Abstainer, n. A weak man who yields to the temptation of denying himself a pleasure.

Cynic, n: a blackguard whose faulty vision sees things as they are, not as they ought to be.

—Ambrose Bierce

“We believe peace can kill us. So we live in a permanent state of war. We no longer can contrive a way to run an economy without war…

We have been at war for over a century now and it has bankrupted our treasury, destroyed our land, corrupted our people, and fouled our bed.

We are creatures of fear, supplicants, and we expect to be taken care of by something and we do not expect to be loved or give love.”

~ Charles Bowden

"War: a massacre of people who don't know each other for the profit of people who know each other but don't massacre each other."

--Paul Valery

“For let us not deceive ourselves: most of the minds we associate with are housed in heads that have little more to offer than overgrown potatoes, stuck on top of whining and tastelessly clad bodies and eking out a pathetic existence that does not even merit our pity.”

— Thomas Bernhard

“If men want to oppose war, it is statism that they must oppose. So long as they hold the tribal notion that the individual is sacrificial fodder for the collective, that some men have the right to rule others by force, and that some (any) alleged “good” can justify it-there can be no peace within a nation and no peace among nations.”

—Ayn Rand

"It is our self-knowledge that must be torn across before we are whole. The man I know myself to be must be destroyed before the true man I am can exist. The old man in me must die and be put away."

— D.H. Lawrence

“Never think that war, no matter how necessary, nor how justified, is not a crime.”

― Ernest Hemingway

“Take life too seriously, and what is it worth? If the morning wake us to no new joys, if the evening bring us not the hope of new pleasure, is it worthwhile to dress and undress?”

—Goethe

"The evil in the world is all of our own making, and it proceeds entirely from our ruthless, senseless, wasteful, destructive and suicidal neglect of our own being."

—Thomas Merton

“It was one of those March days when the sun shines hot and the wind blows cold: when it is summer in the light, and winter in the shade.”

—Charles Dickens

"As far as I am concerned, I resign from humanity.

I no longer want to be, nor can still be, a man. What should I do ? Work for a social and political system, make a girl miserable ? Hunt for weaknesses in philosophical systems, fight for moral and esthetic ideals ? It's all too little."

-- Emil Cioran

Humanity had a lot more grit and guts back when people drank beer and smoked cigs and didn't have access to the narcotic glow of screens to whore out their low-grade opinions daily.

"Politics, wars, causes -- for thousands of years we have ended up with a sack of shit. It's time we learned to think."

~ Bukowski

“All efforts to make politics aesthetic culminate in one thing, war.”

—Walter Benjamin

"All the war-propaganda, all the screaming and lies and hatred, comes invariably from people who are not fighting."

--George Orwell

“Modern man does not think about current problems; he feels them. He reacts, but he does not understand them any more than he takes responsibility for them...

One thought drives away another; old facts are chased by new ones.

Propaganda... cannot permit time for thought or reflection."

— Jacques Ellul

"The only real radicalism in our time will come as it always has: from people who insist on thinking for themselves and who reject party-mindedness."

— Christopher Hitchens

“In all history there is no war which was not hatched by the governments, the governments alone, independent of the interests of the people, to whom war is always pernicious even when successful."

—Leo Tolstoy

"True, the world still stands or spins, but the meaning has gone out of it. It is more dead, this illusory, everyday world, than if it had been shattered by a million atom bombs. We live as ghosts amid a world in ruins. All is senseless repetition."

~ Henry Miller

It appears that it was all a misunderstanding.
What was only a trial run was taken seriously.
The rivers will return to their beginnings.
The wind will cease in its turning about.
Trees instead of budding will tend to their roots.
Old men will chase a ball, a glance in the mirror–
They are children again.
The dead will wake up, not comprehending.
Till everything that happened has unhappened.
What a relief! Breathe freely, you who have suffered much.

-- Czeslaw Milosz