Midway along the journey of our life [Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita] I woke to find myself in a dark wood, for I had wandere...d off from the straight path.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Lanza del Vasto noted a deep connection between play and war, even before the games theory and nuclear war strategy became practic...ally identified. In our society, everything, in fact, is a game. But if everything is a game, then everything leads to war. Play is aimless and yet multiplies obstacles so that the "aim," which in fact does not exist, cannot be attained by the opponent. For instance, getting a ball in a hole. War is caused by similar aimless aims. Not by hunger, not by real need. War is a game of the powerful, or of whole collectivities devoted to self-assertion. It is "the great public vice that consists in playing with the lives of men." War plays with life and death, and does so magnificently. Everybody becomes involved. Everybody has to live or die--so that other side may not get a ball in a hole.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The nearest beach to us on the other side, whither we looked, due east, was on the coast of Galicia, in Spain, whose capital is Sa...ntiago, though by old poets' reckoning it should have been Atlantis or the Hesperides; but heaven is found to be farther west now.... A little south of east was Palos, where Columbus weighed anchor, and farther yet the pillars which Hercules set up; concerning which when we inquired at the top of our voices what was written on them,--for we had the morning sun in our faces, and could not see distinctly,--the inhabitants shouted Ne plus ultra (no more beyond), but the wind bore to us the truth only, plus ultra (more beyond), and over the Bay westward was echoed ultra (beyond). We spoke to them through the surf about the Far West, the true Hesperia, heos peras or end of the day, the This Side Sundown, where the sun was extinguished in the Pacific, and we advised them to pull up stakes and plant those pillars of theirs on the shore of California, whither all our folks were gone,--the only ne plus ultra now. Whereat they looked crestfallen on their cliffs, for we had taken the wind out of all their sails.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Thank Heaven, here is not all the world. The buckeye does not grow in New England, and the mockingbird is rarely heard here. The w...ild goose is more of a cosmopolite than we; he breaks his fast in Canada, takes a luncheon in the Ohio, and plumes himself for the night in a southern bayou. Even the bison, to some extent, keeps pace with the seasons, cropping the pastures of the Colorado only till a greener and sweeter grass awaits him by the Yellowstone. Yet we think that if rail fences are pulled down, and stone walls piled up on our farms, bounds are henceforth set to our lives and our fates decided. If you are chosen town clerk, forsooth, you cannot go to Tierra del Fuego this summer; but you may go to the land of infernal fire nevertheless.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Whenever there's a big war coming on, you should rope off a big field. And on the big day, you should take all the kings and their... cabinets and their generals, put 'em in the center dressed in their underpants and let them fight it out with clubs. The best country wins.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Kemmerick: He's dead. He's dead. Katczinsky: Why did you risk your life bringing him in?... Kemmerick: But it's Behm. My friend. Katczinsky: It's a corpse, no matter who it is.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I don't want to shoot any Englishmen. I never saw one 'til I came up here. But I suppose most of them never saw a German 'til they... came up here.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Oh, God, why do they do this to us? We only wanted to live, you and I. Why should they send us out to fight each other? If we thre...w away these rifles and these uniforms, you could be my brother.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
When you jumped in here, you were my enemy and I was afraid of you. But you're just a man like me, and I killed you. Forgive me, c...omrade.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Tjaden: How do they start a war? Albert: Well, one country offends another.... Tjaden: How could one country offend another? You mean there's a mountain over in Germany gets mad at a field in France?LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »