David Mitchell War Quotations

Science devises ever bloodier means of war until humanity's powers of destruction overcome our powers of creation and our civilisation drives itself to extinction.

Oh, diplomacy ... it mops up war's spillages; legitimizes its outcomes; gives the strong state the means to impose its will on a weaker one, while saving its fleets and battalions for weightier opponents.

Wars are never cured, they just go into remission for a few years.

War's an auction where whoever can pay the most in damage and still be standing wins.

War may be an auction for countries. For soldiers it's a lottery.

Only professional diplomats, inveterate idiots and women view diplomacy as a long-term substitute for war.

If war's first victim is truth, its second is clerical efficiency.

Taro taught me that people respect spirit, but even cowards don't respect cowards.

Wars do not combust without warning. They begin as little fires over the horizon. Wars approach. A wise man watches for the smoke, and prepares to vacate the neighborhood, just like Ayrs and Jocasta. My worry is that the next war will be so big, nowhere with a decent restaurant will be left untouched.

This is a significant promotional offering for both companies, and makes Sun one of the most price competitive places to acquire an Oracle database. Sun is hoping that demand for Oracle products will be a driver for hardware revenue growth, meanwhile Oracle hopes that customers will extend their support contracts and drive revenue growth for Oracle support.

What sparks wars? The will to power, the backbone of human nature. The threat of violence, the fear of violence, or actual violence, is the instrument of this dreadful will. You can see the will to power in bedrooms, kitchens, factories, unions and the borders of states. Listen to this and remember it. The nation state is merely human nature inflated to monstrous proportions. QED, nations are entities whose laws are written by violence. Thus it ever was, so ever shall it be.

You don't want to get swept. My guys are not looking at (the game) toward wining the Cup. They want to get another win and have a successful season.

Perhaps where text slides toward ambiguity, film inclines to specificity. A novel contains as many versions of itself as it has readers, whereas a film's final cut vaporizes every other way it might have been made.