A Quote by Natalie Babbitt
We human beings do a lot of dumb things, and war is certainly the dumbest.
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On Twitter, Donald Trump has called me a "poor journalist, stupid, a very dumb guy, the dumbest political commentator on television, and the dumbest man on TV."
Yes, war is hell. It is awful. It involves human beings killing other human beings, sometimes innocent civilians. That is why we despise war.
War does horrible things to human beings, to societies. It brings out the best, but most often the worst, in our human nature.
Sometimes I lie awake at night thinking about all the dumb things I do every day... If I live to be eighty and I do ten dumb things each day... That would be about two hundred and ninety thousand dumb things... When you add up all the dumb things you do, it's best to use round figures.
War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things: the decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks nothing worth a war, is worse. A war to protect other human beings against tyrannical injustice; a war to give victory to their own ideas of right and good, and which is their own war, carried on for an honest purpose by their own free choice - is often the means of their regeneration.
I don't see the point of Twitter, so I write a lot of stuff to mess with people. But because I used to do dumb things on the court, people think I'm dumb in regular life. But once people meet me, they feel dumb themselves.
The sciences that purport to treat of human things -- the new scientific storyings of the social, the political, the racial or ethnic, and the psychic, nature of human beings -- treat not of human things but mere things, things that make up the physical, or circumstantial, content of human life but are not of the stuff of humanity, have not the human essence in them.
It sounds strange to say it, but you can be in a war zone and have a lot of fun. Even though war is essentially pain on all sides, human beings have the capacity to enjoy themselves. The soldiers are mostly young people, full of enthusiasm and energy, and that's an exciting thing for an old guy like me.
Civil war, now, 100 years in the future - the things that motivate human beings, they don't change emotionally.
I know that sounds cliché, but mostly from my own experiences and things I see around me. We're all human beings, and a lot of the things I write about are pretty universal things.
Considering what human beings do and have done to human beings (and to other living things as well) ... I can never imagine what the devil people think computers can add to the horrors.
There are novels that end well, but in between there are human beings acting like human beings. And human beings are not perfect. All of the motives a human being may have, which are mixed, that's the novelists' materials. That's where they have to go. And a lot of that just isn't pretty. We like to think of ourselves as really, really good people. But look in the mirror. Really look. Look at your own mixed motives. And then multiply that.
When the preponderance of human beings choose to act with justice and generosity and kindness, then learning and love and decency prevail. When the preponderance of human beings choose power, greed, and indifference to suffering, the world is filled with war, poverty, and cruelty.
Strike against war, for without you no battles can be fought. Strike against manufacturing shrapnel and gas bombs and all other tools of murder. Strike against preparedness that means death and misery to millions of human beings. Be not dumb, obedient slaves in an army of destruction. Be heroes in an army of construction.
Some males are intelligent, some are dumb. Some females are intelligent, some are dumb. We're all human beings, no one is superior.
One of the things that I tell beginning writers is this: If you describe a landscape, or a cityscape, or a seascape, always be sure to put a human figure somewhere in the scene. Why? Because readers are human beings, mostly interested in human beings. People are humanists. Most of them are humanists, that is.
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