"One does every day and without a second thought, what at another time would be the event of a year, perhaps of a life."
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War quotes
War
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War quotes (page 148 of 853)
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"It is now conceded that all idea of British intervention is at an end... I want to hug the army of the Potomac. I want to get the whole army of Vicksburg drunk at my own expense. I want to fight some small man and lick him."
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"People here are quite struck aback at Sunday's news of the capture of New Orleans. It took them three days to make up their minds to believe it. The division of American had become an idea so fixed that they had about shut out all the avenues to the reception of any other."
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"If the alternative is to keep all just men in prison, or give up war and slavery, the State will not hesitate which to choose."
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"If one doubts whether Grecian valor and patriotism are not a fiction of the poets, he may go to Athens and see still upon the walls of the temple of Minerva the circular marks made by the shields taken from the enemy in the Persian war, which were suspended there. We have not far to seek for living and unquestionable evidence. The very dust takes shape and confirms some story which we had read."
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"If you would learn to speak all tongues and conform to the customs of all nations, if you would travel farther than all travellers, be naturalized in all climes, and cause the Sphinx to dash her head against a stone, even obey the precept of the old philosopher, and Explore thyself. Herein are demanded the eye and the nerve. Only the defeated and deserters go to the wars, cowards that run away and enlist."
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"My opposition to war is not based upon pacifist or non-resistant principles. It may be that the present state of civilization is such that certain international questions cannot be discussed; it may be that they have to be fought out. But the fighting never settles the question. It only gets the participants around to a frame of mind where they will agree to discuss what they were fighting about."
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"Wars do not end wars any more than an extraordinarily large conflagration does away with the fire hazard."
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"This war, disguise it as they may, is virtually nothing more or less than perpetual slavery against universal freedoms."
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"A war undertaken and brazenly carried on for the perpetual enslavement of colored men, calls logically and loudly for colored men to help suppress it."
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"In wars of the European powers in matters relating to themselves we have never taken any part, nor does it comport with our policy so to do"
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"If you are well off and can afford to spend ten or twenty-five dollars a day to hire some patient soul to listen to your troubles you can be readjusted to the crazy scheme of things and spare yourself the humiliation of becoming a Christian Scientist. You can have your ego trimmed or removed, as you wish, just like a wart or bunion."
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"No matter how vast, how total, the failure of man here on earth, the work of man will be resumed elsewhere. War leaders talk of resuming operations on this front and that, but man's front embraces the whole universe."
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"Of course in war all madness's come out in a man. That is the fault of war not of a man or a nation."
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"It's an irony of our times that men seeking peace must make war."
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"This soldiering thing sadly deadens that very good thing, humanity."
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"The right of individual property is no doubt the very corner-stone of civilization, as hitherto understood; but I am a little impatient of being told that property is entitled to exceptional consideration because it bears all the burdens of the state. It bears those, indeed, which can be most easily borne, but poverty pays with its person the chief expenses of war, pestilence, and famine."
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"Ez fer war, I call it murder,- There you hev it plain an' flat; I don't want to go no furder Than my Testyment fer that. . . . . . An' you 've gut to git up airly Ef you want to take in God."
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"We kind o' thought Christ went agin war an' pillage."
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"Not but wut abstract war is horrid, I sign to thet with all my heart, But civilysation doos git forrid Sometimes, upon a powder-cart."
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