Susan Sontag on war and peace

Ours is an age which consciously pursues health, and yet only believes in the reality of sickness. The truths we respect are those born of affliction.

I envy paranoids; they actually feel people are paying attention to them.

From now to the end of consciousness, we are stuck with the task of defending art.

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