Freeman Dyson Quotes
A good cause can become bad if we fight for it with means that are indiscriminatingly murderous.
Freeman Dyson, Physicist, Disturbing the Universe, 1979
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
Muslim League leaders wanted to stir up India's Muslims in order to prevent Indian Independence from Britain unless India were partitioned and the Muslims could have their own nation. At that point the British and the Congress Party of India—the majority political party were both starting to plan for independence. Most of the Muslim nationalists did not want to have any Muslims living in a Majority Hindu nation. To stop it, they first used fear claiming that when the British left, the Hindus would massacre all the Muslims. They galvanized the Muslims to first attack the Hindus to dissuade then from their attacks which at that point were imaginary except in the conspiracy theory of the Muslim League. The moral logic of this statement was similar, albeit not to the same bloody degree, as the famous quotation of Presidential Candidate Barry Goldwater on extremism." H. S. Suhrawardy
The phrase was used without attribution by President Jimmy Carter in his national address on the energy crisis, April 18, 1977
This was a precursor of the total war views of William Tecumseh Sherman and Ulysses S. Grant during the American Civil War half a century later.
This quotation is noteworthy because he is one of the only Judeo-Christian theologians who hold that the ends justify the means. Even most politicians do not believe this.
Freeman John Dyson FRS was a British-American theoretical and mathematical physicist, mathematician, and statistician known for his works in quantum field theory, astrophysics, random matrices, mathematical formulation of quantum mechanics, condensed matter physics, nuclear physics, and engineering. He was Professor Emeritus in the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, a member of the Board of Visitors of Ralston College, and a member of the Board of Sponsors of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.
