Dorothy Dunnett Quotes

To kill a man is not to defend a doctrine, but to kill a man.

I'm a crack shot and I've won medals for shooting. But I don't think I could shoot a person.

The violence of killing in the name of pro-life makes a mockery of the pro-life cause.

There are many things worth living for, there are a few things worth dying for, but there is nothing worth killing for

When men hire themselves out to shoot other men to order, asking nothing about the justice of their cause, I don’t care if they are shot themselves.

To my mind, to kill in war is not a whit better than to commit ordinary murder.

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.

Who's the best person you know. Of all the people you know personally, is there anyone who has a sense of right and wrong and lives by it? This was a sticky question because it would have to be Ranger ...but I suspected he occasionally killed people. Only bad people, of course, but still...

Which is worse? Killing with hate or killing without hate?

To call war the soil of courage and virtue is like calling debauchery the soil of love.

Holy War is a contradiction of terms.

If some incarnation of evil as unambiguous as Hitler appeared again, I would have no moral qualms about killing the enemy. But in the modern world of moral murkiness, I prefer to keep my hands as clean of enemy blood as possible.

Leo Tolstoy ... defines patriotism as the principle that will justify the training of wholesale murderers.

War is not to be waged in the name of God.

There is no moral difference between a stealth bomber and a suicide bomber. Both kill innocent people for political reasons.

I think it is a mistake to focus - as we most often do - only on the sacrifice of life that war requires. War also requires that we sacrifice our normal unwillingness to kill.

Nothing can justify war.

The difference between humans and wild animals is that humans pray before they commit murder.

There is no such thing as a politically correct war.

Morality is contraband in war.

Vice stirs up war, virtue fights.

War is so unjust and ugly that all who wage it must try to stifle the voice of conscience within themselves.

We live in a world of guns, bombs and terror. To conquer hate seems a nigh-impossible task.

I don't believe in murder.

War is evil, but it is often the lesser evil.