It is a socialist idea that making profits is a vice; I consider the real vice is making losses.
Winston ChurchillRead
We sit in calm, airy, silent rooms opening upon sunlit and embowered lawns, not a sound except of summer and of husbandry disturbs the peace; but seven million men, any ten thousand of whom could have annihilated the ancient armies, are in ceaseless battle from the Alps to the Ocean.
Interpretation
This quote reflects on the contrast between the peace of home and the ongoing turmoil of war.
In this quote, Winston Churchill describes a serene and peaceful environment that starkly contrasts with the reality of war raging across the landscape. While some enjoy tranquility in their lives, countless others are engaged in fierce conflicts, emphasizing the disconnect between personal peace and the broader struggles of humanity. This duality prompts reflection on the sacrifices made by those in battle and the fragility of peace.
In practice
This quote can be used during a memorial service to honor those who have fought in wars despite the peaceful lives enjoyed by others.
It is a socialist idea that making profits is a vice; I consider the real vice is making losses.
The United States is like a gigantic boiler. Once the fire is lit under it, there's no limit to the power it can generate.
Politics is almost as exciting as war, and quite as dangerous. In war you can only be killed once, but in politics many times.
I will not pretend that if I had to choose between communism and Nazism I would choose communism.
Mountaintops inspire leaders but valleys mature them.
True genius resides in the capacity for evaluation of uncertain, hazardous, and conflicting information.
Women are so much a part of war, even if they tend to see another side of it. To say they don't understand war is ridiculous.
I think a lot of people, including me, clammed up when a civilian asked about battle, about war. It was fashionable. One of the most impressive ways to tell your war story is to refuse to tell it, you know. Civilians would then have to imagine all kinds of deeds of derring-do.
History did not demand Yossarian's premature demise, justice could be satisfied without it, progress did not hinge upon it, victory did not depend on it. That men would die was a matter of necessity; WHICH men would die, though, was a matter of circumstance, and Yossarian was willing to be the victim of anything but circumstance. But that was war. Just about all he could find in its favor was that it paid well and liberated children from the pernicious influence of their parents.
In war you lose your sense of the definite, hence your sense of truth itself, and therefore it's safe to say that in a war story nothing is ever absolutely true.
What one Predator drone pilot described of his experience fighting in the Iraq war while never leaving Nevada: 'You're going to war for 12 hours, shooting weapons at targets, directing kills on enemy combatants. Then you get in the car and you drive home, and within 20 minutes you're sitting at the dinner table talking to your kids about their homework.'
I know that war is very cruel and that life is harder when you aren't able to live in the place you called home.
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