William S. Burroughs on guns

Cheat your landlord if you can and must, but do not try to shortchange the Muse. It cannot be done. You can’t fake quality any more than you can fake a good meal.

The junk merchant doesn’t sell his product to the consumer, he sells the consumer to his product. He does not improve and simplify his merchandise. He degrades and simplifies the client.

A functioning police state needs no police.

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.

Dwight D. Eisenhower1890–1969The Chance for Peace (1953)

• War & Peace

Rome remained free for four hundred years and Sparta eight hundred, although their citizens were armed all that time; but many other states that have been disarmed have lost their liberties in less than forty years.

Niccolò Machiavelli1469–1527

• Freedom
• War & Peace

War can only be abolished through war, and in order to get rid of the gun it is necessary to take up the gun.

Mao Zedong1893–1976“Problems of War and Strategy”, 1938.

• War & Peace