>>Or Harry Lime in
The Third Man>>
>>"In Italy, for thirty years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder, bloodshed — they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love, they had five hundred years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock."
>
>I'm waiting for a chance to reply that one ever since I first saw it :).
>
>"And you have a few centuries of independence, free market, no war on their soil but a booming military industry... and what did that produce? An expensive specialist who will decide who gets to keep the dog after a divorce."
But you forget, we also have therapists for the dog to help him work through his issues from the trauma !
>
>(IOW, any other variation on the subject of "war is good for human development" is equally ridiculous, Graham being a Green or not)
I don't think the point was war being good for human development but rather that internal conflict is often the sign of a dynamic society.
Charles Hankey
Though a good deal is too strange to be believed, nothing is too strange to have happened.
- Thomas Hardy
Half the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important. They don't mean to do harm-- but the harm does not interest them. Or they do not see it, or they justify it because they are absorbed in the endless struggle to think well of themselves.
-- T. S. Eliot
Democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for lunch.
Liberty is a well-armed sheep contesting the vote.
- Ben Franklin
Pardon him, Theodotus. He is a barbarian, and thinks that the customs of his tribe and island are the laws of nature.
