Samuel Clemens most poignant quotation is his war prayer that reveals the raw truth of war. Google it. His other quotes adamantly reflect how strongly he felt against bloody battlefield aggression. He had experienced more than one of these debaucheries.
Dear Ones,
Other war quotes express Mark Twain's passionate distrust of man-made wars. His reasoning is enlightening and robust at the same time.
"To be a patriot, one had to say and keep saying, 'Our country right or wrong' and urge on the little war. Have you not perceived that this phrase is an insult to the nation." Nationalism is one step away from fascism.
"Before I had a chance to another war, the desire to kill people to whom I had not been introduced had passed away."
"War is a waste of projectiles. There has never been a just war, never an honorable one . . . on the part of fighting a war, I can see a million years ahead." Mark Twain goes on to remind us of the eternal war cry from the pulpit followed by cheering lies of statesmen, in the name of God, and grotesque self-deception.
"All wars must be just killing of strangers against whom you feel no personal animosity; strangers whom in other circumstances you would help if you found them in trouble and who would help you if you needed the same."
"If a cannon's mouth is loaded my immortal and inflexible purpose is to get over the fence and go home. " He also observed that only one third of the men who fought survived, what seemed to him to be quite "Napoleonic in its grandeur."
"Man is the only animal that deals in the atrocity, War. He is the only one that gathers his brothers about him and goes forth in cold blood and calm pulse to exterminate his kind. He is the only animal that for sordid wages will march . . . and help slaughter strangers of his own species who have never done him harm and with whom he has no quarrel. And in the interlude between campaigns he washes the blood off his hands, and works for 'the universal brotherhood of man."
"An inglorious peace is better than an dishonorable war."
Mame
www.macdonaldsward.com
helenesmith1.blogspot.com
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