Where the voice of the wind calls our wandering feet, Through echoing forest and echoing street, With lutes in our hands ever-singing we roam, All men are our kindred, the world is our home. Our lays are of cities whose lustre is shed, The laughter and beauty of women long dead; The sword of old battles, the crown of old kings, And happy and simple and sorrowful things. What hope shall we gather, what dreams shall we sow? Where the wind calls our wandering footsteps we go. No love bids us tarry, no joy bids us wait: The voice of the wind is the voice of our fate.
|
Probably the battle of Waterloo was won on the playing-fields of Eton, but the opening battles of all subsequent wars have been lost there.
|
It is better to conquer yourself than to win a thousand battles. Then the victory is yours. It cannot be taken from you, not by angels or by demons, heaven or hell.
|
Wars throughout history have been waged for conquest and plunder.... the working class who fight all the battles, the working class who make the supreme sacrifices, the working class who freely shed their blood and furnish their corpses, have never yet had a voice in either declaring war or making peace. It is the ruling class that invariably does both. They alone declare war and they alone make peace....They are continually talking about their patriotic duty. It is not their but your patriotic duty that they are concerned about. There is a decided difference. Their patriotic duty never takes them to the firing line or chucks them into the trenches.
|
Our nation was born in genocide when it embraced the doctrine that the original American, the Indian, was an inferior race. Even before there were large numbers of Negroes on our shore, the scar of our racial hatred had already disfigured colonial society. From the sixteenth century forward, blood flowed in battles over racial supremacy. We are perhaps the only nation which tried as a matter of national policy to wipe out its indigenous population. Moreover, we elevated that tragic experience into a noble crusade. Indeed, even today we have not permitted ourselves to reject or feel remorse for this shameful episode. Our literature, our films, our drama, our folklore all exalt it. Our children are still taught to respect the violence which reduced a red-skinned people of an earlier culture into a few fragmented groups herded into impoverished reservations.
|
It is better to conquer yourself than to win a thousand battles. Then the victory is yours. It cannot be taken from you, not by angels or by demons, heaven or hell
|
The war, therefore, if we judge it by the standards of previous wars, is merely an imposture. It is like the battles between certain ruminant animals whose horns are set at such an angle that they are incapable of hurting one another. But though it is unreal it is not meaningless. It eats up the surplus of consumable goods, and it helps to preserve the special mental atmosphere that a hierarchical society needs. War, it will be seen, is now a purely internal affair. In the past, the ruling groups of all countries, although they might recognize their common interest and therefore limit the destructiveness of war, did fight against one another, and the victor always plundered the vanquished. In our own day they are not fighting against one another at all. The war is waged by each ruling group against its own subjects, and the object of the war is not to make or prevent conquests of territory, but to keep the structure of society intact. The very word 'war', therefore, has become misleading. It would probably be accurate to say that by becoming continuous war has ceased to exist. The peculiar pressure that it exerted on human beings between the Neolithic Age and the early twentieth century has disappeared and been replaced by something quite different. The effect would be much the same if the three super-states, instead of fighting one another, should agree to live in perpetual peace, each inviolate within its own boundaries. For in that case each would still be a self-contained universe, freed for ever from the sobering influence of external danger. A peace that was truly permanent would be the same as a permanent war. This
|
Reactance theory does not address how harmful or innocuous control can be and may seem to be too circumscribed to explain the nature of general harmful behavior. However, the limitations of its scope to specific and reactive control motivation do not detract from its power to explain battles for control dynamics. It is formulated to anticipate these specific incidents and, in doing so, addresses harm in general. With this purpose and the applicability of reactance theory in mind, the terms control and specific control are used interchangeably and, because reactance is control motivation, the terms reactance and control motivation are also used interchangeably. A control model, subsuming these concepts and general control, is introduced next, in which control (unless identified by a general control descriptor) is the belief in the freedom to engage in a specific nonharmful or harmful behavior to reach a specific nonharmful or harmful goal that can be exercised for a variety of reasons, most particularly when threatened or taken away, arousing reactance in proportion to its distinctiveness and importance.
|
Any attempt at a rational discussion of the economic realities of government-controlled medical care is almost certain to run up against the trump card of the political left: The Poor. The image that is often invoked is that of the elderly poor, forced to choose between food and medical treatment. Who could be so heartless as to abandon them to the vagaries of the free market? This has proved to be a very effective political strategy for extending government power, not only over medical care but also over housing and other sectors of the economy.The phoniness of this argument becomes apparent the moment you suggest that money be set aside specifically for dealing with the special problems of the poor, rather than bringing whole sectors of the economy under the dominance of politicians, bureaucrats and judges. The amount of money needed to take care of the poor is often some minute fraction of what sweeping new government programs cost. But, while big government liberals are willing to use the poor as human shields in their political battles, their more basic strategy is to proclaim that everyone has a right to some basic need that they want the government to provide. As a matter of practical politics, programs for the poor alone do not have as large a constituency as programs to give everybody some benefit, so that we can all have the illusion of getting something for nothing
|
17. Thus we may know that there are five essentials for victory: (1) He will win who knows when to fight and when not to fight. (2) He will win who knows how to handle both superior and inferior forces. (3) He will win whose army is animated by the same spirit throughout all its ranks. (4) He will win who, prepared himself, waits to take the enemy unprepared. (5) He will win who has military capacity and is not interfered with by the sovereign. 18. Hence the saying: If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself you will succumb in every battle.
|
He lives not long who battles with the immortals, nor do his children prattle about his knees when he has come back from battle and the dread fray.
|
The master class has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles. The master class had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject class has had nothing to gain and all to lose - especially their lives.
|
The explanation of the propensity of the English people to portrait painting is to be found in their relish for a Fact. Let a man do the grandest things, fight the greatest battles, or be distinguished by the most brilliant personal heroism, yet the English people would prefer his portrait to a painting of the great deed. The likeness they can judge of; his existence is a Fact. But the truth of the picture of his deeds they cannot judge of, for they have no imagination.
|
Behind closed doors they had what were legendary battles I hear but when the doors opened there was absolute unity. Not a crack could be found. No separation whatsoever. They were locked together for the good of the community.
|
If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.
|
I offer neither pay, nor quarters, nor food; I offer only hunger, thirst, forced marches, battles and death. Let him who loves his country with his heart, and not merely with his lips, follow me.
|
We, the soldiers who have returned from battles stained with blood; we who have seen our relatives and friends killed before our eyes; we who ...
|
Even when someone battles hard, there is an equal portion for one who lingers behind, and in the same honor are held both the coward and the brave man the idle man and he who has done much meet death alike.
|
Formless stacks of bodies and bodies by themselves, dabs of flesh upon the masts and spars,...
|
Free men cannot start a war, but once it is started, they can fight on in defeat. Herd men, followers of a leader, cannot do that, and so it is always the herd men who win battles and the free men who win wars.
|
Wars and revolutions and battles are due simply and solely to the body and its desires. All wars are undertaken for the acquisition of wealth; and the reason why we have to acquire wealth is the body, because we are slaves in its service.
|
Life's battles don't always go to the stronger or faster man. But sooner or later the man who wins, is the man who thinks he can.
|
To fight and conquer in all your battles is not supreme excellence supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy's resistance without fighting.
|
Dead battles, like dead generals, hold the military mind in their dead grip.
|
Battles are won by slaughter and maneuver. The greater the general, the more he contributes in maneuver, the less he demands in slaughter.
|
Though they may have won all the battles, we had all the good songs.
|
Military power wins battles, but spiritual power wins wars.
|
Celts are the men
That heaven made mad,
For their battles are all merry,
And their songs are all sad.
|
You can win a million battles but you can only lose one.
|
[If the foregoing was simply insensitive, George W. Bush's comparison of the first U.S. war against Iraq, when his dad was commander in chief, and the current U.S. war against Iraq is damning. In] Misunderestimated: The President Battles Terrorism, John Kerry and the Bush Haters ... I think freedom will prevail, so long as the U.S. and its allies don't ... do what many Iraqis still suspect might happen, and that is cut and run early, like what happened in '91.
|