On the Wisdom of War

A little sanity in these difficult times. Let me reproduce here, some quotes by people who were truly great statesmen and intellectuals. Their collective wisdom is much more than anything I can ever write, so over to them:

"War will exist until that distant day when the conscientious objector enjoys the same reputation and prestige that the warrior does today."
- John F Kennedy

"There will one day spring from the brain of science a machine or force so fearful in its potentialities, so absolutely terrifying, that even man, the fighter, who will dare torture and death in order to inflict torture and death, will be appalled, and so abandon war forever.."
- Thomas Alva Edison (Edison, you overestimated the humanity of humans. We never learnt from the World Wars, nor did the nuclear bomb horrify us enough.)

"He who joyfully marches to music in rank and file has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would suffice."
- Albert Einstein

"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."
- Dwight D. Eisenhower

"War! When I but think of this word, I feel bewildered, as though they were speaking to me of sorcery, of the Inquisition, of a distant, finished, abominable, monstrous, unnatural thing. When they speak to us of cannibals, we smile proudly, as we proclaim our superiority to these savages. Who are the real savages? Those who struggle in order to eat those whom they vanquish, or those who struggle merely to kill?"
- Guy de Maupassant

"A visitor from Mars could easily pick out the civilized nations. They have the best implements of war. "
- Herbert V. Prochnow

"Patriots always talk of dying for their country and never of killing for their country."
- Bertrand Russell

"Only the dead have seen the end of the war."
- Plato

and finally a thought...

"It seems like such a terrible shame that innocent civilians have to get hurt in wars, otherwise combat would be such a wonderfully healthy way to rid the human race of unneeded trash."
- Fred Woodworth