Martin Van Creveld Quotes

In order to do good, you may have to engage in evil

You could run from someone you feared, you could try to fight someone you hated. All my reactions were geared toward those kinds of killers – the monsters, the enemies. When you loved the one who was killing you, it left you no options. How could you run, how could you fight, when doing so would hurt that beloved one? If your life was all you had to give your beloved, how could you not give it? If it was someone you truly loved?

I don't want to lie. I can't tell the truth. So it's over.

Tragedy, for me, is not a conflict between right and wrong, but between two different kinds of right.

It would perhaps be nice to be alternately the victim and the executioner.

We have the wolf by the ears, and we can neither hold him, nor safely let him go. Justice is in one scale, and self-preservation in the other.

It must be a hard thing to kill a man you don't know and don't hate.

There are two kinds of people in this world, son. Those who save lives, and those who take lives." "And what of those who protect and defend? Those who save lives by taking lives?" "That's like trying to stop a storm by blowing harder. Ridiculous. You can't protect by killing.

You undergo too strict a paradox, Striving to make an ugly deed look fair.

Abraham responds "Here I am" when God asks him to sacrifice his son, and he answers "Here I am" when his son asks him about what is happening. It's a paradoxical moment. He can't be fully present for his God or his son.

And that was all the part of it - the way you were obliged to live. You stifled a groan, you lied about your love, you deceived your legal wife, and all in the name of honour. That was the damned paradox of it - in order to behave well, you have to behave badly.

How can justice fall victim, ever, to what is right?

A weak man in a corner is more dangerous than a strong man.

I may command where I adore.

In one sense, the Stanford prison study is more like a Greek drama than a traditional experiment, in that we have humanity, represented by a bunch of good people, pitted against an evil-producing situation. The question is, does the goodness of the people overwhelm the bad situation, or does the bad situation overwhelm the good people?

The battle we have fought, and are still fighting, for the forests is a part of the eternal conflict between right and wrong.

The only war that we must all fight is the one against evil.

We live in a wondrous time in which the strong is weak because of his moral scruples and the weak grows strong because of his audacity.

The tension of opposites: Life is a series of pulls back and forth. You want to do one thing, but you are bound to do something else. Something hurts you, yet you know it shouldn't. You take certain things for granted, even when you know you should never take anything for granted. A tension of opposites, like a pull on a rubber band. And most of us live somewhere in the middle.

Are we to assist it in gaining power in order to save our lives? Is that the paradox of our earthly situation?

He recalls what that first German soldier said to his major: No God-not yours or mine-approves of what you're doing.

There is no escaping this fight. It is civilization or Jihadism. We can and should debate tactics; but the sides are clear enough.

When you fight something, you're tied to it forever. As long as you're fighting it, you’re giving it power.

I was frightened to go forward, but I was even more frightened of going back.

Yes?" she asked, eyeing me guardedly. I struck out a hand and said "Shake." Arra stared at the hand, then into my unfocused eyes. "One good fight doesn't make you a warrior," she said. "Shake!" I repeated angrily. "And if I don't?" she asked. "I'll get back up on the bars and fight you till you do," I growled. Arra studied me at length, then nodded and took my hand. "Power to you, Darren Shan," she said gruffly. "Power," I repeated weakly, then fainted into her arms and knew no more till I came to in my hammock the next night.