A Quote by Henry David Thoreau

Only the defeated and deserters go to war. — © Henry David Thoreau
Only the defeated and deserters go to war.
If you would learn to speak all tongues and conform to the customs of all nations, if you would travel farther than all travellers, be naturalized in all climes, and cause the Sphinx to dash her head against a stone, even obey the precept of the old philosopher, and Explore thyself. Herein are demanded the eye and the nerve. Only the defeated and deserters go to the wars, cowards that run away and enlist.
It is not only that Germany has been defeated in the war, Kaiser Wilhelm's Germany was defeated.
Nonviolent action on behalf of justice is no automatic forumla with promise of success: but neither is war. After all, at least half of the people who go to war for some cause deemed worthy of it are defeated.
The environmental movement doesn't have many deserters and has a high level of recruitment. Eventually, there will be open war.
Azerbaijan unleashed the war, and was defeated in that war; Azerbaijan asked for truce (including from the Commander of Karabakh's forces) and later started to sob about the dire repercussions of that war. As if wars ever bring pleasant repercussions. And on top of that, Azerbaijan adopted conceited stance and started to make demands as if anywhere in the world defeated aggressors are ever allowed to make demands.
Victorious warriors win first and then go to war, while defeated warriors go to war first and then seek to win.
During the Vietnam era, more than 30,000 draft dodgers and deserters sought harbor in cities like Montreal and Toronto, where public opposition to the war was strong and most residents didn't question their motives.
The brave men die in war. It takes great luck or judgment not to be killed. Once‚ at least‚ the head has to bow and the knee has to bend to danger. The soldiers who march back under the triumphal arches are death's deserters.
The brave men die in war. It takes great luck or judgment not to be killed. Once, at least, the head has to bow and the knee has to bend to danger. The soldiers who march back under the triumphal arches are death's deserters.
We go to war only to make peace. We never went to war with any other design. We carry the national conscience wherever we go.
In the middle of the last century there was a reason to go to war. This time around the war was a really bad idea and I think the only people that benefited from it were Halliburton and people that made money from it, but that's not an excuse to have a war. Killing American kids so Halliburton can make money is not a righteous reason to go to war.
Because if I see you defeated, then I think I will see Alban defeated, and if that happens, none of us can go on. To guard you is to guard the heart of this land of ours.
On your principles, you should never yield; you should be prepared to be defeated. Nobody likes to be defeated, but you should let everybody know in the most articulate and thoughtful and civil way you can (you don't go out and pick fights with people) that in certain matters that you define as matters of principle you will not budge, you cannot yield, you will not compromise. If you don't have the votes or the winning argument, then you stand to be defeated and rolled over, and you'll just have to come back another day.
In my final year at Bristol University, I wrote a play called 'White Feathers.' It was produced in the studio theatre at the students' union in early 1999, when I was 21. It's 100 pages long: a very traditional play, with an interval, about deserters in the First World War.
War can only be qualified by its object, and there is neither foreign war nor civil war, there is only just or unjust war.
I'm old enough to remember the end of World War II. On Aug. 14, 1946, a year after the Japanese were defeated, most newspapers and magazines had single articles commemorating the end of the war.
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