QuoteLog

“I would rather ... have a nod from an American, than a snuff-box from an emperor.”

“Do you know what a soldier is, young man? He’s the chap who makes it possible for civilised folk to despise war.”

“It is open to a war resister to judge between the combatants and wish success to the one who has justice on his side. By so judging he is more likely to bring peace between the two than by remaining a mere spectator.”

“As for those who think the Arab world promises freedom, the briefest study of its routine traditional treatment of blacks (slavery) and women (purdah) will provide relief from all illusion. If Malcolm X had been a black woman his last message to the world would have been entirely different. The brotherhood of Moslem men - all colors - may exist there, but part of the glue that holds them together is the thorough suppression of women.”

“There is no avoiding war; it can only be postponed to the advantage of others.”

“There is nothing so subject to the inconstancy of fortune as war.”

“War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things: the decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks nothing worth a war, is worse.”

“Muhammad brought down from heaven and put into the Koran not religious doctrines only, but political maxims, criminal and civil laws, and scientific theories. The Gospels, on the other hand, deal only with the general relations between man and God and between man and man. Beyond that, they teach nothing and do not oblige people to believe anything. That alone, among a thousand reasons, is enough to show that Islam will not be able to hold its power long in ages of enlightenment and democracy, while Christianity is destined to reign in such ages, as in all others.”

“The shepherd drives the wolf from the sheep for which the sheep thanks the shepherd as his liberator, while the wolf denounces him for the same act as the destroyer of liberty. Plainly, the sheep and the wolf are not agreed upon a definition of liberty.”

“The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts.”

“Nothing gives one person so much advantage over another as to remain always cool and unruffled under all circumstances.”

“A fly, Sir, may sting a stately horse and make him wince; but one is but an insect, and the other is a horse still.”