Tacitus Quotes

To rob, to ravage, to murder, in their imposing language, are the arts of civil policy. When they have made the world a solitude, they call it peace.

To plunder, to slaughter, to steal, these things they misname empire; and where they make a wilderness, they call it peace.

They make a desert and call it peace.

For a time during the early settlement of this country peace and goodwill prevailed, only to be followed later by violent and relentless warfare.

If you do not accept the yoke of the Church and the King of Spain, I will make war on you everywhere in every way that I can. The death and destruction will be your fault.

The whole history of the world, on its broader lines, has been one of race conflict, wars, subjugation or extinction.

Man’s greatest good fortune is to chase and defeat his enemies, take all his goods, leave his older women weeping, ride his horses, and use the bodies of his younger women at night.

We Beate the Savages outt of the Island burned their howses Ransaked their Temple Tooke down the Corpes of their deade kings from out of their Toambes And caryed away their pearles.... The Salvages still contineweinge their mallice Ageinste us.

The greatest joy for a man is to defeat his enemies, to drive them before him, to take from them all they possess, to see those they love in tears, to ride their horses, and to hold their wives and daughters in his arms.

Spain stooped on South America, like a vulture on its prey. Everything was force. Territories were acquired by fire and sword. Cities were destroyed by fire and sword. Hundreds of thousands of human beings fell by fire and sword. Even conversion to Christianity was attempted by fire and sword.

All empires are created of blood and fire.

I believe in the Prince of Peace. I believe that War is Murder. I believe that armies and navies are at bottom the tinsel and braggadocio of oppression and wrong, and I believe that the wicked conquest of weaker and darker nations by nations whiter and stronger but foreshadows the death of that strength.

This is the Cuzco asking you to pull on your armor and, mounted on the ample back of a powerful horse, cleave a path through the defenseless flesh of a naked Indian flock whose human wall collapses and disappears beneath the four hooves of the galloping beast.

Solitudinem faciunt pacem appellant. They make a wilderness and they call it peace.

They have plundered the world, stripping naked the land in their hunger… they are driven by greed, if their enemy be rich; by ambition, if poor… They ravage, they slaughter, they seize by false pretenses, and all of this they hail as the construction of empire. And when in their wake nothing remains but a desert, they call that peace.

In careless ignorance they think it civilization, when in reality it is a portion of their slavery...To ravage, to slaughter, to usurp under false pretenses, they call empire; and where they make a desert, they call it peace.

The root of the evil is not the construction of new, more dreadful weapons. It is the spirit of conquest.

There was nothing there but black water and American fire power.

Let no one refer to the sword of Napoleon I as the instrument of progress and civilization!

But it is neither cannon nor bayonet that will do the worst damage to this city. No, this place will remember the war against our government just as long as there are inhabitants here.

So war is an extremely sad business, because the majority of people don't want to be in it.

German militarism and Nazism have devastated twice in our generation the lands of German neighbors.

Kill a man, and you are an assassin. Kill millions of men, and you are a conqueror. Kill everyone, and you are a god.

Having seen war, you obviously learned to hate war.

The alternative to peace is war, which will expose everyone to mass casualties, misery and a loss of perspective for many years to come.