Posted on 11/05/2007 4:56:47 AM PST by Loud Mime
“If we desire to insult, we must be able to repel it; if we desire to secure peace, one of the most powerful instruments of our rising prosperity, it must be known, that we are at all times ready for War.”
George Washington (fifth annual address to Congress, 13 December 1793)
“Our contest is not only whether we ourselves shall be free, but whether there shall be left to mankind an asylum on earth for civil and religious liberty”
Samuel Adams
“If ye love wealth greater than liberty, the tranquility of servitude greater than the animating contest for freedom, go home from us in peace. We seek not your counsel, nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you; and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen.”
Samuel Adams
Other – George Orwell
”Pacifism is objectively pro-fascist. This is elementary common sense. If you hamper the war effort of one side, you automatically help out that of the other.”
”The quickest way to end a war is to lose it.”
”War is evil, but it is often the lesser evil.”
”There are some ideas so wrong that only a very intelligent person could believe in them.”
”Enlightened people seldom, if ever, possess a sense of responsibility.”
”Political language... is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.”
”But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.”
All political thinking for years past has been vitiated in the same way. People can foresee the future only when it coincides with their own wishes, and the most grossly obvious facts can be ignored when they are unwelcome.”
”All the war-propaganda, all the screaming and lies and hatred, comes invariably from people who are not fighting.”
”As I write, highly civilized human beings are flying overhead, trying to kill me.”
”(Mankind) is not likely to salvage civilization unless he can evolve a system of good and evil which is independent of heaven and hell.”
”One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes a revolution in order to establish a dictatorship.”
What you may be referring to are my own embellishments, which were very likely obtained from a variety of sources.
If you doubt this or lack the power to accept it, or it offends your idea of the way things "ought" to be, even for a moment, you do not even deserve freedom and you are not worthy of peace.
Very Interesting... from Wikipedia:
Whatever the source, the adage has become a living vocabulary item itself, used in the production of different ideas in a number of languages. The actual words of Vegetius are not even recognized by a large number of writers, who attribute the saying directly to him.
Si vis bellum para pacem
For example, with reference to the foreign policy of Napoleon Bonaparte, the historian, de Bourrienne, said
“Everyone knows the adage .... Had Bonaparte been a Latin scholar he would probably have reversed it and said, Si vis bellum para pacem.”
meaning that if you are planning a war you should put other nations off guard by cultivating peace.
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