Michel de Montaigne Quotes
A foreign war is a lot milder than a civil war.
Montaigne, Michel de. The Complete Essays of Montaigne. Translated by Donald M. Frame, Stanford University Press, 1958, p. 518.
He was contrasting this with the Supreme Court decision in Bush v. Gore, where by 5 to 4, the Supreme Court made George W. Bush President. Bryer wrote a dissent and the majority of Americans wanted Gore. Yet, the people of America accepted the unpopular decision with which the majority disagreed. The alternative is settling such disputes in the streets with violence. So Bryer strongly advocates the upholding of Supreme Court decisions, even if unpopular and even if wrong as he felt Bush v. Gore was.
3rd Viscount Palmerston
There were some British politicians who had considered the possibility of supporting the South in the Civil War to assure their supply of cheap cotton. Entering the war by allying with the Confederacy was also a possibility. Lincoln used this phrase and instructed Adams to use that with the British politicians as the result if England get involved with the American Civil war. It is the closest phrase to “World War” until WWI.
At this point, there had hardly been any fighting and no outrages or war crimes were yet committed by either side. These would come later—more on the Confederate side as they did not want to take the limited resources they had from their troops to fulfil abstract obligations to prisoners of war or to civilians. A few deliberately chose to use terror tactics. The Union troops also at various points in the war got out of hand and looted personal property of civilians. But at this point, this proclamation was just lies and propaganda.
The Ambassador of Bavaria represented an area where the politicians saw democrats and socialists as their great enemy, as did many of the leading right wing conservatives in all of Germany. They believed that a great war would give them a chance to crush democratic socialism in Europe. Bethmann warned that just the opposite might result, and indeed it did. He was correct. Many of the crowned heads of Europe were deposed and the democratic socialists emerged as a major political factor in the victorious democracies. Bethmann-Hollweg, however, was not a strong leader and could not prevent the Conservatives, the military leaders, and Kaiser Wilhelm from initiating WWI.
Michel Eyquem de Montaigne, also known as Lord of Montaigne, was one of the most significant philosophers of the French Renaissance, known for popularizing the essay as a literary genre. His work is noted for its merging of casual anecdotes and autobiography with intellectual insight. His massive volume Essais contains some of the most influential essays ever written.
