And the talk slid north, and the talk slid south With the sliding puffs from the hookah-mouth; Four things greater than all things are Women and Horses and Power and War.
When a nation forgets her skill in war, when her religion becomes a mockery, when the whole nation becomes a nation of money-grabbers, then the wild tribes, the barbarians drive in... Who will our invaders be? From whence will they come?
It is a tough choice. In war, people die. But when we refuse to confront the enemy, we will face the enemy in New York and Washington, as we did on 9-11. As for responsiblity, of course we stand by our decision to go to war on Iraq. President Kennedy said that friend and foe alike should know where America stands.
It [the Civil War] was a heroic struggle; and, as is inevitable with all such struggles, it had also a dark and terrible side. Very much was done of good, and much also of evil; and, as was inevitable in such a period of revolution, often the same man did both good and evil. For our great good fortune as a nation, we, the people of the United States as a whole, can now afford to forget the evil, or, at least, to remember it without bitterness, and to fix our eyes with pride only on the good that was accomplished.
Einstein was attending a music salon in Germany before the second world war, with the violinist S. Suzuki. Two Japanese women played a German piece of music and a woman in the audience exclaimed: "How wonderful! It sounds so German!" Einstein responded: "Madam, people are all the same."
And we remember the end of our combat mission and the emergence of a new dawn - the precision of our efforts against al Qaeda in Iraq, the professionalism of the training of Iraqi security forces, and the steady drawdown of our forces. In handing over responsibility to the Iraqis, you preserved the gains of the last four years and made this day possible.
War is not courtesy but the most horrible thing in life; and we ought to understand that, and not play at war. We ought to accept this terrible necessity sternly and seriously. It all lies in that: get rid of falsehood and let war be war and not a game.
Nothing is more difficult than the art of maneuver. What is difficult about maneuver is to make the devious route the most direct and to turn misfortune to advantage.