Arthur Miller Quotes

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

Why do people want to kill and maim and pillage? We're all in it together.

For what can war, but endless war, still breed?

What right have the rulers of nations to unsheath the sword of destruction, and to let loose the demons of desolation upon mankind, whenever caprice or pride, ambition or avarice, shall prescribe?

There are worse things than war.

War stirs in men's hearts the mud of their worst instincts. It puts a premium on violence, nourishes hatred, and gives free rein to cupidity. It crushes the weak, exalts the unworthy, and bolsters tyranny .. .Time and time again it has destroyed all ordered living, devastated hope, and put the prophets to death.

When war is raging the laws are dumb.

Law stands mute in the midst of arms

The situation is extraordinary. It is militarism run stark mad. Unless someone acting for you can bring about a different understanding there is some day to be an awful cataclysm.

Nothing endurable can be produced on a soil soaked with blood and moved by violent agitations.

Killing, and nothing else, is what the army is for, and the only thing it can properly build is killers and killees.

And this I hate—not men, nor flag nor race, But only War with its wild, grinning face.

The march of history is accompanied by a steady flow of bodies into the abattoir of hate.

We must accept the possibility of bloodshed if we are to bring about order.

I have come to believe there is nothing in the lives of human beings more terrifying than war and nothing more important than for those of us who have experienced it to share its awful truth

Let us declare through the public journals of our country, that the question of Slavery is not and shall not be open to discussion; that the system is too deep-rooted among us, and must remain forever; that the very moment any private individual attempts to lecture us upon its evils and immorality, and the necessity of putting means in operation to secure us from them, in the same moment his tongue shall be cut out and cast upon the dunghill.

Then comes the catastrophe. Then the great mobilization will take place in Europe; 16-18 million men, the flower of the various nations, armed with the best tools of death, will enter the field as enemies. But, I am convinced, that behind the great mobilization there stands the great havoc. It will not come through our party, but rather yours. You are driving things to the limit. You are leading us to catastrophe. You will reap what you have sown

War is a fevered god who takes alike maiden and king and clod.

Cry "Havoc!" and let slip the dogs of war.

in the clash of contending armies and amid the groans of the wounded and the dying, the interests of education are sacrificed – the pacific virtues take their flight from the earth

Jesus Christ opposed with earnest eloquence the panic fears and hateful superstitions which have enslaved mankind for ages. Nations had risen against nations, employing the subtlest devices of mechanism and mind to waste, and excruciate, and overthrow. The great community of mankind had been subdivided into ten thousand communities, each organized for the ruin of the other. Wheel within wheel, the vast machine was instinct with the restless spirit of desolation.

The first accounts we have of mankind are but so many accounts of their butcheries. All empires have been cemented in blood; and, in those early periods, when the race of mankind began first to form themselves into parties and combinations, the first effect of the combination, and indeed the end for which it seems purposely formed, and best calculated, was their mutual destruction.

I will let loose the dogs of hell, Ten thousand Indians, who shall yell And foam and tear, and grin and roar, And drench their moccasins in gore: To these I’ll give full scope and play From Ticonderoga to Florida

I don’t pray often, but on this occasion I pray devoutly that the Armies of Europe may bleed each other till they faint with the loss of blood..

… those who have never heard a shot, never hears the shriek and groans of the wounded and lacerated … but cry out for more blood, more vengeance, more desolation.