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The Bible nowhere prohibits war. In the Old Testament we find war and even conquest positively commanded, and although war was raging in the world at the time of Christ and His Apostles, still they said not a word of its unlawfulness and immorality.
— Henry Wager Halleck (1815-1872), American Union general, Civil War
“It might be a good idea if the various countries of the world would occasionally swap history books, just to see what other people are doing with the same set of facts.”
— Bill Vaughan, journalist (1915-1977)
“There is no greater fallacy than the belief that aims and purposes are one thing, while methods and tactics are another.”
— Emma Goldman, social activist (1869-1940)
My country has in its wisdom contrived for me the most insignificant office that ever the invention of man contrived or his imagination conceived.
— John Adams (1735-1826), second President of the United States, in a letter written when he was serving as Vice President
Anthropologists continue to turn up examples which prove that competitive, aggressive, warlike cultures are those in which sexual stereotypes are most polarized, while those social structures allowing for an overlap of roles and functions between men and women (in tasks, childrearing, decision-making, etc.) tend to be collectivist, cooperative and peaceful.
— Robin Morgan (1941- ), feminist, poet, writer, editor
All governments, the worst on earth and the most tyrannical on earth, are free governments to that portion of the people who voluntarily support them.
— Lysander Spooner (1808-1887), American lawyer, Libertarian
“All religions are the same: religion is basically guilt, with different holidays.”
— Cathy Ladman, comedian, writer, actress (1955- )
A great civilization is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself from within. The essential cause of Rome’s decline lay in her people, her morals, her class struggle, her failing trade, her bureaucratic despotism, her stifling taxes, her consuming wars. Rome was not destroyed by Christianity any more than by barbarian invasion; it was an empty shell when Christianity rose to influence and the invasion came.
— Will Durant (1885-1981) and Ariel Durant (1898-1981), American historians
Life in this society being, at best, an utter bore and no aspect of society being at all relevant to women, there remains to civic-minded, responsible, thrill-seeking females only to overthrow the government, eliminate the money system, institute complete automation and destroy the male sex.
— Valerie Solanis (1936-1988), radical feminist writer who shot artist Andy Warhol in 1968
We are a long way from the glory days of Mission Accomplished, when the Iraq war was over before it was over — indeed before it really began — and the president could dress up like a fighter pilot and land on an aircraft carrier, and the nation, led by a pliable media, would applaud. Now, late in this sad, terribly diminished presidency, mired in an unwinnable war of their own making, and increasingly on the defensive about events which, to their surprise, they do not control, the president and his men have turned, with some degree of desperation, to history.
— David Halberstam (1934-2007), Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author
