Follies Quotes

Friendship is but another name for an alliance
with the follies and the misfortunes of others.
Our own share of miseries is sufficient:
why enter then as volunteers into those of another?
- Thomas Jefferson

Related topics: Government Political

In war as in life, it is often necessary
when some cherished scheme has failed,
to take up the best alternative open,
and if so, it is folly not to work for it with all your might.
- Winston Churchill

Silence is not always a Sign of Wisdom,
but Babbling is ever a folly.
- Benjamin Franklin

Those who realize their folly are not true fools.
- Zhuangzi

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Thank you for joining me on this journey we call life,
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Training - training is everything; training is all there is to a person.
We speak of nature; it is folly; there is no such thing as nature;
what we call by that misleading name is merely heredity and training.
We have no thoughts of our own, no opinions of our own;
they are transmitted to us, trained into us.
All that is original in us, and therefore fairly creditable
or discreditable to us, can be covered up and hidden
by the point of a cambric needle, all the rest being atoms
contributed by, and inherited from, a procession of ancestors
that stretches back a billion years to the Adam-clam
or grasshopper or monkey from whom our race has been
so tediously and ostentatiously and unprofitably developed.
And as for me, all that I think about in this plodding sad pilgrimage,
this pathetic drift between the eternities,
is to look out and humbly live a pure and high and blameless life,
and save that one microscopic atom in me that is truly me:
the rest may land in Sheol and welcome for all I care.
- Mark Twain in A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court

When we step on the battlefield, I will be
The First Boots On and the Last Boots Off.
- LtG. Hal Moore

Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.
- Alfred, Lord Tennyson

When you are in any contest,
you should work as if there were -
to the very last minute - a chance to lose it.
This is battle, this is politics, this is anything.
- Dwight D. Eisenhower

Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory.
Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.
- Sun Tzu

I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat.
- Winston Churchill

We will not learn how to live together in peace
by killing each other's children.
- Jimmy Carter

The supreme art of war is
to subdue the enemy without fighting.
- Sun Tzu

We have no enemies,
we have only friendships that we haven't yet developed
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

It is my conviction that killing under the cloak of war
is nothing but an act of murder.
- Albert Einstein

The problems of victory are more agreeable
than those of defeat,
but they are no less difficult.
- Winston Churchill

Men ought either to be indulged or utterly destroyed,
for if you merely offend them, they take vengeance,
but if you injure them greatly, they are unable to retaliate,
so that the injury done to a man
ought to be such that vengeance cannot be feared.
- Niccolo Machiavelli

If I am happy in spite of my deprivations,
if my happiness is so deep that it is a faith,
so thoughtful that it becomes a philosophy of life.
If, in short, I am an optimist,
my testimony to the creed of optimism is worth hearing.
- Helen Keller
...
Helen Keller (1880-1968) overcame being both deaf and blind
to become a famous author, lecturer, and activist
for women's suffrage, workers' rights, and ending war.

War settles nothing.
- Dwight D. Eisenhower

You can discover what your enemy fears most
by observing the means he uses to frighten you.
- Michael Moncur

To build may have to be the slow and laborious task of years.
To destroy can be the thoughtless act of a single day.
- Winston Churchill

If we are to teach real peace in this world,
and if we are to carry on a real war against war,
we shall have to begin with the children.
- Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi

When you have to kill a man,
it costs nothing to be polite.
- Winston Churchill

The expert in battle seeks his victory
from strategic advantage
and does not demand it from his men.
- Sun Tzu

A bad peace is better than a good war.
- Yiddish Proverb

If we take the generally accepted definition of bravery
as a quality which knows no fear, I have never seen a brave man.
All men are frightened. The more intelligent they are,
the more they are frightened.
- George S. Patton

But what a cruel thing is war
to separate and destroy families and friends.
- Robert E. Lee

We prefer world law in the age of self-determination
to world war in the age of mass extermination.
- John F. Kennedy

When you are winning a war
almost everything that happens
can be claimed to be right and wise.
- Winston Churchill

When the war of the giants is over,
the wars of the pygmies will begin.
- Winston Churchill

When people speak to you about a preventive war,
you tell them to go fight it.
After my experience, I have come to hate war.
War settles nothing.
- Dwight D. Eisenhower

To jaw-jaw is always better than to war-war.
- Winston Churchill

Love does not begin and end the way we seem to think it does.
Love is a battle, love is a war; love is a growing up.
- James A. Baldwin

It is not enough to say we must not wage war.
It is necessary to love peace and sacrifice for it.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.

There was never a good war or a bad peace.
- Benjamin Franklin

Don't be against anything -
e.g. don't be against war, be FOR peace
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

The unleashed power of the atom has changed everything
save our modes of thinking
and we thus drift toward unparalleled catastrophe.
- Albert Einstein

What counts is not necessarily
the size of the dog in the fight -
it's the size of the fight in the dog.
- Dwight D. Eisenhower quoting Mark Twain

The most terrible job in warfare is to be a second lieutenant
leading a platoon when you are on the battlefield.
- Dwight D. Eisenhower

What is human warfare but just this;
an effort to make the laws of God and
nature take sides with one party.
- Henry David Thoreau

When you put on a uniform,
there are certain inhibitions that you accept.
- Dwight D. Eisenhower

If men can develop weapons that are so terrifying
as to make the thought of global war
include almost a sentence for suicide,
you would think that man's intelligence and his comprehension...
would include also his ability to find a peaceful solution.
- Dwight D. Eisenhower

The end move in politics is always to pick up a gun.
- R. Buckminster Fuller

Battles are won by slaughter and maneuver.
The greater the general, the more he contributes in maneuver,
the less he demands in slaughter.
- Winston Churchill

All warfare is based on deception.
- Sun Tzu

Never in the field of human conflict
was so much owed by so many to so few.
- Winston Churchill

When all you know is bombs,
everything looks like a target.
Give peace and diplomacy a chance.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

The power of an air force is terrific
when there is nothing to oppose it.
- Winston Churchill

There should be an honest attempt at the reconciliation
of differences before resorting to combat.
- Jimmy Carter

We shall show mercy, but we shall not ask for it.
- Winston Churchill

We have not yet begun to fight.
- John Paul Jones

I can make more generals, but horses cost money.
- Abraham Lincoln

The great defense against the air menace
is to attack the enemy's aircraft
as near as possible to their point of departure.
- Winston Churchill

I wanted to see exotic Vietnam, the jewel of Southeast Asia.
I, uh, I wanted to meet interesting
and stimulating people of an ancient culture,
and kill them.
- the movie Full Metal Jacket

We are all "neighbors."
Our world has gotten too small for us to be anything else.
We can no longer have "us" and "them" - friends and enemies.
A person from Iraq, or Russia, or Columbia is
no more a stranger or enemy than a person from across town.
A few people everywhere are troublemakers.
Every religion provokes a few people to become extremists.
Do we need police around the globe? Unfortunately, we always will.
Do we need war? Does that question even deserve an answer?
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

We may never be strong enough to be entirely
nonviolent in thought, word and deed.
But we must keep nonviolence as our goal
and make strong progress towards it.
- Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi

But what a cruel thing is war
to separate and destroy families and friends,
and mar the purest joys and happiness
God has granted us in this world,
to fill our hearts with hatred
instead of love for our neighbors,
and to devastate the fair face of this beautiful world!
- Robert E. Lee

I do not believe in using women in combat,
because females are too fierce.
- Margaret Mead

Victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror,
victory however long and hard the road may be;
for without victory, there is no survival.
- Winston Churchill

We shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be,
we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds,
we shall fight in the fields and in the streets,
we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender.
- Winston Churchill

I have seen enough of one war never to wish to see another.
- Thomas Jefferson

Those who can win a war well can rarely make a good peace
and those who could make a good peace
would never have won the war.
- Winston Churchill

The limitation of riots, moral questions aside,
is that they cannot win and their participants know it.
Hence, rioting is not revolutionary but reactionary
because it invites defeat.
It involves an emotional catharsis,
but it must be followed by a sense of futility.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.

Do not speak to me of rules.
This is war! This is not a game of cricket!
- from the movie The Bridge On The River Kwai

When I despair, I remember that all through history
the way of truth and love has always won.
There have been tyrants and murderers and
for a time they seem invincible,
but in the end, they always fall ... think of it, always.
- Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi

It is an unfortunate fact that we can secure peace
only by preparing for war.
- John F. Kennedy

Do feuds ever end?
Only when both sides shake hands,
and agree that there is no winner, no loser,
only people who have wearied of fighting
and desire to live in peace.
For many years, Northern Ireland was locked
in a murderous and seemingly unending feud.
The key to ending the feud was a shared commitment
that peace was more important than vengeance.
That is always the choice to be made.
The organizers of an April 10, 2009
joint Protestant-Catholic commemoration
of the Northern Ireland dead,
comprised of members of the once-outlawed Sinn Fein
as well as their once-avowed enemies,
referred to, "the terrible, random nature
of death in war and civil conflict."
Some lessons have been learned, many more remain.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Love is like war: easy to begin but very hard to stop.
- H. L. Mencken

The Creator has not thought proper
to mark those in the forehead
who are of stuff to make good generals.
We are first, therefore, to seek them blindfold,
and then let them learn the trade
at the expense of great losses.
- Thomas Jefferson

We must concentrate not merely on
the negative expulsion of war
but the positive affirmation of peace.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.

I am never going to have anything more to do
with politics or politicians.
When this war is over I shall confine myself entirely
to writing and painting.
- Winston Churchill

Gentlemen, you can't fight in here! This is the War Room.
- the movie Dr. Strangelove (1964)

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May the world be kind to you, and may your own thoughts be gentle upon yourself.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie