Great Throughts Treasury

This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.

Related Quotes

John Steinbeck, fully John Ernst Steinbeck

All war is a symptom of man's failure as a thinking animal.

Failure | Thinking | War | Failure |

John Steinbeck, fully John Ernst Steinbeck

The writer is delegated to declare and to celebrate man's proven capacity for greatness of heart and spirit - for gallantry in defeat - for courage, compassion and love. In the endless war against weakness and despair, these are the bright rally-flags of hope and of emulation.

Capacity | Compassion | Defeat | Greatness | Heart | Hope | Spirit | War | Weakness |

John Hersey, fully John Richard Hersey

The crux of the matter is whether total war in its present form is justifiable, even when it serves a just purpose. Does it not have material and spiritual evil as its consequences which far exceed whatever good might result? When will our moralists give us an answer to this question?

Consequences | Evil | Good | Present | War | Will |

John F. Kennedy, fully John Fitzgerald "Jack" Kennedy

We prefer world law in the age of self-determination to world war in the age of mass extermination.

Age | Law | Self-determination | War | World |

John Woolman

May we look upon our treasure, the furniture of our houses, and our garments, and try to discover whether the seeds of war have nourishment in these our possessions.

War |

John Fowles, fully John Robert Fowles

Men love war because it allows them to look serious. Because it is the one thing that stops women laughing at them.

Love | War |

John Henry Newman

There is such a thing as legitimate warfare: war has its laws; there are things which may fairly be done, and things which may not be done.

War |

John Stuart Mill

As for charity, it is a matter in which the immediate effect on the persons directly concerned, and the ultimate consequence to the general good, are apt to be at complete war with one another.

War |

John Haynes Holmes

Religion must be used in furthering great works of justice and reform. It must be used to establish right relations between different groups of men, and thus to make a reality of brotherhood. It must be used to abolish poverty, the breeding ground of all misery and crime, by distributing equably among men the abundance of the soil. And it must be used to get rid of war and to establish enduring peace. Here is the supreme test of the effectiveness of religion.

Abundance | Justice | Men | Reality | Right | War |

Milton Friedman, fully John Milton Friedman

It is because it's prohibited. See, if you look at the drug war from a purely economic point of view, the role of the government is to protect the drug cartel. That's literally true.

Government | War | Government |

Jonathan Schell, fully Jonathan Edward Schell

It is a key fact about American policy in Vietnam that the withdrawel of American troops was built into it from the start. None of the presidents who waged war in Vietnam contemplated an open-ended campaign; all promised the public that American troops would be able to leave in the not-too-remote future. The promise of withdrawel precluded a policy of occupation of the traditional colonial sort, in which a great power simply imposes its will on a small one indefinitely.

Occupation | Policy | Power | Promise | Public | War | Will |

John Paul Jones

An honorable Peace is and always was my first wish! I can take no delight in the effusion of human Blood; but, if this War should continue, I wish to have the most active part in it.

Peace | War |

John Maynard Keynes

The decadent international but individualistic capitalism in the hands of which we found ourselves after the war is not a success. It is not intelligent. It is not beautiful. It is not just. It is not virtuous. And it doesn't deliver the goods.

Capitalism | War |

Joseph Grew, fully Joseph Clark Grew

If surrender could have been brought about in May, 1945, or even in June or July, before the entrance of Soviet Russia into the [Pacific] war and the use of the atomic bomb, the world would have been the gainer.

Surrender | War | World |

Joseph R. Sizoo

It is a tragedy when the mind, soul and heart are in slavery in a way of life which refuses to recognize that people have rights before God. It is a war which makes hate a badge of honor, slavery the keystone to prosperity. Not to resist would make one an accomplice to crime.... We must resist oppression and tyranny. We have to end it no matter what it costs.

Hate | Heart | Life | Life | Oppression | People | Rights | Slavery | Soul | Tragedy | War |

Carl von Clausewitz, fully Carl Philipp Gottfried von Clausewitz, also Karl von Clausewitz

The political object is the goal, war is the means of reaching it, and the means can never be considered in isolation form their purposes.

Isolation | Means | Object | War |

Kurt Gödel, also Goedel

There would be no danger of an atomic war if advances in history, the science of right and of state, philosophy, psychology, literature, art, etc. were as great as in physics. But instead of such progress, one is struck by significant regresses in many of the spiritual sciences.

Danger | Right | Science | War | Danger |

L. Ron Hubbard, fully Lafayette Ron Hubbard

There is no war not based on lies, there is no infamy alive without its kindred kin, deceit.

Infamy | War |