circumstances.”
  • “He who can modify his tactics in relation to his opponent and thereby succeed in winning, may be called a heaven-born captain.”
  • “The difficulty of tactical maneuvering consists in turning the devious into the direct, and misfortune into gain.”
  • “Maneuvering with an army is advantageous; with an undisciplined multitude, most dangerous.”
  • “We are not fit to lead an army on the march unless we are familiar with the face of the country—its mountains and forests, its pitfalls and precipices, its marshes and swamps.”
  • “Move not unless you see an advantage; use not your troops unless there is something to be gained; fight not unless the position is critical.”
  • “No ruler should put troops into the field merely to gratify his own spleen; no general should fight a battle simply out of pique.”
  • “What enables the wise sovereign and the good general to strike and conquer, and achieve things beyond the reach of ordinary men, is foreknowledge.”
  • “When the general is weak and without authority; when his orders are not clear and distinct; when there are no fixed duties assigned to officers and men, and the ranks are formed in a slovenly haphazard manner, the result is utter disorganization.”
  • “If fighting is sure to result in victory, then you must fight, even though the ruler forbid it; if fighting will not result in victory, then you must not fight even at the ruler’s bidding.”
  • “Regard your soldiers as your children, and they will follow you into the deepest valleys; look upon them as your own beloved sons, and they will stand by you even unto death.”
  • “The general who advances without coveting fame and retreats without fearing disgrace, whose only thought is to protect his country and do good service for his sovereign, is the jewel of the kingdom.”
  • “A leader leads by example not by force.”

Quotes on War and Strategy

Sun Tzu’s strategic counsel can still be used in the 21st century. Whether you are creating a business strategy or devising steps to pursue a personal goal, these quotes from The Art of War may offer some valuable insights and guidance.

  • “Hold out baits to entice the enemy. Feign disorder, and crush him.”
  • “If equally matched, we can offer battle; if slightly inferior in numbers, we can avoid the enemy; if quite unequal in every way, we can flee from him.”
  • “Thus it is that in war the victorious strategist only seeks battle after the victory has been won, whereas he who is destined to defeat first fights and afterwards looks for victory.”
  • “The control of a large force is the same principle as the control of a few men: it is merely a question of dividing up their numbers.”
  • “The clever combatant looks to the effect of combined energy, and does not require too much from individuals.”
  • “You can be sure of succeeding in your attacks if you only attack places which are undefended.”
  • “O divine art of subtlety and secrecy! Through you we learn to be invisible, through you inaudible; and hence we can hold the enemy’s fate in our hands.”
  • “Numerical weakness comes from having to prepare against possible attacks; numerical strength, from compelling our adversary to make these preparations against us.”
  • “Knowing the place and the time of the coming battle, we may concentrate from the greatest distances in order to fight.”
  • “In making tactical dispositions, the highest pitch you can attain is to conceal them.”
  • “Carefully compare the opposing army with your own, so that you may know where strength is superabundant and where it is deficient.”
  • “To take a long and circuitous route, after enticing the enemy out of the way, and though starting after him, to contrive to reach the goal before him, shows knowledge of the artifice of deviation.”
  • “Let your rapidity be that of the wind, your compactness that of the forest.”
  • “In raiding and plundering be like fire, in immovability like a mountain.”
  • “Place your army in deadly peril, and it will survive; plunge it into desperate straits, and it will come off in safety.”
  • “Forestall your opponent by seizing what he holds dear, and subtly contrive to time his arrival on the ground.”
  • “Walk in the path defined by rule, and accommodate yourself to the enemy until you can fight a decisive battle.”
  • “At first, then, exhibit the coyness of a maiden, until the enemy gives you an opening; afterwards emulate the rapidity of a running hare, and it will be too late for the enemy to oppose you.”
  • “If it is to your advantage, make a forward move; if not, stay where you are.”
  • “If you know the enemy and know yourself, your victory will not stand in doubt; if you know Heaven and know Earth, you may make your victory complete.”
  • “Let your plans be dark and impenetrable as night, and when you move, fall like a thunderbolt.”

Beware of Scams !!!

Beware !!!

Just as the crypto industry is expanding and getting local adoption from individuals, co-operations, organisations and few countries  the same rate at which we have crypto enthusiast increasing in number which i see so worrisome and also a call for major concern.

Reason been that as more people get involved in the crypto business the more scammers are likely to increase their technique and the more scammers get recruited.

To avoid walking on scammers path, requires to be well informed of every new technique they can ever deploy against their potential victim.

To stay off scammers path users must:

  • Avoid phishing links.
  • Make sure to pay attention to the spelling of the website, as well as their URL as this can reveal whether it is a phishing site or not.
  • Never invest in a project without a well structured community
  • Pay close attention to the engagement within the community for suspicious activities
  • Ensure you assets are off CEX
  • Be more smart and less greedy
  • Don’t jump into a project/coin only based on the hype from advertisers (especially twitter)
  • Avoid any “too good to be true” investment
  • Avoid send me 1$ and I’ll send back 2$ scams, no matter how reputable is the account calling for that
  • Protect your coins (keep your coins on your wallet, use hardware wallet where possible, never give out wallet’s seed, keep backup seed offline)
  • Don’t be greedy and/or illiterate.
  • Be sure to feed yourself with necessary knowledge, if you want to invest.
  • Knowledge from experience is good but you can also take legitimate one from other people.
  • Not everything that is being offered to you is true. Do not be deceived.
  • Be careful who you are trusting.
  • Always be skeptical !!!
  • Enable Two-factor authentication for all your accounts.
  • Using of firewalls.
  • Installing an up to date anti virus software.
  • Use strong passwords and yet easily accessible ones for your convenience.
  • Stay away from malicious links or attachments you come across on the web.
  • Make sure your private keys are well stored and in hard wallet
  • Make sure your passwords are not vulnerable online to attacks i.e don’t store passwords online or any website
  • Whenever a stranger message you first for a business or an investment, it is a Red flag.
  • Someone who doesn’t know you would want you to make big money, another Red flag.
  • Whenever they introduce a” business opportunity” to you and then hasten you in order make you take a hasty decision it’s not  genuine, they are trying their best to make you take a fast decision without telling your loved ones and friends who will discourage you.
  • It is safer to  assume anyone you don’t know, communicating with you is a scammer until it is proven otherwise.
  • Read the whitepaper and research well of the company where you are going to invest because many scams are done by this method.
  • Check whether it is genuine or fake.
  • Scammers are constantly upgrading their scam methods and anyone can be the next target.
  • Loss doesn’t just happen due to an internal or intentional mistake, and when it does happen everyone has a similar sense of remorse and risks that are absolute consequences.
  • You’ll be fooled many times by those scammers that have maintained a well structured fake community.
  • They can hire those PRs and people talking inside their community to make it look like they’re a legit community.
  • As for their workers, they’ll just tell that they need engagement but the purpose of it, they’re not talking about it because that’s what the main purpose it.
  • And that’s to make it look genuine that they have real people inside the community. But in reality, it’s all fake people that they’ve hired just to make discussions all over their place.
  • It’s safe to say as well that it’s not just the crypto industry that is not safe for newbies, everything that talks about money is not safe for everyone.
  • Crypto is the latest thing and in the last 5 years it become so successful that scammers make this as their paradise as there are a lot of naive investors in the market.
  • Do your investigations, and don’t listen to influencers and believe them.
  • Think that this is your hard earn money so you need to be careful where you are going to invest it.
  • Don’t be Greedy.
  • Don’t jump on it like a hungry cow.
  • Don’t trust the sweet words they offer you. Most of them are too good to be true but they will always sound inviting to invest with.
  • Make a wall to not fully support them unless they have proven themselves worthy of that kind of respect.
  • Always be in doubt. That will be the shield that will protect you from being scammed.
  • Must simply assume that our coins are never really safe despite our best efforts, so it is important to always be on alert and protect our coins to the best of our ability.
  • Improve the security of your coins by an important margin by buying a hardware wallet, since they are very secure devices and they are relatively cheap, instead of risking storing our coins in our computers or at an exchange.
  • Always good to know how to make technical and fundamental analysis so that you can get specific information what is the situation of the projects you want to invest
  • Many projects are delivering a good testament, but they always ended into a scam , so we need to be smart enough and have a lot of preparation before investing or trading

21M or Death

21 Million or Death
Arise…

The supply of Bitcoin is fixed at 21 million BTC, and as a hard coded monetary policy of the protocol, the fixed supply of the dominant cryptocurrency cannot be altered.

Former Google Product Director Steve Lee stated that only 1 percent of the world’s population can own more than 0.28 BTC, due to the fixed supply of Bitcoin.

In late 2017, Chainalysis, a blockchain forensics company that monitors and investigates cryptocurrency transactions, revealed in a research paper that up to four million BTC are permanently lost on the blockchain as a result of theft, loss of wallets and private keys, and the dormant wallet of Bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamoto, which experts have said is no longer accessible.

Kim Grauer, Senior Economist at Chainalysis, said at the time, that the lost supply of BTC is not taken into consideration by the market cap.That means, the real price of BTC could be substantially higher, as 4 to 6 million BTC are estimated to be lost.

Based on the estimate that the supply of Bitcoin is around 17 million, only 0.8 percent of the world population can own more than 0.28 BTC and less than 0.2 of the world population can own more than 1 BTC.

The 0.28 BTC figure introduced by Lee assumes the supply of Bitcoin to be 21 million, as it divides 21 million by 0.28 and divides the outcome of that by the world population that is 7.442 billion. If the research of Chainalysis is accurate and that 4 to 6 million BTC are lost on the blockchain, the supply of Bitcoin should be closer to around 16 to 17 million

The fact that any investor in the global market can be within the 1 percent of the world population with a $1,830 investment demonstrates that the cryptocurrency market is still at its early phase, and in terms of adoption, market development, infrastructure, and regulation, the sector can still grow significantly in the mid to long-term.

Hal Finney
There is no “Whole Coin”

Peace not War

Peace not War
Fighting for Peace…

“Imagine there’s no countries
It isn’t hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace

You may say that I’m a dreamer
But I’m not the only one
I hope someday you’ll join us
And the world will be as one”

John Lennon, Imagine

“He who joyfully marches to music rank and file has already earned my contempt.

He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord

would surely suffice.

This disgrace to civilization

should be done away with at once.

Heroism at command, senseless brutality, deplorable love-of-country stance and all the loathsome nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism, how violently I hate all this, how despicable and ignoble war is;

I would rather be torn to shreds than be part of so base an action!

It is my conviction that killing

under the cloak of war is nothing

but an act of murder.”

Albert Einstein

“War is peace.
Freedom is slavery.
Ignorance is strength.”

George Orwell, “1984”

“I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.”

Albert Einstein

“Only the dead have seen the end of war.”

Plato

“The supreme art of war is to subdue         the enemy without fighting.”

Sun Tzu, “The Art of War”

Today the most civilized countries of the world spend a maximum of their income on war and a minimum on education.

The twenty-first century will

reverse this order.

It will be more glorious to fight against ignorance than to die on the field of battle.

The discovery of a new scientific truth

will be more important than the

squabbles of diplomats.

Even the newspapers of our own

day are beginning to treat scientific discoveries and the creation of fresh philosophical concepts as news.

The newspapers of the twenty-first century will give a mere ‘stick’ in the back pages to accounts of crime or political controversies, but will headline on the front pages the proclamation of a new scientific hypothesis.

Progress along such lines will be impossible while nations persist in the savage

practice of killing each other off.

I inherited from my father, an erudite

man who labored hard for peace,

an ineradicable hatred of war.

Nikola Tesla

“Older men declare war.

But it is youth that must fight and die.”

Herbert Hoover

“War does not determine who is right –   only who is left.”

Anonymous

“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 clouds of war,

it is humanity hanging on a cross of iron.”

Dwight D. Eisenhower

“You can have peace.

Or you can have freedom.

Don’t ever count on having both at once.”

Robert A. Heinlein

“War is over … If you want it.”

John Lennon

“How is it possible to have a civil war?”

George Carlin

“It is not enough to win a war; it is more important to organize the peace.”

Aristotle

“They wrote in the old days that it is sweet and fitting to die for one’s country.

But in modern war, there is nothing

sweet nor fitting in your dying.

You will die like a dog

for no good reason.”

Ernest Hemingway

“In times of war, the law falls silent.”

“Silent enim leges inter arma“

Marcus Tullius Cicero

“The nuclear arms race is like two sworn enemies standing waist deep in gasoline, one with three matches, the other with five.”

Carl Sagan

“The human race is unimportant.

It is the self that must not be betrayed.”

“I suppose one could say that

Hitler didn’t betray his self.”

“You are right.

He did not.

But millions of Germans

did betray their selves.

That was the tragedy.

Not that one man had

the courage to be evil.

But that millions had not

the courage to be good.”

John Fowles, “The Magus”

“Fighting for peace, is like f***ing for chastity.”

Stephen King, “Hearts in Atlantis”

“I’m fed up to the ears with old men dreaming up wars for young men to die in.”

George McGovern

“Pacifism is objectively pro-fascist.

This is elementary common sense.

If you hamper the war effort of one side,

you automatically help out

that of the other.

Nor is there any real way

of remaining outside

such a war as the present one.

In practice, ‘he that is not with me

is against me’.”

George Orwell

“The essential act of war is destruction,

not necessarily of human lives,

but of the products of human labour.

War is a way of shattering to pieces,

or pouring into the stratosphere,

or sinking in the depths of the sea,

materials which might otherwise

be used to make the masses

too comfortable, and hence,

in the long run, too intelligent.”

George Orwell, “1984”

“Mankind must put an end to war – or war will put an end to mankind.”

[Address before the United Nations, September 25 1961]

John F. Kennedy

“Military men are just dumb, stupid animals to be used as pawns in foreign policy.”

Henry Kissinger

“In War: Resolution,
In Defeat: Defiance,
In Victory: Magnanimity
In Peace: Good Will.”

Winston S. Churchill, “The Second World War”

“this is the 21st century and we need

to redefine r/evolution.

this planet needs a people’s r/evolution.

a humanist r/evolution.

r/evolution is not about bloodshed or about going to the mountains and fighting.

we will fight if we are forced to

but the fundamental goal of

r/evolution must be peace.

we need a r/evolution of the mind.

we need a r/evolution of the heart.

we need a r/evolution of the spirit.

the power of the people is stronger

than any weapon.

a people’s r/evolution can’t be stopped.

we need to be weapons

of mass construction.

weapons of mass love.

it’s not enough just to change the system.

we need to change ourselves.

we have got to make this world

user friendly. user friendly.

are you ready to sacrifice

to end world hunger.

to sacrifice to end colonialism.

to end neo-colonialism.

to end racism.

to end sexism.

r/evolution means the end of exploitation.

r/evolution means respecting

people from other cultures.

r/evolution is creative.

r/evolution means treating your

mate as a friend and an equal.

r/evolution is sexy.

r/evolution means respecting and

learning from your children.

r/evolution is beautiful.

r/evolution means protecting

the people.

the plants. the animals. the air. the water.

r/evolution means saving this planet.

r/evolution is love.”

Assata Shakur

“After all, no one is stupid enough to prefer war to peace; in peace sons bury their fathers and in war fathers bury their sons.”

Herodotus

“Let my country die for me.”

James Joyce, “Ulysses”

“If we really saw war,

what war does to young minds and bodies, it would be impossible to embrace the myth of war.

If we had to stand over the mangled corpses of schoolchildren killed in Afghanistan and listen to the wails of their parents, we would not be able to repeat clichés we use to justify war.

This is why war is carefully sanitized.

This is why we are given war’s perverse and dark thrill but are spared from seeing war’s consequences.

The mythic visions of war keep it heroic and entertaining…

The wounded, the crippled, and the dead are, in this great charade, swiftly carted offstage.

They are war’s refuse.

We do not see them.

We do not hear them.

They are doomed, like wandering spirits, to float around the edges of our consciousness, ignored, even reviled.

The message they tell is too painful for us to hear.

We prefer to celebrate ourselves and our nation by imbibing the myths of glory, honor, patriotism, and heroism, words that in combat become empty and meaningless.“

Chris Hedges “Death of the Liberal Class”

“The ever more sophisticated weapons piling up in the arsenals of the wealthiest and the mightiest can kill the illiterate, the ill, the poor and the hungry, but they cannot kill ignorance, illness, poverty or hunger.”

Fidel Castro

“For the whole earth is the tomb

of famous men; not only are they commemorated by columns

and inscriptions in their own country,

but in foreign lands there dwells also an unwritten memorial of them,

graven not on stone

but in the hearts of men.

Make them your examples, and,

esteeming courage to be freedom and freedom to be happiness,

do not weigh too nicely

the perils of war.”

[Funeral Oration of Pericles]

Thucydides, “History of the Peloponnesian War”

“War and drink are the two things

man is never too poor to buy.”

William Faulkner

For me, the most ironic token of

[the first human moon landing] is the plaque signed by President Richard M. Nixon that Apollo 11 took to the moon.

It reads:

“We came in peace for all Mankind.”

As the United States was dropping

7 ½ megatons of conventional

explosives on small nations

in Southeast Asia,

we congratulated ourselves on

our humanity.

We would harm no one on a lifeless rock.”

Carl Sagan, “Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space”

“This topic brings me to that

worst outcrop of herd life,

the military system, which I abhor…

This plague-spot of civilization ought

to be abolished with all possible speed.

Heroism on command,

senseless violence,

and all the loathsome nonsense that

goes by the name of patriotism —

how passionately I hate them!”

Albert Einstein

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 René 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 apercu of the day was: ‘foreign policy should not he confused with missionary work.’ Saddam Hussein heartily concurred.

5. East Timor. The day after Kissinger left Djakarta in 1975, the Armed Forces

of Indonesia employed American weapons to invade and subjugate the independent former Portuguese colony of East Timor.

Isaacson gives a figure of 100,000 deaths resulting from the occupation, or one-seventh of the population, and there

are good judges who put this

estimate on the low side.

Kissinger was furious when news of

his own collusion was leaked, because

as well as breaking international law

the Indonesians were also violating

an agreement with the United States….

Monroe Leigh … pointed out this awkward latter fact. Kissinger snapped: ‘The Israelis when they go into Lebanon—when was the last time we protested that?‘

A good question, even if it did not and

does not lie especially well in his mouth.

It goes on and on and on until one

cannot eat enough to vomit enough.”

Christopher Hitchens

“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, “Demian: Die Geschichte von Emil Sinclairs Jugend”

“We need to decide that we will not go to war, whatever reason is conjured up by the politicians or the media, because war in our time is always indiscriminate, a war against innocents, a war against children.”

Howard Zinn

All wars are sacred,” he said.

“To those who have to fight them.

If the people who started wars

didn’t make them sacred, who would be

foolish enough to fight?

But, no matter what rallying cries

the orators give to the idiots who fight,

no matter what noble purposes they

assign to wars, there is never but

one reason for a war.

And that is money.

All wars are in reality money squabbles.

But so few people ever realize it.

Their ears are too full of bugles

and drums and the fine words

from stay-at-home orators.

Sometimes the rallying cry is

’save the Tomb of Christ from the Heathen!’

Sometimes it’s ’down with Popery!’

and sometimes ‘Liberty!’

and sometimes

‘Cotton, Slavery and States’ Rights!”

Margaret Mitchell, “Gone with the Wind”

“The most dangerous people in the world are not the tiny minority instigating evil acts, but those who do the acts for them.

For example, when the British

invaded India, many Indians accepted

to work for the British to kill off

Indians who resisted their occupation.

So in other words, many Indians were

hired to kill other Indians on behalf

of the enemy for a paycheck.

Today, we have mercenaries in Africa, corporate armies from the western world, and unemployed men throughout the Middle East killing their own people – and people of other nations – for a paycheck.

To act without a conscience,

but for a paycheck,

makes anyone a dangerous animal.

The devil would be powerless

if he couldn’t entice people

to do his work.

So as long as money continues to seduce

the hungry, the hopeless, the broken,

the greedy, and the needy,

there will always be

war between brothers.”

Suzy Kassem

“Peace is such hard work.

Harder than war.

It takes way more effort

to forgive than to kill.”

Rae Carson, “The Bitter Kingdom” (Fire and Thorns, #3)

“An unjust law is itself a species of violence.

Arrest for its breach is more so.

Now the law of nonviolence says that violence should be resisted not by counter-violence but by nonviolence.

This I do by breaking the law and by peacefully submitting to arrest and imprisonment.”

Mahatma Gandhi, “Non-violence in Peace and War” 1942-1949

“Civilized society is perpetually menaced with disintegration through this primary hostility of men towards one another.”

Sigmund Freud

“In war,

the strong make slaves of the weak,

and in peace,

the rich makes slaves of the poor.”

Oscar Wilde

“So it is the human condition that to wish for the greatness of one’s fatherland

is to wish evil to one’s neighbors.

The citizen of the universe would be

the man who wishes his country never to be either greater or smaller, richer or poorer.”

Voltaire, “Philosophical Dictionary”

“A democracy which makes or even effectively prepares for modern,

scientific war must necessarily

cease to be democratic.

No country can be really well

prepared for modern war unless

it is governed by a tyrant,

at the head of a highly trained

and perfectly obedient bureaucracy.”

Aldous Huxley, “Ends and Means”

“War may sometimes be a necessary evil.

But no matter how necessary,

it is always an evil, never a good.

We will not learn to live together in peace

by killing each other’s children.”

Jimmy Carter, “The Nobel Peace Prize Lecture”

“The most disadvantageous peace

is better than the most just war.”

Desiderius Erasmus Roterodamus, “Adagia. Lateinisch / Deutsch”

“I prefer the most unfair peace

to the most righteous war.”

Cicero

“War is not the answer,

for only love can conquer hate.”

Marvin Gaye

“A weapon does not decide

whether or not to kill.

A weapon is a manifestation of a decision that has already been made.”

Steven Galloway, “The Cellist of Sarajevo”

“There has never been a just [war],

never an honorable one —

on the part of the instigator of the war.

I can see a million years ahead,

and this rule will never change

in so many as half a dozen instances.

The loud little handful — as usual —

will shout for the war.

The pulpit will–warily and cautiously–object–at first;

the great, big, dull bulk of the nation

will rub its sleepy eyes and try to

make out why there should be a war,

and will say, earnestly and indignantly,

‘It is unjust and dishonorable,

and there is no necessity for it.

‘ Then the handful will shout louder.

A few fair men on the other side will

argue and reason against the war with speech and pen, and at first will have a hearing and be applauded; but it will not last long; those others will outshout them, and presently the anti-war audiences will thin out and lose popularity.

Before long you will see this curious thing: the speakers stoned from the platform,

and free speech strangled by hordes of furious men who in their secret hearts are still at one with those stoned speakers–as earlier–but do not dare say so.

And now the whole nation–pulpit and all–will take up the war-cry, and shout

itself hoarse, and mob any honest man

who ventures to open his mouth;

and presently such mouths

will cease to open.

Next the statesmen will invent cheap lies, putting the blame upon the nation that is attacked, and every man will be glad of those conscience-soothing falsities,

and will diligently study them, and refuse

to examine any refutations of them;

and thus he will by and by convince

himself the war is just,

and will thank God

for the better sleep he enjoys

after this process of

grotesque self-deception.”

Mark Twain, “The Mysterious Stranger and Other Stories”

“We often think of peace

as the absence of war,

that if powerful countries

would reduce their weapon arsenals,

we could have peace.

But if we look deeply into the weapons,

we see our own minds – our own

prejudices, fears and ignorance.

Even if we transport all the bombs

to the moon, the roots of war

and the roots of bombs are still there,

in our hearts and minds,

and sooner or later we will

make new bombs.

To work for peace is to uproot war from ourselves and from the hearts

of men and women.

To prepare for war,

to give millions of men and women

the opportunity to practice killing

day and night in their hearts,

is to plant millions of seeds of violence, anger, frustration, and fear that will be passed on for generations to come.”

Thich Nhat Hanh, “Living Buddha, Living Christ”

“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.”

Bernard Cornwell, “Death of Kings” (The Saxon Stories, #6)

“That there are men in all countries

who get their living by war,

and by keeping up the quarrels

of Nations is as shocking as it is true…”

Thomas Paine

“The real power in America is held by a fast-emerging new Oligarchy of pimps

and preachers who see no need for Democracy or fairness or even trees,

except maybe the ones in their own yards, and they don’t mind admitting it.

They worship money and power and death.

Their ideal solution to all the

nation’s problems would be

another 100 Year War.”

Hunter S. Thompson, “Kingdom of Fear: Loathsome Secrets of a Star-Crossed Child in the Final Days of the American Century”

“Once war becomes a clash of absolutes, there is no breathing room for mercy.

Absolute truth is blind truth.”

Deepak Chopra, “The Third Jesus: The Christ We Cannot Ignore”

“What is so often said about the solders

of the 20th century is that the

fought to make us free.

Which is a wonderful sentiment and

one witch should evoke tremendous gratitude if in fact there was a shred

of truth in that statement but,

it’s not true.

It’s not even close to true

in fact it’s the opposite of truth.

There’s this myth around that people believe that the way to honor deaths of so many of millions of people; that the way to honor is to say that we achieved some tangible, positive, good, out of their death’s.

That’s how we are supposed to

honor their deaths.

We can try and rescue some positive

and forward momentum of human progress, of human virtue from these hundreds of millions of death’s but we

don’t do it by pretending that they’d died

to set us free because we are less free;

far less free now then we were

before these slaughters began.

These people did not die to set us free.

They did not die fighting any enemy

other than the ones that the

previous deaths created.

The beginning of wisdom is to call

things by their proper names.

Solders are paid killers, and I say this

with a great degree of sympathy to young men and women who are suckered into

a life of evil through propaganda and the labeling of heroic to a man in costume who kills for money and the life of honor is accepting ordered killings for money, prestige, and pensions.

We create the possibility of moral choice

by communicating truth

about ethics to people.

That to me is where real heroism

and real respect for the dead lies.

Real respect for the dead lies in exhuming the corpses and hearing what they would say if they could speak out; and they

would say: If any ask us why we died tell

it’s because our fathers lied, tell them it’s because we were told that charging up a hill and slaughtering our fellow man was heroic, noble, and honorable.

But these hundreds of millions of ghosts encircled the world in agony, remorse

will not be released from our collective unconscious until we lay the truth of

their murders on the table and look

at the horror that is the lie;

that murder for money can be moral, that murder for prestige can be moral.

These poor young men and woman propagandized into an undead ethical status lied to about what is noble,

virtuous, courageous, honorable, decent, and good to the point that they’re rolling hand grenades into children’s rooms and the illusion that, that is going to make the world a better place.

We have to stare this in the face if we want to remember why these people died. They did not die to set us free. They did not die to make the world a better place. They died because we are ruled by sociopaths. The only thing that can create a better world is the truth is the virtue is the honor and courage of standing up to the genocidal lies of mankind and calling them lies and ultimate corruptions.

The trauma and horrors of this century of staggering bloodshed of the brief respite of the 19th century. This addiction to blood and the idea that if we pour more bodies into the hole of the mass graves of the 20th century, if we pour more bodies and more blood we can build some sort of cathedral to a better place but it doesn’t happen. We can throw as many young men and woman as we want into this pit of slaughter and it will never be full. It will never do anything other than sink and recede further into the depths of hell. We can’t build a better world on bodies. We can’t build peace on blood. If we don’t look back and see the army of the dead of the 20th century calling out for us to see that they died to enslave us. That whenever there was a war the government grew and grew.

We are so addicted to this lie. What we need to do is remember that these bodies bury us. This ocean of blood that we create through the fantasy that violence brings virtue. It drowns us, drowns our children, our future, and the world. When we pour these endless young bodies into this pit of death; we follow it.”

Stefan Molyneux

“It is only those who have neither fired a shot nor heard the shrieks and groans

of the wounded who cry aloud for blood,

more vengeance, more desolation.

War is hell.”

William Tecumseh Sherman

Our enemies are Medes and Persians,

men who for centuries have lived

soft and luxurious lives;

we of Macedon for generations past

have been trained in the hard school

of danger and war.

Above all, we are free men,

and they are slaves.

There are Greek troops, to be sure, in Persian service — but how different

is their cause from ours!

They will be fighting for pay — and not much of at that; we, on the contrary,

shall fight for Greece, and our

hearts will be in it.

As for our foreign troops — Thracians, Paeonians, Illyrians, Agrianes — they

are the best and stoutest soldiers in Europe, and they will find as their opponents the slackest and softest of the tribes of Asia.

And what, finally, of the two men

in supreme command?

You have Alexander, they — Darius!”

Alexander the Great

“If I had known they were going to do this,

I would have become a shoemaker.”

Albert Einstein

“One question in my mind,

which I hardly dare mention in public,

is whether patriotism has, overall, been a force for good or evil in the world.

Patriotism is rampant in war and

there are some good things about it.

Just as self-respect and pride bring out the best in an individual, pride in family,

pride in teammates, pride in hometown bring out the best in groups of people.

War brings out the kind of pride in country that encourages its citizens in the direction of excellence and it encourages them

to be ready to die for it.

At no time do people work so well

together to achieve the same goal

as they do in wartime.

Maybe that’s enough to make patriotism eligible to be considered a virtue.

If only I could get out of my mind

the most patriotic people

who ever lived,

the Nazi Germans.”

Andy Rooney, “My War”

“My own concern is primarily the

terror and violence carried out by

my own state, for two reasons.

For one thing, because it happens to be the larger component of international violence.

But also for a much more important

reason than that; namely, I can

do something about it.

So even if the U.S. was responsible

for 2 percent of the violence in the

world instead of the majority of it,

it would be that 2 percent I would

be primarily responsible for.

And that is a simple ethical judgment.

That is, the ethical value of one’s actions depends on their anticipated

and predictable consequences.

It is very easy to denounce the

atrocities of someone else.

That has about as much ethical value

as denouncing atrocities that

took place in the 18th century.”

Noam Chomsky

“We are in the hands of men whose power and wealth have separated them

from the reality of daily life

and from the imagination.

We are right to be afraid.”

Grace Paley

“Wars of nations are fought

to change maps.

But wars of poverty are fought

to map change.”

Muhammad Ali

“What passing bells for these

who die as cattle?
Only the monstrous anger of the guns.
Only the stuttering rifle’s rapid rattle
Can patter out their hasty orisons.
No mockeries now for them;

no prayers, nor bells,
Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs,
The shrill demented choirs of wailing shells,
And bugles calling for them from sad shires.
What candles may be held

to speed them all?
Not in the hands of boys, but in their eyes,
Shall shine the holy glimmers of goodbyes.
The pallor of girls’ brows shall be their pall,
Their flowers the tenderness

of patient minds,
And each, slow dusk a drawing

down of blinds.”

Wilfred Owen, The War Poems

Millions of fathers in rain
Millions of mothers in pain
Millions of brothers in woe


Millions of sisters nowhere to go

Millions of daughters walk in the mud
Millions of children wash in the flood
A million girls vomit and groan
Millions of families hopeless alone”

Allen Ginsberg, “Poems”

“No honest journalist should be willing to describe himself or herself as ’embedded.’

To say, ‘I’m an embedded journalist’ is to say, ‘I’m a government Propagandist.”

Noam Chomsky, “Imperial Ambitions: Conversations on the Post-9/11 World”

“Darwinism by itself did not produce the Holocaust, but without Darwinism…

neither Hitler nor his Nazi followers

would have had the necessary scientific underpinnings to convince themselves

and their collaborators that one

of the worlds greatest atrocities

was really morally praiseworthy.”

Richard Weikart, “From Darwin to Hitler: Evolutionary Ethics, Eugenics, and Racism in Germany”

“War means fighting.

The business of the soldier is to fight.

Armies are not called out to dig trenches,

to throw up breastworks,to live in camps, but to find the enemy and strike him; to invade his country, and do him all possible damage in the shortest possible time.

This will involve great destruction of life and property while it lasts; but such a war will of necessity be of brief continuance,

and so would be an economy of life

and property in the end.”

Stonewall Jackson

“I have seen war.

I have seen war on land and sea.

I have seen blood running from

the wounded.

I have seen men coughing out their

gassed lungs.

I have seen the dead in the mud.

I have seen cities destroyed.

I have seen 200 limping, exhausted

men come out of line—the survivors

of a regiment of 1,000 that went

forward 48 hours before.

I have seen children starving.

I have seen the agony of mothers and wives.

I hate war.”

Franklin D. Roosevelt

“How is the world ruled and led to war?

Diplomats lie to journalists and believe these lies when they see them in print.”

Karl Kraus

“Each Javelin round costs $80,000, and

the idea that it’s fired by a guy who doesn’t make that in a year at a guy who doesn’t make that in a lifetime is somehow so outrageous it almost makes the

war seem winnable.”

Sebastian Junger, “War”

“But what are a hundred million deaths?

When one has served in a war, one hardly knows what a dead man is, after a while.

And since a dead man has no substance unless one has actually seen him dead,

a hundred million corpses broadcast through history are no more than a puff

of smoke in the imagination.”

Albert Camus

“I have never advocated war except

as means of peace, so seek peace,

but prepare for war.

Because war…

War never changes.

War is like winter and winter is coming.”

Ulysses S Grant

“I do not say that there is no glory

to be gained [in war];

but it is not personal glory.

In itself, no cause was ever more glorious than that of men who struggle, not to conquer territory, not to gather spoil,

not to gratify ambition, but for freedom,

for religion, for hearth and home, and to revenge the countless atrocities inflicted upon them by their oppressors.”

G. A. HENTY

“World War I was the most colossal, murderous, mismanaged butchery that

has ever taken place on earth.

Any writer who said otherwise lied,

So the writers either wrote propaganda, shut up, or fought.”

Ernest Hemingway

“In peace, children inter their parents;

war violates the order of nature and

causes parents to inter their children.”

Herodotus

“Perpetual peace is a futile dream.”

Gen. George S. Patton

“Such then is the human condition,

that to wish greatness for one’s country

is to wish harm to one’s neighbors.”

Voltaire

“It is precisely that requirement

of shared 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!”

Fyodor Dostoyevsky, “The Brothers Karamazov”

What a terrible thing war is,

what a terrible thing!”

Leo Tolstoy, “War and Peace”

“When you think about new-born babies being killed in our own lifetime,’ he said,

‘all the efforts of culture seem worthless.

What have people learned from all

our Goethes and Bachs?

To kill babies?”

Vasily Grossman, “Life and Fate”

“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.”

Christopher Hitchens, “The Quotable Hitchens from Alcohol to Zionism: The Very Best of Christopher Hitchens”

“I have never advocated war

except as a means of peace.”

Ulysses S. Grant

“It is of the greatest important in this world that a man should know himself, and the measure of his own strength and means; and he who knows that he has not a genius for fighting must learn how to govern

by the arts of peace.”

Machiavelli, Niccolo

“War has no longer the justification that

it makes for the survival of the fittest;

it involves the survival of the less fit.

The idea that the struggle between nations is a part of the evolutionary law of man’s advance involves a profound misreading

of the biological analogy.


The warlike nations do not inherit the earth; they represent

the decaying human element.”

Norman Angell, “The Great Illusion”

“Homo sapiens!

The name itself was an irony.

They had not been wise at all,

but incredibly stupid.

Lords of the Earth with their great gray brains, their thinking minds had placed them above all other forms of life.

Yet it had not been thought that compelled them to act, but emotion.

From the dawn of their evolution they had killed, and conquered, and subdued.

They had committed atrocities on others

of their kind, ravaged the land, polluted

and destroyed, left millions to starve

in Third World countries, and finished

it all with a nuclear holocaust.

The mutants were right.

Intelligent creatures did not commit genocide, or murder the environment

on which they were dependent.”

Louise Lawrence, “Children of the Dust”

“War: first, one hopes to win;


then one expects the enemy to lose;

then, one is satisfied that he too is suffering;


in the end, one is surprised that

everyone has lost.”

Karl Kraus

“War is unlike life.

It’s a denial of everything you learn life is.

And that’s why when you get finished with it, you see that if offers no lessons that can’t be bettered learned in civilian life.

You are exposed to horrors you

would sooner forget.”

Robert Graff