Greg Bear Quotes

There are times for all of us when all the laughter seems to be gone, but we should not permit these periods to last too long. When we've lost our sense of humor, there isn't very much left. We become ridiculous. We must then go to war against the whole world, and that's a war we cannot win.

Don't ever go to war. Even if you win, the battle is never over inside you.

Our conflict is not likely to cease so soon as every good man would wish. The measure of iniquity is not yet filled; and unless we can return a little more to first principles, and act a little more upon patriotic ground, I do not know when it will-or-what may be the issue of the contest. Speculation-peculation-engrossing-forestalling-with all their concomitants, afford too many melancholy proofs of the decay of public virtue; and too glaring instances of its being the interest and desire of too many, who would wish to be thought friends, to continue the war.

War is the admission of defeat in the face of conflicting interests.

Wars happen because the ones who start them think they can win.

A man's body and his mind, with the utmost reverence to both I speak it, are exactly like a jerkin and a jerkin's lining; rumple the one, you rumple the other.

A mind that is afraid withers away; it cannot function properly.

The funny part of it all is that relatively few people seem to go crazy, relatively few even a little crazy or even a little weird, relatively few, and those few because they have nothing to do that is to say they have nothing to do or they do not do anything that has anything to do with the war only with food and cold and little things like that.

Always remember, however sure you are that you could easily win, that there would not be a war if the other man did not think he also had a chance.

Whenever you have a possibility of going in two ways, either for peace or for war, for peaceful methods of for military methods, in the present age there is a strong prejudice for the peaceful ones. War seldom ever leads to good results.

Sure, we want to go home. We want this war over with. The quickest way to get it over with is to go get the bastards who started it.

I sincerely wish war was a pleasanter and easier business than it is, but it does not admit of holidays.

It takes more distress and poison to kill someone who has peace of mind and loves life.

If there is anything unhealthy in your reactions, just bear in mind that sickness is the means by which an organism frees itself from what is alien; so one must simply help it to be sick, to have its whole sickness and to break out with it, since that is the way it gets better.

Maybe I couldn't be dafter, But I keep wondering if this time we settle our differences before a war instead of after.

What Tully said of war may be applied to disputing: "It should be always so managed as to remember that the only true end of it is peace." But generally true disputants are like true sportsmen,--their whole delight is in the pursuit; and the disputant no more cares for the truth than the sportsman for the hare.

It is very important for I think those of us who desperately want peace, who see war as, at some level, a break-down, a manifestation of human weakness, to understand that sometimes it’s also necessary – and you know, to – to be able to balance two ideas at the same time; that we are constantly striving for peace, we are doubling up on our diplomacy, we are going to actively engage, we are going to try to see the world through other people’s eyes and not just our own.

Happiness is native to the human mind and its physical machine. We think better, perform better, feel better, and are healthier when we are happy.

To win a moral victory at the expense of your sanity is dumb.

Can any church help us to win a war? If you can't help us win a war, then please don't press us.

We want peace with all our hearts. But peace cannot be achieved through weakness.

We have thought of peace as the passive and war as the active way of living. The opposite is true. War is not the most strenuous life. It is a kind of rest-cure compared to the task of reconciling our differences.

It is my disposition to maintain peace until its condition shall be made less tolerable than that of war itself.

A wiser rule would be to make up your mind soberly what you want, peace or war, and then to get ready for what you want; for what we prepare for is what we shall get.

Wise men mingle mirth with their cares, as a help either to forget or overcome them; but to resort to intoxication for the ease of one's mind is to cure melancholy by madness.