Joseph Brodsky on war and peace

Life⁠—the way it really is⁠—is a battle not between bad and good but between bad and worse.

It is better to be a total failure in democracy than a martyr or the crème de la crème in tyranny.

The surest defense against Evil is extreme individualism, originality of thinking, whimsicality, even — if you will — eccentricity.

The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.

Thomas Jefferson1743–1826Letter to William Stephens Smith (13 November 1787). Manuscript at the Library of Congress.

• Liberty

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)

• Guns

The object of war is not to die for your country but to make the other bastard die for his.

George S. Patton1885–1945