| If the bubble reputation can be obtained only
at the cannon's mouth, I am willing to go there for it, provided the cannon
is empty. If it is loaded my immortal and inflexible purpose is to get over
the fence and go home. My invariable practice in war has been to bring out
of every fight two-thirds more men than when I went in. This seems to me
Napoleonic in its grandeur. - "Mark Twain as a Presidential Candidate," New York Evening Post, 9 June 1879 All war must be just the killing of strangers against whom you feel no personal animosity; strangers whom, in other circumstances, you would help if you found them in trouble, and who would help you if you needed it. - "The Private History of the Campaign That Failed" Before I had chance in another war, the desire to kill people to whom I had not been introduced had passed away. - Autobiography of Mark Twain |
|
A wanton waste of projectiles.
- The Art of War speech, 1881
To be a patriot, one had to say, and keep on saying, " Our country, right
or wrong," and urge on the little war. Have you not perceived that that
phrase is an insult to the nation.
- "Glances at History," 1906
An inglorious peace is better than a dishonorable war.
- "Glances at History," 1906
Statesmen will invent cheap lies, putting blame upon the nation that is attacked,
and every man will be glad of those conscience-soothing falsities, and will
diligently study them, and refuse to examine any refutations of them; and thus
he will by and by convince himself that the war is just, and will thank God
for the better sleep he enjoys after this process of grotesque self-deception.
- "Chronicle of Young Satan"
Man is the only animal that deals in that atrocity of atrocities, War. He is
the only one that gathers his brethren about him and goes forth in cold blood
and calm pulse to exterminate his kind. He is the only animal that for sordid
wages will march out...and help to slaughter strangers of his own species who
have done him no harm and with whom he has no quarrel. ..And in the intervals
between campaigns he washes the blood off his hands and works for "the
universal brotherhood of man"--with his mouth.
- What Is Man?
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