>>>Like the fella says, in Italy for 30 years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love - they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock. So long Holly.
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>>With all due respect to the late mr Welles, this whole mantra of "war is good for science and art" is baloney. It's just the weapons' industry sales pitch.
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>I agree with you, but you have to admit it's a great quote.
Can't be great in my eyes. Witty maybe, memorable for sure. Just as some racist jokes are still funny - and would still be funny if turned against anybody else.
It's not even completely true, now that you got me thinking about it. I wouldn't call Switzerland "500 years of democracy and brotherly love" - or maybe we could take "brotherly" too literally, as this was the country which was sooooo afraid of their own women, they didn't allow them to vote until the 1970s. Oh and they did have their own internal wars - just look them up on Wikipedia - one group of cantons against another, Catholics vs Protestants, they were occupied by Napoleon, then liberated by Russians and Austrians, and finally had their last internal piece of warfare in 1847. So he's actually and factually wrong, it's about 100 years. The basis of Swiss democracy was established the next year, 1848.
And the invention of a cuckoo clock is not Swiss at all - it's German, from the Black Forest region, where it was a traditional craft since XVII century. The Swiss, accidentally (maybe), joined the trade about mid XIX century.
But then it just proves that no matter how nice and witty it may sound, most of the propaganda is just lies. Real masters use truths to the same purpose, just omit a few nasty details; the best way to lie is to have at least about 90% of your text true. Which was probably mr Welles's intent: put such a nasty, lying piece of demagoguery into the mouth of his character, who was, let's not forget, the worst kind of war profiteer.
