Follies Quotes

Silence is not always a Sign of Wisdom,
but Babbling is ever a folly.
- Benjamin Franklin

Training - training is everything; training is all there is to a person.
We speak of nature; it is folly; there is no such thing as nature;
what we call by that misleading name is merely heredity and training.
We have no thoughts of our own, no opinions of our own;
they are transmitted to us, trained into us.
All that is original in us, and therefore fairly creditable
or discreditable to us, can be covered up and hidden
by the point of a cambric needle, all the rest being atoms
contributed by, and inherited from, a procession of ancestors
that stretches back a billion years to the Adam-clam
or grasshopper or monkey from whom our race has been
so tediously and ostentatiously and unprofitably developed.
And as for me, all that I think about in this plodding sad pilgrimage,
this pathetic drift between the eternities,
is to look out and humbly live a pure and high and blameless life,
and save that one microscopic atom in me that is truly me:
the rest may land in Sheol and welcome for all I care.
- Mark Twain in A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court

When we step on the battlefield, I will be
The First Boots On and the Last Boots Off.
- LtG. Hal Moore

We will not learn how to live together in peace
by killing each other's children.
- Jimmy Carter

When you are in any contest,
you should work as if there were -
to the very last minute - a chance to lose it.
This is battle, this is politics, this is anything.
- Dwight D. Eisenhower

It is my conviction that killing under the cloak of war
is nothing but an act of murder.
- Albert Einstein

Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory.
Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.
- Sun Tzu

If I am happy in spite of my deprivations,
if my happiness is so deep that it is a faith,
so thoughtful that it becomes a philosophy of life.
If, in short, I am an optimist,
my testimony to the creed of optimism is worth hearing.
- Helen Keller
...
Helen Keller (1880-1968) overcame being both deaf and blind
to become a famous author, lecturer, and activist
for women's suffrage, workers' rights, and ending war.

Men ought either to be indulged or utterly destroyed,
for if you merely offend them, they take vengeance,
but if you injure them greatly, they are unable to retaliate,
so that the injury done to a man
ought to be such that vengeance cannot be feared.
- Niccolo Machiavelli

We have no enemies,
we have only friendships that we haven't yet developed
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

The expert in battle seeks his victory
from strategic advantage
and does not demand it from his men.
- Sun Tzu

The problems of victory are more agreeable
than those of defeat,
but they are no less difficult.
- Winston Churchill

You can discover what your enemy fears most
by observing the means he uses to frighten you.
- Michael Moncur

If we are to teach real peace in this world,
and if we are to carry on a real war against war,
we shall have to begin with the children.
- Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi

To build may have to be the slow and laborious task of years.
To destroy can be the thoughtless act of a single day.
- Winston Churchill

When people speak to you about a preventive war,
you tell them to go fight it.
After my experience, I have come to hate war.
War settles nothing.
- Dwight D. Eisenhower

Don't be against anything -
e.g. don't be against war, be FOR peace
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Love does not begin and end the way we seem to think it does.
Love is a battle, love is a war; love is a growing up.
- James A. Baldwin

When the war of the giants is over,
the wars of the pygmies will begin.
- Winston Churchill

It is not enough to say we must not wage war.
It is necessary to love peace and sacrifice for it.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.

It is not our place to know the mind of God.
Spirit knows what is best in the long run -
best for each of us individually,
and best for humanity as a whole.
This is often very difficult to accept
when we see war and disease in the world
and experience physical and emotional suffering
in ourselves, our family, and our friends.
I consider this belief in God's infinite power
and ultimate wisdom to be the true test of faith.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

We prefer world law in the age of self-determination
to world war in the age of mass extermination.
- John F. Kennedy

When you are winning a war
almost everything that happens
can be claimed to be right and wise.
- Winston Churchill

If we take the generally accepted definition of bravery
as a quality which knows no fear, I have never seen a brave man.
All men are frightened. The more intelligent they are,
the more they are frightened.
- George S. Patton

If men can develop weapons that are so terrifying
as to make the thought of global war
include almost a sentence for suicide,
you would think that man's intelligence and his comprehension...
would include also his ability to find a peaceful solution.
- Dwight D. Eisenhower

There should be an honest attempt at the reconciliation
of differences before resorting to combat.
- Jimmy Carter

We may never be strong enough to be entirely
nonviolent in thought, word and deed.
But we must keep nonviolence as our goal
and make strong progress towards it.
- Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi

I wanted to see exotic Vietnam, the jewel of Southeast Asia.
I, uh, I wanted to meet interesting
and stimulating people of an ancient culture,
and kill them.
- the movie Full Metal Jacket

But what a cruel thing is war
to separate and destroy families and friends.
- Robert E. Lee

Never in the field of human conflict
was so much owed by so many to so few.
- Winston Churchill

The power of an air force is terrific
when there is nothing to oppose it.
- Winston Churchill

The unleashed power of the atom has changed everything
save our modes of thinking
and we thus drift toward unparalleled catastrophe.
- Albert Einstein

Battles are won by slaughter and maneuver.
The greater the general, the more he contributes in maneuver,
the less he demands in slaughter.
- Winston Churchill

What is human warfare but just this;
an effort to make the laws of God and
nature take sides with one party.
- Henry David Thoreau

The most terrible job in warfare is to be a second lieutenant
leading a platoon when you are on the battlefield.
- Dwight D. Eisenhower

I do not believe in using women in combat,
because females are too fierce.
- Margaret Mead

What counts is not necessarily
the size of the dog in the fight -
it's the size of the fight in the dog.
- Dwight D. Eisenhower quoting Mark Twain

Victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror,
victory however long and hard the road may be;
for without victory, there is no survival.
- Winston Churchill

The great defense against the air menace
is to attack the enemy's aircraft
as near as possible to their point of departure.
- Winston Churchill

When all you know is bombs,
everything looks like a target.
Give peace and diplomacy a chance.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

When you put on a uniform,
there are certain inhibitions that you accept.
- Dwight D. Eisenhower

What difference does it make to the dead,
the orphans, and the homeless,
whether the mad destruction is wrought
under the name of totalitarianism
or the holy name of liberty or democracy?
- Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi

In war, you can only be killed once,
but in politics, many times.
- Winston Churchill

When I despair, I remember that all through history
the way of truth and love has always won.
There have been tyrants and murderers and
for a time they seem invincible,
but in the end, they always fall ... think of it, always.
- Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi

Communism has never come to power in a country
that was not disrupted by war or corruption, or both.
- John F. Kennedy

A prisoner of war is a man who tries to kill you and fails,
and then asks you not to kill him.
- Winston Churchill

Gentlemen, you can't fight in here! This is the War Room.
- the movie Dr. Strangelove (1964)

It is an unfortunate fact that we can secure peace
only by preparing for war.
- John F. Kennedy

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

There is always inequality in life.
Some men are killed in a war and some men are wounded
and some men never leave the country.
Life is unfair.
- John F. Kennedy

Mankind must put an end to war
before war puts an end to mankind.
- John F. Kennedy

I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can,
only as one who has seen its brutality, its futility, its stupidity.
- Dwight D. Eisenhower

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

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May the world be kind to you,
and may your own thoughts be gentle upon yourself.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

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