Dalton Trumbo Quotes
There's nothing noble about dying. Not even if you die for honor. Not even if you die the greatest hero the world ever saw. Not even if you're so great your name will never be forgotten and who's that great? The most important thing is your life, little guys. You're worth nothing dead except for speeches. There's nothing noble about dying. Not even if you die for honor. Not even if you die the greatest hero the world ever saw. Not even if you're so great your name will never be forgotten and who's that great? The most important thing is your life, little guys. You're worth nothing dead except for speeches.
Trumbo was morally opposed to war. He also refused to name Hollywood communists to Congressional Committees during the Red Scare. He was then blacklisted from his occupation, screen writing.
Dalton Trumbo, 1905-1976, Screen Writer & Novelist, Member of the Hollywood 10 Blacklist Group, Johnny Got His Gun, 1938
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
Quintus Horatius Flaccus. This famous quotation has been echoed in virtually every language and every country of the world. However, see Ernest Hemingway for a counter view.
This line was used in the WPA Federal Theater Project. The play was closed down, because the State Department was distressed that the Federal Theater quoting heads of State might be insulting to the world leaders. Mussolini was another character in the play and he was depicted as the boorish thug that he turned out to be. It was that which offended the government officials who closed the show before it could open. FDR used a similar line 6 years later. See {32529} . Dolores Ibarruri in the Spanish Civil War is quoted with a similar phrase at about the same time. See {604321}
The Poles were fighting the Russians. Pulaski was a Field Marshall. This was before he had come to America and fought in the American Revolution.
Joseph Addison had earlier written of such a situation. Recent research has strongly suggested that Hale may never have said these words. The American patriots wanted to have heroes and may not have been too worried about the documentation and historical research. See {621112}
Ataturk had been a military hero, but was very much opposed to war and military adventurism not unlike the Dwight Eisenhower and Colin Powell type leaders. However, the one thing that he thought worth the sacrifice of his own and other Turkish lives was Turkish independence and sovereignty. Historically, the Ottoman Empire which Ataturk finally ended, had dominated half of Europe and all of the Mid East at the cost of sovereignty of other nations and Ataturk saw no more important virtue with dying for than national sovereignty. See {125322} and {584501}.
Quintus Horatius Flaccus
Drumbo was morally opposed to war. He also refused to name Hollywood communists to Congressional Committees during the Red Scare. He was then blacklisted from his occupation, screen writing.
It was then customary to return with the head of a killed Samurai which would be made up as if in life so the dead man could be recognized. That way, the victor received more recognition with the importance of the Samurai who he defeated.
The “old” writing to which he was referring was a quotation from Roman Poet Horace. See {589060}.
James Dalton Trumbo was an American screenwriter and novelist who scripted many award-winning films, including Roman Holiday (1953), Exodus, Spartacus (both 1960), and Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo (1944). One of the Hollywood Ten, he refused to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) in 1947 during the committee's investigation of Communist influences in the motion picture industry.
