Wars are not paid for in wartime, the bill comes later.

Germany has reduced savagery to a science, and this great war for the victorious peace of justice must go on until the German cancer is cut clean out of the world body.

People who treat other people as less than human must not be surprised when the bread they have cast on the waters comes floating back to them, poisoned.

Acceptance of what has happened is the first step to overcoming the consequences of any misfortune.

He that sows thorns should never go barefoot.

If the battle for civilization comes down to the wimps versus the barbarians, the barbarians are going to win.

It is not the employer who pays the wages. Employers only handle the money. It is the customer who pays the wages.

Wars are caused by undefended wealth.

The Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor led to many very good things. If you follow the trail, it led to kicking Europeans out of Asia – that saved tens of millions of lives in India alone.

When the war of the giants is over the wars of the pygmies will begin.

Wherever there is interest and power to do wrong, wrong will generally be done.

Morality is contraband in war.

Success consecrates the most offensive crimes.

War is a contagion.

In the long term we can hope that religion will change the nature of man and reduce conflict. But history is not encouraging in this respect. The bloodiest wars in history have been religious wars.

One thing I have learned in my painful career as a gambler is that bragging when you get lucky and win a few games will plunge you into gloom and unacceptable beatings very soon. It happens every time.

Nothing good ever comes of violence.

Where there is no opposition to evil, it multiplies.

‚In Utero‘ was the first time I’d made an album that reached into the dark side. I remember the conflict and the uncertainty. I remember all those things when I hear ‚Pennyroyal Tea.‘

It is impossible to suffer without making someone pay for it; every complaint already contains revenge.

There is hardly such a thing as a war in which it makes no difference who wins. Nearly always one side stands more or less for progress, the other side more or less for reaction.

Wars have never hurt anybody except the people who die.

Of the four wars in my lifetime, none came about because the U.S. was too strong.

Like a baseball game, wars are not over till they are over. Wars don’t run on a clock like football. No previous generation was so hopelessly unrealistic that this had to be explained to them.

I object to violence because when it appears to do good, the good is only temporary; the evil it does is permanent.

Never envy a man his lady. Behind it all lays a living hell.

If I’d written all the truth I knew for the past ten years, about 600 people – including me – would be rotting in prison cells from Rio to Seattle today. Absolute truth is a very rare and dangerous commodity in the context of professional journalism.

One cannot violate the promptings of one’s nature without having that nature recoil upon itself.

There are risks and costs to action. But they are far less than the long range risks of comfortable inaction.

When a man wants to murder a tiger he calls it sport; when a tiger wants to murder him he calls it ferocity.

I agree with Balzac and 19th-century writers, black and white, who say, ‚I write for money.‘ Yes, I think everybody should be paid handsomely; I insist on it, and I pay people who work for me, or with me, handsomely.

You can kill ten of our men for every one we kill of yours. But even at those odds, you will lose and we will win.

People do not make wars; governments do.

We have real enemies in the world. These enemies must be found. They must be pursued and they must be defeated.

I think life is a matter of choices and that wherever we are, good or bad, is because of choices we make.

Consequences are unpitying.

The crimes against Palestinians in the Occupied Territories and elsewhere, particularly Lebanon, are so shocking that the only emotionally valid reaction is rage and a call for extreme actions. But that does not help the victims. And, in fact, it’s likely to harm them.

Children say that people are hung sometimes for speaking the truth.

The many questions about the bombing of Yugoslavia by the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation – meaning primarily the United States – come down to two fundamental issues: ‚What are the accepted and applicable ‚rules of world order,‘ and how do these apply in the case of Kosovo?‘

Some of the generals are saying, ‚We’re making progress. We are clearing an area.‘ But you really don’t defeat the Taliban by clearing an area. They move.

Wars based on principle are far more destructive… the attacker will not destroy that which he is after.

There must always remain something that is antagonistic to good.

It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you’ll do things differently.

To sit back hoping that someday, some way, someone will make things right is to go on feeding the crocodile, hoping he will eat you last – but eat you he will.

War – An act of violence whose object is to constrain the enemy, to accomplish our will.

Heat not a furnace for your foe so hot that it do singe yourself.

A man is born alone and dies alone; and he experiences the good and bad consequences of his karma alone; and he goes alone to hell or the Supreme abode.

The Iraq War was the first conflict in western history in which an imperialist war was massively protested against before it had even been launched.

Leaders who fail to prune their pride will meet demise. That’s not a guess, it’s a guarantee. With pride, it’s not a matter of ‚if‘ we will fall, but ‚when.‘ There are no exceptions.

I am at peace with God. My conflict is with Man.

It is only by not paying one’s bills that one can hope to live in the memory of the commercial classes.

There is no rule more invariable than that we are paid for our suspicions by finding what we suspect.

Telling us to obey instinct is like telling us to obey ‚people.‘ People say different things: so do instincts. Our instincts are at war… Each instinct, if you listen to it, will claim to be gratified at the expense of the rest.

When people speak to you about a preventive war, you tell them to go and fight it. After my experience, I have come to hate war.

Do not ask for what you will wish you had not got.

What you don’t do can be a destructive force.

It’s always interesting about God because it’s like all of the religions in the world say that they pray to the same God, and yet they ask that same one God to divide itself up and agree with this one and fight against that one.

You can wipe out your opponents. But if you do it unjustly you become eligible for being wiped out yourself.

If you go on with this nuclear arms race, all you are going to do is make the rubble bounce.

The least initial deviation from the truth is multiplied later a thousandfold.

War is never a solution; it is an aggravation.