I am alive and well and unconcerned about the rumors of my death. But if I were dead, I would be the last to know.
When a war is over I think it's a cowardly thing to leave the war behind you in minefields that hit women and children and the most vulnerable. Imagine the war is finished and you go to work and there are snipers shooting at you. Imagine taking your kids to the beach and you find that the beach is blowing up beneath you. Like there's nowhere safe.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote emphasizes the moral responsibility to address the aftermath of war, especially its effects on innocent civilians.
In this quote, Paul McCartney reflects on the haunting consequences of war, suggesting that leaving behind unexploded mines and dangers for vulnerable populations, particularly women and children, is an act of cowardice. He urges us to imagine the ongoing peril that innocent lives face in post-war environments, highlighting the importance of confronting and resolving the remnants of conflict rather than ignoring them.
Themes
In practice
Example use cases
In a speech about humanitarian efforts in post-conflict zones, this quote could highlight the importance of addressing hidden dangers.
More from Paul Mccartney
All quotes →There’s nothing as glamorous to me as a record store.
If You can play Your stuff in a pub, then You´re a good band.
We were a savage little lot, Liverpool kids, not pacifist or vegetarian or anything. But I feel I've gone beyond that, and that it was immature to be so prejudiced and believe in all the stereotypes.
I don't work at being ordinary.
It (LSD) opened my eyes. We only use one-tenth of our brain. Just think of what we could accomplish if we could only tap that hidden part! It would mean a whole new world if the politicians would take LSD. There wouldn't be any more war or poverty or famine.
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Our enmity toward God takes on many labels, such as rebellion, hard-heartedness, stiff-neckedness, unrepentant, puffed up, easily offended, and sign seekers. The proud wish God would agree with them. They aren't interested in changing their opinions to agree with God's.
Once you buy the argument that some segment of the citizenry should lose their rights, just because they are envied or resented, you are putting your own rights in jeopardy - quite aside from undermining any moral basis for respecting anybody's rights. You are opening the floodgates to arbitrary power. And once you open the floodgates, you can't tell the water where to go.
And there is the headlight, shining far down the track, glinting off the steel rails that, like all parallel lines, will meet in infinity, which is after all where this train is going.
No one has ever laughed at a pun who did not see in the one word a twofold meaning. To materialists this world is opaque like a curtain; nothing can be seen through it. A mountain is just a mountain, a sunset just a sunset; but to poets, artists, and saints, the world is transparent like a window pane - it tells of something beyond....a mountain tells of the Power of God, the sunset of His Beauty, and the snowflake of His Purity.
Man can embody truth but he cannot know it.