James Reston Quotes

The first casualty when war comes is truth.

It's often been observed that the first casualty of war is the truth. But that's a lie, too, in its way. The reality is that, for most wars to begin, the truth has to have been sacrificed a long time in advance.

When a nation is at war many things that might be said in time of peace are such a hindrance to its efforts that their utterance will not be endured.

Death to intellectuals!

My mom gets so upset at me when I say stuff in the press about anything political, and it drives me crazy because I say to my mom: 'I can't be on the side of any sort of war and I'm not going to be.'

During the early months of the war in 1914 there was a conflict of opinion between the War Office and the Foreign Office regarding news from the Front.

In a war of ideas it is people who get killed.

As long as the people don't fear the truth, there is hope. For once they fear it, the one who tells it doesn't stand a chance. And today, truth is still beautiful... but so frightening.

We cannot undo the past in this misguided war in Iraq.

Germany has reduced savagery to a science, and this great war for the victorious peace of justice must go on until the German cancer is cut clean out of the world body.

Hate sells.

One certain effect of war is to diminish freedom of expression.

My personal opinion is that if someone writes honestly about war, it will inherently be anti-war.

Oftentimes, discussion of war gets flattened to a discussion of trauma.

I was surrounded by nature and trying to come to terms with this blissful nature versus the inhumane mentality of war. People were being deluded by someone using the word peace.

And in the Second World War, you didn't just read about it in the newspapers because you weren't allowed to read it in the newspapers. It was all censored, you know? So nobody knew what we were doing.

As soon as war is declared it will be impossible to hold the poets back. Rhyme is still the most effective drum.

I hate war for its consequences, for the lies it lives on and propagates, for the undying hatreds it arouses.

And religion causes most of the problems, war, and economics of course, and study your history or you're going to repeat it; and if you're burning a Harry Potter book you need some serious counseling, you don't get it, you're missing the whole point.

Censorship always defeats it own purpose, for it creates in the end the kind of society that is incapable of exercising real discretion.

Under no stretch of imagination can war be regarded as an ethical process; yet war, force, terror, and propaganda were the evolutionary means employed to weld the German people into a tribal whole.

If truth is the first victim of war, then read on - I've got some great lies for you this month.

If you're going to write about war, the ugly side is inevitable. Suffering and death are obviously part of war.

Everyone, when there's war in the air, learns to live in a new element: falsehood.

No event in American history is more misunderstood than the Vietnam War. It was misreported then, and it is misremembered now.