When it comes time to protecting the homeland, the United States of America must be right 100 percent of the time. And the enemy, which desires to strike us again, only has to be right once.
Still, I have been no one's enemy but my own. My easy nature, either in drinking or anything else, was always ready to submit to persuasions of profligate companions, who often led me into snares.
There is no Nation however small which had the right to set itself free, that has not rescued itself from the dishonour of obeying the Prince imposed by an enemy in the hour of victory.
It is sufficient to estimate the enemy situation correctly and to concentrate your strength to capture him. There is no more to it than this. He who lacks foresight and underestimates his enemy will surely be captured by him.
Now we will no longer concede so easily that anyone has the truth; the rigorous methods of inquiry have spread sufficient distrust and caution, so that we experience every man who represents opinions violently in word and deed as any enemy of our present culture, or at least as a backward person. And in fact, the fervor about having the truth counts very little today in relation to that other fervor, more gentle and silent, to be sure, for seeking the truth, a search that does not tire of learning afresh and testing anew.
When it comes time to protecting the homeland, the United States of America must be right 100 percent of the time. And the enemy, which desires to strike us again, only has to be right once.
As they were during the Cold War, urban population centers remain the most likely targets of a nuclear attack. Now, however, an attack may come without warning from an unknown enemy, to achieve unclear motives.
It is the acid test of nonviolence that in a nonviolent conflict there is no rancor left behind, and in the end the enemies are converted into friends.
There is no great harm in the theorist who makes up a new theory to fit a new event. But the theorist who starts with a false theory and then sees everything as making it come true is the most dangerous enemy of human reason.