Your enemy shall ye seek; your war shall ye wage, and for the sake of your thoughts! And if your thoughts succumb, your uprightness shall still shout triumph thereby!
When someone asked Abraham Lincoln, after he was elected president, what he was going to do about his enemies, he replied, "I am going to destroy them. I am going to make them my friends."
As for the virtuous poor, one can pity them, of course, but one cannot possibly admire them. They have made private terms with the enemy, and sold their birthright for very bad pottage. They must also be extraordinarily stupid.
Every fanatic or enemy of virtue is not at liberty to misrepresent the greatest geniuses and most heroic defenders of all that is valuable in this mortal world.
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, however, you have an enemy, then do not requite him good for evil: for that would shame him. Instead, prove that he did some good for you. And rather be angry than put to shame! And when you are cursed, I do not like it that you want to bless. Rather curse a little also! And if you are done a great injustice, then quickly add five small ones. Hideous to behold is he who is obsessed with an injustice.
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.