#warfare

He could not believe that any of them might actually hit somebody. If one did, what a nowhere way to go: killed by accident; slain not as an individual but by sheer statistical probability, by the calculated chance of searching fire, even as he himself might be at any moment. Mathematics! Mathematics! Algebra! Geometry! When 1st and 3d Squads came diving and tumbling back over the tiny crest, Bell was content to throw himself prone, press his cheek to the earth, shut his eyes, and lie there. God, oh, God! Why am I here? Why am I here? After a moment's thought, he decided he better change it to: why are we here. That way, no agency of retribution could exact payment from him for being selfish. ↗

— James Jones

#bell #death #fear #geometry #machine-guns

How reprehensible it is when those blessed with commodities insist on ignoring the poor. Better to torment them, force them into indentured servitude, inflict compulsion and blows—this at least produces a connection, fury and a pounding heart, and these too constitute a form of relationship. But to cower in elegant homes behind golden garden gates, fearful lest the breath of warm humankind touch you, unable to indulge in extravagances for fear they might be glimpsed by the embittered oppressed, to oppress and yet lack the courage to show yourself as an oppressor, even to fear the ones you are oppressing, feeling ill at ease in your own wealth and begrudging others their ease, to resort to disagreeable weapons that require neither true audacity nor manly courage, to have money, but only money, without splendor: That’s what things look like in our cities at present ↗

— Robert Walser

#class-warfare #courage #cowardice #inequality #money

Whatever your station or position in life, there is always room for improvement, enhancement, and perfection. I say this with a great sense of humility. Regardless of what you are enjoying at the moment, the Lord says that he has something better for you! No matter what you have achieved, attained, or accomplished in this world, there are more challenges and blessings ahead. God says that you have stayed long enough on this mountain. It is time to press forward to take more territories and receive more trophies. ↗

— Pedro Okoro

#spiritual-warfare #inspirational

Pleasant it to behold great encounters of warfare arrayed over the plains, with no part of yours in peril. ↗

— Lucretius

#encounters #great #over #part #peril

Nations fight against nations, in marriages people fight against each other, children fight against each other. We are in warfare, in a national warfare, and in warfare with each other and with ourselves. ↗

— Charles Stanley

#children #each #fight #marriages #national

If we are to be destroyed we will do it ourselves by warfare with thermonuclear weaponry. ↗

— Lewis Thomas

#ourselves #warfare #weaponry #will

The battle for the mind of Ronald Reagan was like the trench warfare of World War I: never have so many fought so hard for such barren terrain. ↗

— Peggy Noonan

#battle #fought #hard #i #like

...the world was trying to change its old face and show its underbelly of earth and roots. ↗

— Italo Calvino

#warfare #change

When he reached the last hole he saw, far to the west, a series of rockets bloom in the sky. He watched their green and yellow and red petals arch across the horizon, and fade into the gloom of the earth. It was very beautiful, but he recognized them for Chinese rockets. ↗

— Pat Frank

#warfare #beauty

I sometimes try to imagine what would have happened if we’d known the bonobo first and the chimpanzee only later—or not at all. The discussion about human evolution might not revolve as much around violence, warfare and male dominance, but rather around sexuality, empathy, caring and cooperation. What a different intellectual landscape we would occupy! ↗

— Frans de Waal

#cooperation #empathy #evolution #frans-de-waal #male-dominance