#sacrifice

War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things, the decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth a war, is much worse. When a people are used as mere human instruments for firing cannon or thrusting bayonets, in the service and for the selfish purposes of a master, such war degrades a people. A war to protect other human beings against tyrannical injustice; a war to give victory to their own ideas of right and good, and which is their own war, carried on for an honest purpose by their free choice, — is often the means of their regeneration. A man who has nothing which he is willing to fight for, nothing which he cares more about than he does about his personal safety, is a miserable creature who has no chance of being free, unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself. ↗

— John Stuart Mill

#pacifism #sacrifice #selfishness #war #men

Society can give its young men almost any job and they'll figure how to do it. They'll suffer for it and die for it and watch their friends die for it, but in the end, it will get done. That only means that society should be careful about what it asks for. ... Soldiers themselves are reluctant to evaluate the costs of war, but someone must. That evaluation, ongoing and unadulterated by politics, may be the one thing a country absolutely owes the soldiers who defend its borders. ↗

— Sebastian Junger

#duty #patriotism #sacrifice #war #men

If Everything’s a Rush, Nothing Is ↗

— Miles Anthony Smith

#leadership #quotes-to-live-by #sacrifice #servant-leader #inspirational

Freedom is a right ultimately defended by the sacrifice of America's servicemen and women. ↗

— Arnold Schwarzenegger

#defended #freedom #men and women #right #sacrifice

That every person is desirous to obtain, with as little sacrifice as possible, as much as possible of the articles of wealth. ↗

— Nassau William Senior

#desirous #every #little #much #obtain

It's often been observed that the first casualty of war is the truth. But that's a lie, too, in its way. The reality is that, for most wars to begin, the truth has to have been sacrificed a long time in advance. ↗

— L. Neil Smith

#been #begin #casualty #first #lie

I think that the present is worth attention, one shouldn't sacrifice it to future conceptions of, of this future or that future. ↗

— Tom Stoppard

#conceptions #future #i #i think #present

We strain to tell Americans and aliens in this country that there's nothing unique about America, nothing unique about American civilization, nothing that requires their allegiance, nothing of great value that they should sacrifice for. ↗

— Tom Tancredo

#allegiance #america #american #civilization #country

After Nicholas hung up the phone, he watched his mother carry buckets and garden tools across the couch grass toward a bed that would, come spring, be brightly ablaze as tropical coral with colorful arctotis, impatiens, and petunias. Katherine dug with hard chopping strokes, pulling out wandering jew and oxalis, tossing the uprooted weeds into a black pot beside her. The garden will be beautiful, he thought. But how do the weeds feel about it? Sacrifices must be made. ↗

— Stephen M. Irwin

#flowers #garden #gardening #mother #sacrifices

Your representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgment; and he betrays instead of serving you if he sacrifices it to your opinion. ↗

— Edmund Burke

#his #industry #instead #judgment #only