This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
I do not know how to light the fire, I do not know the prayer, but I know the place and this must be sufficient. [When he saw the war approaching, he went to the forest and said this]
Charles De Montesquieu, formally Charles-Louis de Secondat, Baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu
There are only two cases in which war is just: first, in order to resist the aggression of an enemy, and second, in order to help an ally who has been attacked.
Aggression | Order | War |
Mozi or Mo-tze, Mocius or Mo-tzu, original name Mo Di, aka Master Mo NULL
The Ten Mohist Doctrines [paraphrase] As their movement developed, the Mohists came to present themselves as offering a collection of ten key doctrines, divided into five pairs. The ten doctrines correspond to the titles of the ten triads, the ten sets of three essays that form the core of the Mozi. Although the essays in each triad differ in detail, the gist of each doctrine may be briefly summarized as follows. “Elevating the Worthy” and “Conforming Upward.” The purpose of government is to achieve a stable social, economic, and political order (zhi, pronounced “jr”) by promulgating a unified conception of morality (yi). This task of moral education is to be carried out by encouraging everyone to “conform upward” to the good example set by social and political superiors and by rewarding those who do so and punishing those who do not. Government is to be structured as a centralized, bureaucratic state led by a virtuous monarch and managed by a hierarchy of appointed officials. Appointments are to be made on the basis of competence and moral merit, without regard for candidates' social status or origins. “Inclusive Care” and “Rejecting Aggression.” To achieve social order and exemplify the key virtue of ren (humanity, goodwill), people must inclusively care for each other, having as much concern for others' lives, families, and communities as for their own, and in their relations with others seek to benefit them. Military aggression is wrong for the same reasons that theft, robbery, and murder are: it harms others in pursuit of selfish benefit, while ultimately failing to benefit Heaven, the spirits, or society as a whole. “Thrift in Utilization” and “Thrift in Funerals.” To benefit society and care for the welfare of the people, wasteful luxury and useless expenditures must be eliminated. Seeking always to bring wealth to the people and order to society, the ren (humane) person avoids wasting resources on extravagant funerals and prolonged mourning (which were the custom in ancient China). “Heaven's Intention” and “Elucidating Ghosts.” Heaven is the noblest, wisest moral agent, so its intention is a reliable, objective standard of what is morally right (yi) and must be respected. Heaven rewards those who obey its intention and punishes those who defy it, hence people should strive to be humane and do what is right. Social and moral order (zhi) can be advanced by encouraging belief in ghosts and spirits who reward the good and punish the wicked. “Rejecting Music” and “Rejecting Fatalism.” The humane (ren) person opposes the extravagant musical entertainment and other luxuries enjoyed by rulers and high officials, because these waste resources that could otherwise be used for feeding and clothing the common people. Fatalism is not ren, because by teaching that our lot in life is predestined and human effort is useless, it interferes with the pursuit of economic wealth, a large population, and social order (three primary goods that the humane person desires for society). Fatalism fails to meet a series of justificatory criteria and so must be rejected.
Aggression | Belief | Care | Competence | Custom | Doctrine | Education | Effort | Entertainment | Example | Good | Government | Heaven | Intention | Life | Life | Luxury | Morality | Mourning | Murder | Order | People | Present | Purpose | Purpose | Regard | Reward | Right | Society | Virtue | Virtue | Waste | Wealth | Wrong | Society | Government | Murder |
Mozi or Mo-tze, Mocius or Mo-tzu, original name Mo Di, aka Master Mo NULL
[paraphrase] Of the three goods, the Mohists' concept of “order” (zhi) calls for special attention. This is a complex good comprising a variety of conditions the Mohists probably regard as constitutive of the good social life. From passages in which the Mohists characterize zhi (order) and its opposite, luan (disorder, turmoil), we find that the elements of “order” include at least four sorts of conditions. All levels of society conform to unified moral standards, and incentives and disincentives based on these standards are administered fairly by virtuous leaders, as described in Mohist political theory. Peace and social harmony prevail, characterized negatively as the absence of crime, deceit, harassment, injury, conflict, and military aggression. Members of society manifest virtues constitutive of the proper performance of their relational social roles as ruler or subject, father or son, and elder or younger brother. Order obtains only when the ruler is benevolent, his subjects are loyal, fathers are kind, sons are filial, and elder and younger brothers display brotherly love and respect. (Like much ancient thought, Mohism has a sexist bias, and with few exceptions the texts disregard the social roles of women.) Community members habitually engage in reciprocal assistance and charity, sharing information, labor, education, and surplus goods and aiding the destitute and unfortunate. In summary, “benefit to the world” is a general conception of welfare comprising social harmony and public security; economic prosperity and a thriving population and family; reciprocal cooperation among neighbors and charity for the needy; and good social relations, manifested in the exercise of virtues corresponding to the fundamental social roles.
Absence | Charity | Cooperation | Display | Father | Good | Harmony | Love | Order | Prosperity | Public | Regard | Society | Surplus | Society |
Bawa Mahaiyadden, fully Muhammad Raheem Bawa Muhaiyaddeen
Killing, cutting, slaughtering, destroying, injuring or abusing another's life is not Islam. But to each one of us is enjoined the Qurban, the sacrifice - the sacrifice of our Nafs, our base desires, our animosities, our egoism. Other than Allah and His Truth, every other thing must be the object of our sacrifice. His Word, His Qualities, His Traits, His Actions, His unique Three- thousand Qualities, - other than these, everything else are all enemies unto you and these must be sacrificed. And to wage total war against such enemies unto oneself, is Islam. Anger, hastiness, rage, fury, impatience, feelings of superiority of 'I' and 'you', pride, jealousy, treachery, selfishness, sorcery and black magic, mesmerism trickery, self-praise, conceit, titles, position and status, exclusiveness as between 'you' and 'I', falsehood, envy, - to cut away these base qualities and more, - is Islam. Such then is the formidable war within. This is one's very own battle, one's own sacrifice or Qurban, this is one's own war of purification, one's own purging of all that are enemies unto oneself. It is these which are the wars of Islam. Islam is certainly vehemently not a war which kills man or another human being or which slaughters or divides human kind or causes dissensions in human societies or annihilates humans. This is not Islam... For, Islam by its definition, has no enmity, no differences, no distinctions. To segregate and divide those who themselves divide and cause separation among the children of Adam, - is not Islam.
Cause | Children | Feelings | Life | Life | Man | Object | Position | Qualities | Sacrifice | Superiority | Unique | War |
Bawa Mahaiyadden, fully Muhammad Raheem Bawa Muhaiyaddeen
Children of any religion who have true faith must realize that God is the only One who knows all of everything. Therefore, only God can judge whether a person has faith, certitude, and determination or not and whether a person lives with that purity that can be called Islam or not. No one else can give that judgment. Do not wave your religion like a banner and go out to capture others. Only one kind of war is permissible in the eyes of God: the war you wage within yourself to defeat the demonic forces of lust, anger, jealousy, desire for revenge, and other evil feelings and attributes that may exist within your heart. God has sent each of the prophets as witnesses to the grace of God and as supports to help us in this inner war. This is the reason for the Qur'an. It is to help the true Muslim fight this inner battle and win victory over his own base desires that God sent the Messenger with the Qur'an.
Battle | Defeat | Desire | Determination | Evil | Faith | Feelings | God | Grace | Purity | Reason | Religion | War | God |
Bawa Mahaiyadden, fully Muhammad Raheem Bawa Muhaiyaddeen
To wage war within oneself is Islam; the real fight is an inner one. To dispel evil qualities, evil thoughts, and the differences that lead to separations is Islam. To wage war upon jealousy, envy, and vengeance is Islam. To cut out and discard the qualities of Satan and to fill ourselves with the qualities of Allah is Islam. To show a heart full of love to our brothers and sisters is the wealth of Islam.
Evil | Heart | Love | Qualities | Satan | Vengeance | War | Wealth |
Murray Kempton, fully James Murray Kempton
A critic is someone who enters the battlefield after the war is over and shoots the wounded.
Kafū Nagai, pen name for Nagai Sōkichi
It has been four years since I commenced this life of solitude, living in the maid's room and cooking for myself. At first there was a certain novelty in the arrangement. Then, toward the end of last year, the ways of the military government began to grow more arbitrary, and there came a change in the world; and somehow the drab and inconvenient life of the bachelor has come to seem so appropriate to the moods of the days that I would not now find it easy to change. Indeed, my feelings and thoughts are quite beyond description when, on an evening of a sudden autumn rain, I drag my sandals along the cliff, taking care that the frayed thong does not break, and buy onions and radishes in Tanimachi. I am quite drunk with the melancholy poetry of it all. However malicious and arbitrary may be the ways of the government, it cannot keep one's fancies from running free. There will be freedom while there is life.
Care | Change | Feelings | Freedom | Government | Inconvenient | Life | Life | Melancholy | Novelty | Poetry | Will | Government | Novelty |
In a year when it felt at times as if we had nothing in common anymore, we were united in this hope: that our men and women at arms might soon come safely home, because their job was done. They are the bright, sharp instrument of a blunt policy, and success or failure in a war unlike any in history ultimately rests with them.
Failure | History | Men | Nothing | Success | War | Failure |
Muhammad Ali, born Cassius Marcellus Clay, Jr.
Why should they ask me to put on a uniform and go 10,000 miles from home and drop bombs and bullets on Brown people in Vietnam while so-called Negro people in Louisville are treated like dogs and denied simple human rights? No I’m not going 10,000 miles from home to help murder and burn another poor nation simply to continue the domination of white slave masters of the darker people the world over. This is the day when such evils must come to an end. I have been warned that to take such a stand would cost me millions of dollars. But I have said it once and I will say it again. The real enemy of my people is here. I will not disgrace my religion, my people or myself by becoming a tool to enslave those who are fighting for their own justice, freedom and equality. If I thought the war was going to bring freedom and equality to 22 million of my people they wouldn’t have to draft me, I’d join tomorrow. I have nothing to lose by standing up for my beliefs. So I’ll go to jail, so what? We’ve been in jail for 400 years.
Cost | Day | Disgrace | Enemy | Equality | Fighting | Freedom | Murder | Nothing | People | Thought | War | Will | World | Murder | Thought |
Ironically, many ordinary people and their families cannot afford to live “simply.” It is a demanding enterprise when one considers the costliness of “simple” hand-crafted artifacts and the exorbitant price of organic and “recycled” goods. Moreover, what the “production end” of the environmental crisis cannot sell to the “consumption end,” it will certainly sell to the military. General Electric enjoys considerable eminence not only for its refrigerators but also for its Gatling guns. This shadowy side of the environmental problem — military production — can only be ignored by attaining an ecological airheadedness so vacuous as to defy description.
Napoleon Bonaparte, Napoleon I
In war one must lean on an obstacle in order to overcome it.
Our lives are a battlefield on which is fought a continuous war between the forces that are pledged to confirm our humanity and those determined to dismantle it; those who strive to build a protective wall around it, and those who wish to pull it down; those who seek to mould it and those committed to breaking it up; those who aim to open our eyes, to make us see the light and look to tomorrow [...] and those who wish to lull us into closing our eyes.
Nelson Mandela, fully Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela
We cannot proclaim this century the African Century and then ignore the AIDS pandemic, as some political leaders are apt to do. To claim this century the African Century is to declare war on AIDS.
War |
General disarmament being for the present entirely out of question, a proportionate reduction might be recommended. The safety of any country and of the world's commerce depending not on the absolute, but relative amount of war material, this would be evidently the first reasonable step to take towards universal economy and peace. But it would be a hopeless task to establish an equitable basis of adjustment. Population, naval strength, force of army, commercial importance, water-power, or any other natural resource, actual or prospective, are equally unsatisfactory standards to consider.
The distance at which it can strike, and the destructive power of such a quasi-intelligent machine being for all practical purposes unlimited, the gun, the armor of the battleship and the wall of the fortress, lose their import and significance. One can prophesy with a Daniel's confidence that skilled electricians will settle the battles of the near future. But this is the least. In its effect upon war and peace, electricity offers still much greater and more wonderful possibilities. To stop war by the perfection of engines of destruction alone, might consume centuries and centuries. Other means must be employed to hasten the end.
Confidence | Means | Perfection | Power | War | Will |
While I have not lost faith in its potentialities, my views have changed since. War can not be avoided until the physical cause for its recurrence is removed and this, in the last analysis, is the vast extent of the planet on which we live. Only though annihilation of distance in every respect, as the conveyance of intelligence, transport of passengers and supplies and transmission of energy will conditions be brought about some day, insuring permanency of friendly relations. What we now want most is closer contact and better understanding between individuals and communities all over the earth and the elimination of that fanatic devotion to exalted ideals of national egoism and pride, which is always prone to plunge the world into primeval barbarism and strife. No league or parliamentary act of any kind will ever prevent such a calamity. These are only new devices for putting the weak at the mercy of the strong.
Barbarism | Better | Cause | Devotion | Earth | Energy | Faith | Ideals | Mercy | Understanding | War | Will | World |
Oswald Spengler, fully Oswald Manuel Arnold Gottfried Spengler
The press today is an army with carefully organized weapons, the journalists its officers, the readers its soldiers. But, as in every army, the soldier obeys blindly, and the war aims and operating plans change without his knowledge. The reader neither knows nor is supposed to know the purposes for which he is used and the role he is to play. There is no more appalling caricature of freedom of thought. Formerly no one was allowed to think freely; now it is permitted, but no one is capable of it any more. Now people want to think only what they are supposed to want to think, and this they consider freedom.