Verbal Shrapnel
a desiderative pastiche
The word experience is like a shrapnel shell, and bursts into a
thousand meanings.
George Santayana (1920, 1956)
I against my brother
I and my brother against our cousin
I, my brother and our cousin against the neighbors
All of us against the foreigner.
Bedouin proverb
An enemy spared is an enemy that might have to be faced again
some other day.
Elmer Kelton (1999)
All have turned away, they have together become worthless; there
is no one who does good, not even one. Their throats are open
graves; their tongues practice deceit. The poison of vipers is on
their lips. Their mouths are full of cursing and bitterness.
Their feet are swift to shed blood; ruin and misery mark their
ways, and the way of peace they do not know.
Romans 3:12-17 NIV Bible
You cannot teach people hate and then ask them to practice peace.
But neither can you teach people peace except by according them
dignity and granting them hope.
Tony Blair [18 July 2003 address to Congress]
Wars are not caused by persons wishing to kill each other. They
are caused by ridiculous rivalries promoted by unscrupulous and
ambitious politicians. Killing is merely the means by which they
are carried on and, in due course, completed. You confuse cause
and effect.
Gwyn Griffin (1967)
And if any mischief follow, then thou shalt give life for life,
eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot,
burning for burning, wound for wound, stripe for stripe.
Exodus 21:23-25 Bible
You have heard that it was said, `An eye for an eye
and a tooth for a tooth.' But I say to you, Do
not resist an evildoer. But if anyone strikes you on the right
cheek, turn the other also; and if anyone wants to sue you and
take your coat, give your cloak as well ....
Matthew 5:38-40 Bible
Recompense to no man evil for evil.
Romans 12:17 Bible
Reparation: Satisfaction that is made for a wrong and deducted
from the satisfaction felt in committing it.
Ambrose Gwinnett Bierce
Longanimity: The disposition to endure injury with meek
forbearance while maturing a plan of revenge.
Ambrose Gwinnett Bierce
Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil; who put darkness
for light, and light for darkness!
Isaiah 5:20 Bible
So I find this law at work: When I want to do good, evil
is right there with me.
Romans 7:21 NIV Bible
By the victims they choose, and by the means they use, the
terrorists have clarified the struggle we are in. Those who
target relief workers for death have set themselves against all
humanity. Those who incite murder and celebrate suicide reveal
their contempt for life, itself. They have no place in any
religious faith; they have no claim on the world's sympathy; and
they should have no friend in this chamber.
george Walker Bush [23 Sep 2003 UN Gen Assembly address]
There never has been a time when the power of America was so
necessary; or so misunderstood; or when, except in the most
general sense, a study of history provides so little instruction
for our present day. We were all reared on battles between great
warriors, between great nations, between powerful forces and
ideologies that dominated entire continents. These were struggles
for conquest, for land or money. The wars were fought by massed
armies. The leaders were openly acknowledged: the outcomes
decisive.
Tony Blair [18 July 2003 address to Congress]
For if the truth of God through my lie hath abounded more unto
His glory, why am I also yet judged as a sinner? And why not say
rather (as we are slanderously reported, and as some affirm that
we say), "Let us do evil, that good may come"?
Their damnation is just!
Romans 3:7-8 21KJV Bible
Yet even in all our might, we are taught humility. In the end, it
is not our power alone that will defeat this evil. Our ultimate
weapon is not our guns but our beliefs.
Tony Blair [18 July 2003 address to Congress]
But there will be terrorists, and they want to fight us. Remember
this is — Iraq is a battle in the war on terror. The war on
terror is being fought on many fronts, and some of them obviously
[are] more visible than others. ... The war on terror encompasses
more than just military action, of course, or the use of special
force strike teams. Cutting off money is an important part in the
war on terror. ... it's very important for people to put this
— Iraq in a broader context about a war that will continue
on.
George Walker Bush [15 Dec 2003 press conference]
All wars are boyish, and are fought by boys, the champions and
enthusiasts of the state.
Herman Melville
We must be eager to kill, to inflict on the enemy — the
hated enemy — wounds, death, and destruction.
George Smith Patton
War is cruelty. There's no use trying to reform it. The crueler
it is, the sooner it will be over.
William Tecumseh Sherman
Once we have a war there is only one thing to do. It must be won.
For defeat brings worse things than any that can ever happen in
war.
Ernest Miller Hemingway
Our wars have taken from us some of our finest citizens, and
every hour of the lifetimes they hoped to live. And the courage
of our military has given us every hour we live in freedom.
George Walker Bush [11 Nov 2003 address to Heritage Fdn]
Regardless of how persistent our diplomacy may be in activities
stretching all around the globe, in the final analysis it rests
upon the power of the United States, and that power rests upon
the will and courage of our citizens, and upon you [soldiers] in
this field [at a military post].
John Fitzgerald Kennedy (1962)
People don't start wars, governments do.
Ronald Wilson Reagan
Army: A body of men assembled to rectify the mistakes of the
diplomats.
Josephus Daniels
Diplomats are just as essential in starting a war as soldiers are
in finishing it.
W.P.A. "Will" Rogers
The foolish race of mankind
Are swarming below in the night;
They shriek and rage and quarrel —
And all of them are right,
Heinrich Heine (1844)
There is always inequity in life. Some men are killed in war and
some men are wounded, and some men are stationed in the Antarctic
and some are stationed in San Francisco. It's very hard in
military or personal life to assure complete equality. Life is
unfair.
John Fitzgerald Kennedy [21 Mar 1962 comment to Reservists
anxious to be released from Active Duty]
WE THE PEOPLES OF THE UNITED NATIONS DETERMINED to save
succeeding generations from the scourge of war ... and to ensure,
by the acceptance of principles and the institution of methods,
that armed force shall not be used, save in the common
interest....
Preamble, United Nations Charter (1945)
The founders [of the United Nations] sought to replace a world at
war with a world of civilized order. They hoped that a world of
relentless conflict would give way to a new era, one where
freedom from violence prevailed. But the awful truth is that the
use of violence for political gain has become more, not less,
widespread in the last decade.
Ronald Wilson Reagan (26 Sep 1983 address to UN General Assembly)
If you wish to change the world, the place to begin is with your
own hands, your own heart and your own mind.
Robert Pirsig [Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance]
To reform a world, to reform a nation, no wise man will
undertake; and all but foolish men know, that the only solid,
though a far slower reformation, is what each begins and perfects
on himself.
Thomas Carlyle [Signs of the Times (1829)]
The amelioration of the world cannot be achieved by sacrifices
in moments of crisis; it depends on the efforts made and
constantly repeated during the humdrum, uninspiring periods,
which separate one crisis from another, and of which normal lives
mainly consist.
Aldous Leonard Huxley [ch 10 Grey Eminence (1941)]
Every reform, however necessary, will by weak minds be carried to
an excess, which will itself need reforming.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge [ch 1 Biographia Literaria (1817)]
If we are wrong, we will have destroyed a [terrorist] threat
that, at its least is responsible for inhuman carnage and
suffering. That is something I am confident history will forgive.
But if our critics are wrong, if we are right as I believe with
every fibre of instinct and conviction I have that we are, and we
do not act, then we will have hesitated in face of this menace,
when we should have given leadership. That is something history
will not forgive.
Tony Blair [18 July 2003 address to Congress]
No free nation can be neutral in the fight between civilization
and chaos.
Colin Powell (13 Sep 2003)
And this is a brutal dictator. He's a person who killed a lot of
people. But my views, my personal views aren't important in this
matter. What matters is the views of the Iraqi citizens. And we
need to work, of course, with them to develop a system that is
fair and where he will be put on trial and will be brought to
justice — the justice he didn't, by the way, afford any of
his own fellow citizens.
George Walker Bush [15 Dec 2003 press conference]
Men must be capable of imagining and executing and insisting on
social change if they are to reform or even maintain
civilization, and capable too of furnishing the rebellion which
is sometimes necessary if society is not to perish of immobility.
Rebecca West [pt 4 The Meaning of Treason (1949)]
We thought, because we had power, we had wisdom.
Stephen Vincent Benet
The most terrible fight is not when there is one opinion against
another, the most terrible is when two men say the same thing
— and fight about the interpretation, and this
interpretation involves a difference of quality.
Søren A. Kierkegaard (1850)
No one is to blame. It is neither their fault nor ours. It is the
misfortune of being born when a whole world is dying.
Aleksandr Ivanovich Herzen [From the Other Shore (1849)]
There is nothing stable in the world; uproar's your only music.
John Keats [1818 letter]
That which makes someone a good poet also makes them a poor
soldier; but if the good soldier can survive his terrible
education, then he will have also learned how to be a good poet
or parent or priest.
anonymous
There's something simple about it — like the Golden
Rule. If you want boys to be decent, if you care about
helping them grow up to be good men, why just get them out into
the open, take them on hikes, teach them to tie knots, to make
fire with flint and steel, to believe that the Kingdom of
Heaven is not a bull stock market, but a
khaki uniform that a boy wins by proving he has accepted the
ludicrous belief that it is admirable to be trustworthy, loyal,
helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty,
brave, clean, and reverent. Silly, of course.
Jerome Weidman ["Good Man, Bad Man" The Saturday Evening
Post (1 Jul 1967)]
I have not changed my philosophy of how a President ought to act
during wartime, which is to set the strategy, lay out the goals
and empower the military people — both civilian and uniform
— to make the decisions necessary to achieve the objective.
And they will make those recommendations about troop levels and
what is necessary.
George Walker Bush [15 Dec 2003 press conference]
We all felt that the men about us were making history, and that
we were looking at heroes, if we could only find them out.
M.E.W. Sherwood [ch 5 An Epistle to Posterity (re: 1862;
1897)]
Whatever we had missed, we possessed together the precious,
incommunicable past.
Willa Cather [My Antonia (1918)]
History changes with each successive generation.
Russian addage
We have to do with the past only as we can make it useful to
the present and the future.
Frederick Douglass
It has become fashionable in our modern, more cynical time to
reexamine our history, to throw a supposedly new light on those
who are famous for their accomplishments, to instead expose their
faults, to topple the statue of the hero, to replace the honor
and respect with the sensational and the shameful, as though it
were the only meaningful way these [historical] characters can be
relevant to today's world. I most adamantly disagree. That we
know so much about these characters today is a testament to their
accomplishments, their extraordinary achievements, and, yes,
their astounding heroism. That they can so easily become targets
is a testament to their humanity.
Jeffrey M. Shaara [Rise to Rebellion, a Novel of the American
Revolutionary War (Oct 2000)]
Down these mean streets must go a man who is not himself mean;
who is neither tarnished nor afraid. ...He must be the best man
in his world, and a good enough man for any world.
Raymond Thornton Chandler [The Simple Art of Murder
(1950)]
All the wrong people remember Vietnam. I think all the people who
remember it should forget it, and all the people who forgot it
should remember it.
Michael Herr (15 Jan 1989)
In the end, Vietnam was lost on the political front in the
United States; not on the battle front in Southeast Asia.
Richard Milhous Nixon [No More Vietnams (1985)]
All gave some — some gave all!
lyrical phrase popular after Vietnam War
Above all, Vietnam was a war that asked everything of a few and
nothing of most in America.
Myra MacPherson [Long Time Passing: Vietnam and the Haunted
Generation (1984)]
No event in American history is more misunderstood than the
Vietnam War. It was misreported then, and it is misremembered
now. Rarely have so many people been so wrong about so much.
Never have the consequences of their misunderstanding been so
tragic.
Richard Milhous Nixon [No More Vietnams (1985)]
Some of the critics viewed Vietnam as a morality play in which
the wicked must be punished before the final curtain and where
any attempt to salvage self respect from the outcome compounded
the wrong. I viewed it as a genuine tragedy. No one had a
monopoly on anguish.
Henry Alfred Kissinger [ch 8 The White House Years (1979)]
Our men had gone to war but it was difficult to find out what was
happening in that war. I remember a time, sixty-odd years later,
when the malevolent eye of television turned war into a spectator
sport, even to the extent, I hope that this is not true, that
attacks were timed so that the action could be shown live on the
evening news. Can you imagine a more ironically horrible way to
die than to have one's death timed to allow an anchorman to
comment on it, just before turning the screen over to the beer
ads?
Robert A. Heinlein [To Sail Beyond the Sunset (1987)]
The Vietnam War has been the subject of thousands of newspaper
and magazine articles, hundreds of books, and scores of movies
and television documentaries. The great majority of these efforts
have erroneously portrayed many myths about the Vietnam War as
being facts.
Richard Milhous Nixon [No More Vietnams (1985)]
And there's another thing I've always noticed: that arguments
sound a lot different indoors than outdoors. There's a kind of
insanity that comes from being between walls and under a roof.
You're too cooped up, and don't get a chance to test ideas
against the real size of things.
Walter Van Tilburg Clark
A handful of soldiers is always better than a mouthful of
arguments.
G.C. Lichtenberg (1765-99)
Better is a handful with quietness, than both the hands full with
travail and vexation of spirit.
Ecclesiastes 4:6 Bible
To a reasonable man, only unreason is unreasonable. Blows, by
nature, are not intolerable.
attributed to Epictetus
The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the
unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to
himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man.
George Bernard Shaw ["Maxims for Revolutionists: Reason" Man
and Superman (1903)]
O God, O God,
How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable
Seem to me all the uses of this world!
William Shakespeare [act 1 sc 2 Hamlet]
Man dies of cold, not of darkness.
Miguel de Unamuno [ch 4 The Tragic Sense of Life (1913)]
Despair is the price one pays for setting oneself an impossible
aim. It is, one is told, the unforgivable sin, but it is a sin
the corrupt or evil man never practises. He always has hope. He
never reaches the freezing-point of knowing absolute failure.
Only the man of goodwill carries always in his heart this
capacity for damnation.
Graham Greene [bk 1 pt 1 ch 2 sct 4 The Heart of the
Matter (1948)]
One thing I've learnt about peace processes. They're always
frustrating, often agonising and occasionally seem hopeless. But
for all that, having a peace process is better than not having
one.
Tony Blair [18 July 2003 address to Congress]
Because I remember, I despair. Because I remember, I have the
duty to reject despair.
Elie Wiesel [11 Dec 1986 Nobel lecture]
Let judges secretly despair of justice: their verdicts will be
more acute. Let generals secretly despair of triumph; killing
will be defamed. Let priests secretly despair of faith: their
compassion will be true.
Leonard Cohen ["Lines From My Grandfather's Journal" The
Spice-Box Of Earth (1961)]
The spread of freedom is the best security for the free. It is
our last line of defence and our first line of attack.
Tony Blair [18 July 2003 address to Congress]
So long as we have failed to eliminate any of the causes of
human despair, we do not have the right to try to eliminate those
means by which man tries to cleanse himself of despair.
Antonin Artaud (1925)
To sit back hoping that someday, someway, someone will make
things right is to go on feeding the crocodile, hoping he will
eat you last — but eat you he will.
Ronald Wilson Reagan (7 Nov 1974)
Americans are a peaceful people, and this nation has always gone
to war reluctantly, and always for a noble cause. America's war
veterans have fought for the security of this nation, for the
safety of our friends, and for the peace of the world. They
humbled tyrants and defended the innocent, and liberated the
oppressed. And across the Earth, you will find entire nations
that once lived in fear, where men and women still tell of the
day when Americans came and set them free.
George Walker Bush [11 Nov 2003 Arlington Nat'l Cemetery address]
Gentle folk rest peacefully in their comfortable homes each
night, because their security is guarded by rough men, who stand
ready to do violence for their protection.
paraphrase of George Orwell [Eric Arthur Blair]
Our men and women in uniform are warriors and they are
liberators, strong and kind and decent. By their courage, they
keep us safe; by their honor, they make us proud.
George Walker Bush [11 Nov 2003 address to Heritage Fdn]
compiled by Ed Staff
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