Quotes by Playwrights - Page 166

Once and for allthe idea of glorious victorieswon by the glorious armymust be wiped outNeither side is gloriousOn either side they're just frightened men messing their pantsand they all want the same thingNot to lie under the earthbut to walk upon itwithout crutches(Roux, act 1, scene 19)
Peter Weiss
This isn't champagne anymore. We went through the champagne a long time ago. This is serious stuff. The days of champagne are long gone.
Sam Shepard
If war is not holy man is nothing but antic clay.
Cormac McCarthy
Perhaps to the soldier the civilian is the man who employs him to kill, who includes the guilt of murder in the pay-envelope and escapes responsibility.
Graham Greene
Lebedev: France has a clear and defined policy... The French know what they want. They just want to wipe out the Krauts, finish, but Germany, my friend, is playing a very different tune. Germany has many more birds in her sights than just France...Shabelsky: Nonsense! ...In my view the German are cowards and the French are cowards... They're just thumbing their noses at each other. Believe me, things will stop there. They won't fight.Borkin: And as I see it, why fight? What's the point of these armaments, congresses, expenditures? You know what I'd do? I'd gather together dogs from all over the country, give them a good dose of rabies and let them loose in enemy country. In a month all my enemies would be running rabid.
Anton Chekhov
To live is - to war with trolls In the holds of the heart and mind
Henrik Ibsen
This country was filled with violent children orphaned by war.
Cormac McCarthy
For Ares, lord of strife,tWho doth the swaying scales of battle hold,t War’s money-changer, giving dust for gold,t Sends back, to hearts that held them dear,tScant ash of warriors, wept with many a tear,tLight to the hand, but heavy to the soul;t Yea, fills the light urn fullt With what survived the flame—tDeath’s dusty measure of a hero’s frame!
Aeschylus
Let me have war, say I: it exceeds peace as far as day does night; it's spritely, waking, audible, and full of vent. Peace is a very apoplexy, lethargy; mulled, deaf, sleepy, insensible; a getter of more bastard children than war's a destroyer of men.
William Shakespeare
ten soldiers wisely led will beat a hundred with out a head
Euripides
-You have no respect for excessive authority or obsolete traditions. You're dangerous and depraved, and you ought to be taken outside and shot!
Joseph Heller
I just wanted all the wars to be over so that we could spend the money on starships and Mars colonies.
Grant Morrison
Major Major never sees anyone in his office while he's in his office.
Joseph Heller
The war which is comingIs not the first one. There wereOther wars before it.When the last one came to an endThere were conquerors and conquered.Among the conquered the common peopleStarved. Among the conquerorsThe common people starved too.
Bertolt Brecht
The argument that there are just wars often rests on the social system of the nation engaging in war. It is supposed that if a ‘liberal’ state is at war with a ‘totalitarian’ state, then the war is justified. The beneficent nature of a government was assumed to give rightness to the wars it wages.t...Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt were liberals, which gave credence to their words exalting the two world wars, just as the liberalism of Truman made going into Korea more acceptable and the idealism of Kennedy’s New Frontier and Johnson’s Great Society gave an early glow of righteousness to the war in Vietnam.tWhat the experience of Athens suggests is that a nation may be relatively liberal at home and yet totally ruthless abroad. Indeed, it may more easily enlist its population in cruelty to others by pointing to the advantages at home. An entire nation is made into mercenaries, being paid with a bit of democracy at home for participating in the destruction of life abroad.
Howard Zinn
The enemy," retorted Yossarian with weighted precision, "is anybody who's going to get you killed, no matter which side he's on, and that includes Colonel Cathcart. And don't you forget that, because the longer you remember it, the longer you might live.
Joseph Heller
We attacked a foreign people and treated them like rebels. As you know, it's all right to treat barbarians barbarically. It's the desire to be barbaric that makes governments call their enemies barbarians.
Bertolt Brecht
In peace there's nothing so becomes a man as modest stillness and humility; but when the blast of war blows in our ears, then imitate the action of the tiger; stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood, disguise fair nature with hard-favor'd rage.
William Shakespeare
This is an orchestration for an event. For a dance in fact. The participants will be apprised of their roles at the proper time. For now it is enough that they have arrived. As the dance is the thing with which we are concerned and contains complete within itself its own arrangement and history and finale there is no necessity that the dancers contain these things within themselves as well. In any event the history of all is not the history of each nor indeed the sum of those histories and none here can finally comprehend the reason for his presence for he has no way of knowing even in what the event consists. In fact, were he to know he might well absent himself and you can see that that cannot be any part of the plan if plan there be.
Cormac McCarthy
What struck me as I began to study history was how nationalist fervor--inculcated from childhood on by pledges of allegiance, national anthems, flags waving and rhetoric blowing--permeated the educational systems of all countries, including our own. I wonder now how the foreign policies of the United States would look if we wiped out the national boundaries of the world, at least in our minds, and thought of all children everywhere as our own. Then we could never drop an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, or napalm on Vietnam, or wage war anywhere, because wars, especially in our time, are always wars against children, indeed our children.
Howard Zinn
Suppose two men at cards with nothing to wager save their lives. Who has not heard such a tale? A turn of the card. The whole universe for such a player has labored clanking to his moment which will tell if he is to die at that man’s hand or that man at his. What more certain validation of a man’s worth could there be? This enhancement of the game to its ultimate state admits no argument concerning the notion of fate. The selection of one man over another is a preference absolute and irrevocable and it is a dull man indeed who could reckon so profound a decision without agency or significance either one. In such games as have for their stake the annihilation of the defeated the decisions are quite clear. This man holding this particular arrangement of cards in his hand is thereby removed from existence. This is the nature of war, whose stake is at once the game and the authority and the justification. Seen so, war is the truest form of divination. It is the testing of one’s will and the will of another within that larger will which because it binds them is therefore forced to select. War is the ultimate game because war is at last a forcing of the unity of existence. War is god.
Cormac McCarthy
All other trades are contained in that of war.Is that why war endures?No. It endures because young men love it and old men love it in them. Those that fought, those that did not.That's your notion.The judge smiled. Men are born for games. Nothing else. Every child knows that play is nobler than work. He knows too that the worth or merit of a game is not inherent in the game itself but rather in the value of that which is put at hazard. Games of chance require a wager to have meaning at all. Games of sport involve the skill and strength of the opponents and the humiliation of defeat and the pride of victory are in themselves sufficient stake because they inhere in the worth of the principals and define them. But trial of chance or trial of worth all games aspire to the condition of war for here that which is wagered swallows up game, player, all.
Cormac McCarthy
I am afeard there are few die well that die in battle, for how can they charitably dispose of anything when blood is their argument?
William Shakespeare
In war, the strong make slaves of the weak, and in peace the rich makes slaves of the poor.
Oscar Wilde
Everyone has the best of feelings towards mankind in general, but not towards the individual man. We'll kill men, but we want to save mankind. And that isn't right, your Reverence. The world will be an evil place as long as people don't believe in other people.
Karel Čapek
We need to decide that we will not go to war, whatever reason is conjured up by the politicians or the media, because war in our time is always indiscriminate, a war against innocents, a war against children
Howard Zinn
Once you hear the details of victory, it is hard to distinguish it from a defeat.
Jean-Paul Sartre
Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more;Or close the wall up with our English dead!In peace there's nothing so becomes a manAs modest stillness and humility:But when the blast of war blows in our ears,Then imitate the action of the tiger.
William Shakespeare
It makes no difference what men think of war, said the judge. War endures. As well ask men what they think of stone. War was always here. Before man was, war waited for him. The ultimate trade awaiting its ultimate practitioner. That is the way it was and will be. That way and not some other way.
Cormac McCarthy
The first time it was reported that our friends were being butchered there was a cry of horror. Then a hundred were butchered. But when a thousand were butchered and there was no end to the butchery, a blanket of silence spread. When evil-doing comes like falling rain, nobody calls out "stop!"When crimes begin to pile up they become invisible. When sufferings become unendurable the cries are no longer heard. The cries, too, fall like rain in summer.
Bertolt Brecht
War was always here. Before man was, war waited for him. The ultimate trade awaiting its ultimate practitioner.
Cormac McCarthy
Cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war!
William Shakespeare
The enemy is anybody who's going to get you killed, no matter which side he is on.
Joseph Heller
It doesn't make a damned bit of difference who wins the war to someone who's dead.
Joseph Heller
When the rich wage war it's the poor who die.
Jean-Paul Sartre
How can you have a war on terrorism when war itself is terrorism?
Howard Zinn
There is no flag large enough to cover the shame of killing innocent people.
Howard Zinn
Almost everybody we get together with about a matter, even if it is of the highest importance, is incompetent.
Thomas Bernhard
Just imagine the silence in the world, if people talked only what they knew
Karel Čapek
History shows us that people often make mistakes, they give wrong decisions, they vote for the wrong persons! And history also shows us that in the end they pay a heavy price for it!
Mehmet Murat ildan
Here is a tragicomic reality of all the regimes: People work hard to feed their thief politicians, their thief kings and thief queens or their thief presidents! And therefore the tragicomic reality of all the times is this: There can exist no thieves without the support of people!
Mehmet Murat ildan
Sissie knew that she had to stop herself from crying. Why weep for them? In fact, stronger in her was the desire to ask somebody why the entire world has had to pay so much and is still paying so much for some folks' unhappiness.
Ama Ata Aidoo
A soulless city creates soulless people!
Mehmet Murat ildan
People do not see you, / They invent you and accuse you.
Hélène Cixous
It would be unfair to expect other people to be as brilliant as oneself.
Oscar Wilde
There are only two kinds of people who are really fascinating- people who know absolutely everything, and people who know absolutely nothing.
Oscar Wilde
People so easily forget their past selves.
Henrik Ibsen
In the end we all come to be cured of our sentiments. Those whom life does not cure death will.
Cormac McCarthy
I dont believe knowing can save us. What isconstant in history is greed and foolishness and a love of blood and this is a thing that even God—who knows all that can be known—seems powerless to change.
Cormac McCarthy
People move around so much in the world, things get lost.
Emma Donoghue
What a strange creature is a laughing fool,As if a man were created to no useBut only to show his teeth.
John Webster
What is certain is this, that I never rested in that way again, my feet obscenely resting on the earth, my arms on the handlebars and on my arms my head, rocking and abandoned. It is indeed a delporable sight, a deplorable example, for the people, who so need to be encouraged, in their bitter toil, and to have before their eyes manifestations of strength only, of courage and joy, without which they might collapse, at the end of the day, and roll on the ground.
Samuel Beckett
However gross a man may be, the minute he expresses a strong and genuine affection, some inner secretion alters his features, animates his gestures, and colors his voice. The stupidest man will often, under the stress of passion, achieve heights of eloquence, in thought if not in language, and seem to move in some luminous sphere. Goriot's voice and gesture had at this moment the power of communication that characterizes the great actor. Are not our finer feelings the poems of the human will?
Honoré de Balzac
Those who are weak don't fight.Those who are stronger might fightfor an hour.Those who are stronger still might fightfor many years.The strongest fighttheir whole life.They are the indispensable ones.
Bertolt Brecht
People run away to be alone,' he said. Some people had to be alone.
William Trevor
Pray don't talk to me about the weather, Mr. Worthing. Whenever people talk to me about the weather, I always feel quite certain that they mean something else. And that makes me quite nervous.
Oscar Wilde
Remember that every man is a variation of yourself
William Saroyan
Facts may be colored by the personalities of the people who present them.
Reginald Rose
If history is to be creative, to anticipate a possible future without denying the past, it should, I believe, emphasize new possibilities by disclosing those hidden episodes of the past when, even if in brief flashes, people showed their ability to resist, to join together, occasionally to win. I am supposing, or perhaps only hoping, that our future may be found in the past's fugitive movements of compassion rather than in its solid centuries of warfare.
Howard Zinn
People. You must love people. Men are admirable. I wantto vomit—and suddenly, there it is: the Nausea
Jean-Paul Sartre