WIST Quotations

Orwell, George -- Essay (1942-08), “Looking Back on the Spanish War, ch. 2, New Road (1943-06)

Dave — Fri, 14 Nov 2025 15:20:57 +0000

But unfortunately the truth about atrocities is far worse than that they are lied about and made into propaganda. The truth is that they happen. The fact often adduced as a reason for scepticism — that the same horror stories come up in war after war — merely makes it rather more likely that these stories are true.

George Orwell (1903-1950) English journalist, essayist, writer [pseud. of Eric Arthur Blair]
Essay (1942-08), “Looking Back on the Spanish War, ch. 2, New Road (1943-06)
(Source)

Orwell, George -- Essay (1942-08), “Looking Back on the Spanish War, ch. 2, New Road (1943-06)

Dave — Fri, 07 Nov 2025 15:19:57 +0000

Official war propaganda, with its disgusting hypocrisy and self-righteousness, always tends to make thinking people sympathize with the enemy.

George Orwell (1903-1950) English journalist, essayist, writer [pseud. of Eric Arthur Blair]
Essay (1942-08), “Looking Back on the Spanish War, ch. 2, New Road (1943-06)
(Source)

Orwell, George -- Essay (1942-08), “Looking Back on the Spanish War, ch. 1, New Road (1943-06)

Dave — Thu, 23 Oct 2025 15:33:08 +0000

People forget that a soldier anywhere near the front line is usually too hungry, or frightened, or cold, or, above all, too tired to bother about the political origins of the war.

George Orwell (1903-1950) English journalist, essayist, writer [pseud. of Eric Arthur Blair]
Essay (1942-08), “Looking Back on the Spanish War, ch. 1, New Road (1943-06)
(Source)

Hardy, Thomas -- “The Man He Killed” (1902)

Dave — Thu, 14 Sep 2023 16:59:00 +0000

Yes; quaint and curious war is!
You shoot a fellow down
You’d treat if met where any bar is,
Or help to half-a-crown.

Thomas Hardy (1840-1928) English novelist, poet
“The Man He Killed” (1902)
(Source)

Todorov, Tzvetan -- The New World Disorder: Reflections of a European, ch. 3 (2005)

Dave — Wed, 15 Jun 2022 18:56:32 +0000

American society has always exercised a stronger pressure on individual behavior than Western European societies; but in time of war this pressure is notched a few degrees, and starts to become quite alarming.

Tzvetan Todorov (1939-2017) Bulgarian-French historian, philosopher, literary critic, sociologist
The New World Disorder: Reflections of a European, ch. 3 (2005)
(Source)

Forster, E. M. -- “The Tercentenary of the Areopagitica,” Two Cheers for Democracy (1951)

Dave — Wed, 18 Mar 2020 21:48:06 +0000

We are willing enough to praise freedom when she is safely tucked away in the past and cannot be a nuisance. In the present, amidst dangers whose outcome we cannot foresee, we get nervous about her, and admit censorship.

E. M. Forster (1879-1970) English novelist, essayist, critic, librettist [Edward Morgan Forster]
“The Tercentenary of the Areopagitica,” Two Cheers for Democracy (1951)
(Source)

Ennius -- Annales, Book 8, Sec. 3, l. 262-8

Dave — Thu, 23 Jan 2020 17:56:46 +0000

Wisdom is publicly rejected, affairs are pursued with force,
A good speaker is spurned, and the wretched warrior is loved.
Men strive not with educated speeches but instead with insults
attack one another and enter into mutual enmity.
They seize property suddenly not by the right of law but with swords
As they seek sovereignty and wander with the power of the mob.

[Pellitur e medio sapientia, vi geritur res,
spernitur orator bonus, horridus miles amatur.
haut doctis dictis certantes nec maledictis
miscent inter sese inimicitiam agitantes,
non ex iure manum consertum, sed magis ferro
rem repetunt regnumque petunt, vadunt solida vi.]

Ennius (239-169 BC) Roman poet, writer [Quintus Ennius]
Annales, Book 8, Sec. 3, l. 262-8
(Source)

On public discourse during wars. Fragment quoted by Cicero in Epistle 171.

Alt. trans.: "Pushed away from the centre good sense, force rules the day, / despised the good orator, the horrid soldier cherished. / Fighting, not with learned words or curses, / they clash with one another, pushing hostilities, / laying hand onto one another not rightfully, but rather with the sword / they seek material gain and strive for power, advancing with brute force."

Napier, William -- History of the War in the Peninsula, Vol. 5, Book 25, ch. 2 (1837)

Dave — Tue, 18 Nov 2014 14:18:28 +0000

Success in war, like charity in religion, covers a multitude of sins.

William Napier (1785-1860) Irish soldier and military historian
History of the War in the Peninsula, Vol. 5, Book 25, ch. 2 (1837)
(Source)

Wilson, Woodrow -- Letter to Arthur Brisbane (25 Apr 1917)

Dave — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 09:50:48 +0000

I can imagine no greater disservice to the country than to establish a system of censorship that would deny to the people of a free republic like our own their indisputable right to criticize their own public officials. While exercising the great powers of the office I hold, I would regret in a crisis like the one through which we are now passing to lose the benefit of patriotic and intelligent criticism.

Woodrow Wilson (1856-1924) US President (1913-20), educator, political scientist
Letter to Arthur Brisbane (25 Apr 1917)

Three weeks after the US entered WW I.