Clive James Quotes

The third rule of ethics of means and ends is that in war the end justifies almost any means.

You don't ask people to sacrifice their lives until the nation has debated and committed to the mission. It's immoral.

Even for the world's only superpower, the ends don't always justify the means.

The lowest standards of ethics of which a right-thinking man can possibly conceive is taught to the common soldier whose trade is to shoot his fellow men. In youth he may have learned the command, 'Thou shalt not kill,' but the ruler takes the boy just as he enters manhood and teaches him that his highest duty is to shoot a bullet through his neighbor's heart - and this, unmoved by passion or feeling or hatred, and without the least regard to right or wrong, but simply because his ruler gives the word.

A moral choice in its basic terms appears to be a choice that favors survival: a choice made in favor of life.

As a mother trying to raise kids with some kind of a code, an honorable way to solve problems without using violence, I find it interesting to live in a country where your government is allowed to kill, whether it's war or execution. What interests me is not who deserves to die but who deserves to kill.

No weapon has ever settled a moral problem. It can impose a solution but it cannot guarantee it to be a just one. You can wipe out your opponents. But if you do it unjustly you become eligible for being wiped out yourself.

Necessity may render a doubtful act innocent, but it cannot make it praiseworthy

Explain to me why it is more noble to kill ten thousand men in battle than a dozen at dinner.

In modern eyes, precious though wars may be they must not be waged solely for the sake of the ideal harvest. Only when forced upon one, is a war now thought permissible.

The issues of the choice between right and wrong has to be an ongoing concern for everybody, at every age. There is no magical point in a human life when anyone is or becomes immune to the second-by-second choice to do right instead of wrong.

I don't want my generals or my defense secretary or my national-security team to ever feel deploying weapons to kill people as routine or abstract, even if the targets are bad people.

The only place you and I disagree is with regard to the bombing. You're so goddamned concerned about the civilians, and I (in contrast) don't give a damn. I don't care.". . . "I'd rather use the nuclear bomb. . . Does that bother you? I just want you to think big.

Does the commandment 'Thou Shalt Not Kill' mean nothing to us? Are we to interpret it as meaning 'Thou shalt not kill except on the grand scale,' or 'Thou shalt not kill except when the national leaders say to do so'?

In war, as in politics, no evil - even if it is permissible under the rules - is excusable unless it is absolutely necessary. Everything beyond that is a crime.

The right to do something doesn't mean it's the right thing to do.

Were prayers of murderers, when fighting on the “right side” of the war, ever heard—let alone answered?

Neither Jewish morality nor Jewish tradition can be used to disallow terror as a means of war.

To me, to say that war isn't evil is to say that nothing is evil.

It was my view then, and still is, that you don't make war without knowing why. Knowledge of course, is always imperfect, but it seemed to me that when a nation goes to war it must have reasonable confidence in the justice and imperative of its cause. You can't fix your mistakes. Once people are dead, you can't make them undead.

You can't have intentions without consequences. The question is, who pays for the consequences? Saving fish from drowning. Same thing. Who’s saved? Who’s not?

With the indiscriminate nature of modern military technology (no such thing as a "smart bomb," it turns out) all wars are wars against civilians, and are therefore inherently immoral. This is true even when a war is considered "just," because it is fought against a tyrant, against an aggressor, to correct a stolen boundary.

The Department of Justice is committed to asking one central question of everything we do: What is the right thing to do? Now that can produce debate, and I want it to be spirited debate. I want the lawyers of America to be able to call me and tell me: Janet, have you lost your mind?

If in order to kill the enemy you have to kill an innocent, don't take the shot. Don't create more enemies than you take out by some immoral act.

An aggressive war is the great crime against everything good in the world. A defensive war, which must necessarily turn to aggressive at the earliest moment, is the necessary great counter-crime. But never think that war, no matter how necessary, nor how justified, is not a crime. Ask the infantry and ask the dead.