WIST Quotations

Taylor, A. J. P. -- “What Else Indeed?” New York Review of Books (5 Aug 1965)

Dave — Mon, 18 Oct 2021 16:49:07 +0000

They had all been brought up, as we still are, to believe in “the deterrent.” Firm resolve, a readiness to threaten war, would avert war itself. Some Power would always give way. This usually happened, indeed happened so often that the wisdom of the method seemed sure. In 1914 all the Powers, for different reasons, expected the yielding to come from the other side.

A. J. P. Taylor (1906-1990) British historian, journalist, broadcaster [Alan John Percivale Taylor]
“What Else Indeed?” New York Review of Books (5 Aug 1965)
(Source)

Arendt, Hannah -- Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil, Epilogue (1963)

Dave — Tue, 28 Jul 2020 15:52:30 +0000

No punishment has ever possessed enough power of deterrence to prevent the commission of crimes. On the contrary, whatever the punishment, once a specific crime has appeared for the first time, its reappearance is more likely than its initial emergence could ever have been.

Hannah Arendt (1906-1975) German-American philosopher, political theorist
Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil, Epilogue (1963)
(Source)

Bronte, Charlotte -- Jane Eyre, ch. 6 [Jane] (1847)

Dave — Fri, 21 Apr 2017 22:09:36 +0000

If people were always kind and obedient to those who are cruel and unjust; the wicked people would have it all their own way: they would never feel afraid, and so they would never alter, but would grow worse and worse. When we are struck at without a reason, we should strike back again very hard; I am sure we should — so hard as to teach the person who struck us never to do it again.

Charlotte Brontë (1816-1855) British novelist [pseud. Currer Bell]
Jane Eyre, ch. 6 [Jane] (1847)
(Source)

Miller, Walter M. -- A Canticle for Leibowitz, “Fiat Homo,” ch. 6 (1959)

Dave — Mon, 30 Jan 2017 23:01:04 +0000

It was said that God, in order to test mankind which had become swelled with pride as in the time of Noah, had commanded the wise men of that age, among them the Blessed Leibowitz, to devise great engines of war such as had never before been upon the Earth, weapons of such might that they contained the very fires of Hell, and that God had suffered these magi to place the weapons in the hands of princes, and to say to each prince: “Only because the enemies have such a thing have we devised this for thee, in order that they may know that thou hast it also, and fear to strike. See to it, m’Lord, that thou fearest them as much as they shall now fear thee, that none may unleash this dread thing which we have wrought.” But the princes, putting the words of their wise men to naught, thought each to himself: If I but strike quickly enough, and in secret, I shall destroy these others in their sleep, and there will be none to fight back; the earth shall be mine.
Such was the folly of princes, and there followed the Flame Deluge.

Walter M. Miller Jr. (1923-1996) American writer
A Canticle for Leibowitz, “Fiat Homo,” ch. 6 (1959)

Eisenhower, Dwight David -- “Regarding the Situation in the Formosa Straits,” broadcast speech (11 Sep 1958)

Dave — Tue, 26 Apr 2016 21:39:14 +0000

I know something about that war, and I never want to see that history repeated. But, my fellow Americans, it certainly can be repeated if the peace-loving democratic nations again fearfully practice a policy of standing idly by while big aggressors use armed force to conquer the small and weak.

Dwight David Eisenhower (1890-1969) American general, US President (1953-61)
“Regarding the Situation in the Formosa Straits,” broadcast speech (11 Sep 1958)

Wollstonecraft, Mary -- Letters Written During a Short Residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark, Letter 19 (1796)

Dave — Thu, 21 Apr 2016 14:28:56 +0000

Executions, far from being useful examples to the survivors, have, I am persuaded, a quite contrary effect, by hardening the heart they ought to terrify. Besides, the fear of an ignominious death, I believe, never deterred anyone from the commission of a crime, because in committing it the mind is roused to activity about present circumstances.

Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797) English social philosopher, feminist, writer
Letters Written During a Short Residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark, Letter 19 (1796)

Berry, Wendell -- Speech (1968-02-10), “A Statement Against the War in Vietnam,” Kentucky Conference on the War and the Draft, University of Kentucky

Dave — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 14:25:30 +0000

We have become blind to the alternatives to violence. This involves us in a sort of official madness, in which, while following what seems to be a perfect logic of self-defense and deterrence, we commit one absurdity after another: We seek to preserve peace by fighting a war, or to advance freedom by subsidizing dictatorships, or to “win the hearts and minds of the people” by poisoning their crops and burning their villages and confining them in concentration camps; we seek to uphold the “truth” of our cause with lies, or to answer conscientious dissent with threats and slurs and intimidations. […] All this is made frighteningly clear, in Vietnam, in our inability to control the swiftly widening discrepancy between what we are doing and what we say we are doing.

Wendell Berry (b. 1934) American farmer, educator, poet, conservationist
Speech (1968-02-10), “A Statement Against the War in Vietnam,” Kentucky Conference on the War and the Draft, University of Kentucky
(Source)

Collected in The Long-Legged House, Part 2 (1969).

Browne, Thomas -- Religio Medici, Part 1, sec. 52 (1643)

Dave — Sun, 01 Feb 2004 16:00:00 +0000

I have so fixed my contemplations on Heaven, that I have almost forgot the Idea of Hell, and am afraid rather to lose the joyes of the one than endure the misery of the other; to be deprived of them is a perfect hell, & needs me thinkes no addition to compleate our afflictions; that terrible terme hath never detained me from sin, nor do I owe any good action to the name thereof: I feare God, yet am not afraid of him, his mercies make me ashamed of my sins, before his judgements afraid thereof: these are the forced and secondary method of his wisedome, which he useth but as the last remedy, and upon provocation, a course rather to deterre the wicked, than incite the vertuous to his worship. I can hardly thinke there was ever any scared into Heaven, they goe the fairest way to Heaven, that would serve God without a Hell, other Mercenaries that crouch unto him in feare of Hell, though they terme themselves the servants, are indeed but the slaves of the Almighty.

Thomas Browne (1605-1682) English physician and author
Religio Medici, Part 1, sec. 52 (1643)
(Source)