Price Of War Quotes & Sayings

Politics and war were just different names for power, and the price of power was predictably high and could be precisely measured-in dollards,yen,euros,rubles,riyals, and blood. — Tara Janzen

In war, love is a luxury. It comes at a high price... This brand of marriage, I guess, takes steady nerves. — Emily Yellin

He was an American character, one typical of men of his generation, men who embraced the notion of freedom and individualism and the open road without always knowing its price, and whose enthusiasms could as easily lead to the cowardice of McCarthyism as to the heroics of World War II. Men who were both dangerous and promising precisely because of their fundamental innocence; men prone, in the end, to disappointment. — Barack Obama

We [Americans] move about the world arrogantly, calling wars when we want, overthrowing governments when we want. There is a price to be paid for it
look at 9/11. [That] wasn't just bin Laden. Bin Laden didn't come from the abstract. He came from somewhere, and if you look where ... you'll see America's hand of villainy. — Harry Belafonte

[The right] may never bring prayer back to schools, but it has rescued all manner of rightwing economic nostrums from history's dustbins. Having rolled back the landmark economic reforms of the sixties (the war on poverty) and those of the thirties (labor law, agricultural price supports, banking regulation), its leaders now turn their guns on the accomplishments of the earliest years of progressivism (Woodrow Wilson's estate tax; Theodore Roosevelt's anti-trust measures). With a little more effort, the backlash may well repeal the entire twentieth century. — Thomas Frank

Let the word go forth from this time and place, to friend and foe alike, that the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans, born in this century, tempered by war, disciplined by a hard and bitter peace, proud of our ancient heritage, and unwilling to witness or permit the slow undoing of those human rights to which this nation has always been committed, and to which we are committed today at home and around the world. Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty. — John F. Kennedy

The lingering effects of war can inspire callousness even after the guns have fallen silent. Many of us have seen the notorious clip from 60 Minutes in which Madeleine Albright, then U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and soon to be U.S. Secretary of State, declared that the price of half a million dead children as a result of the sanctions against Iraq during the 1990s had been worth it. — Thomas E. Woods Jr.

You don't write about the horrors of war. No. You write about a kid's burnt socks lying in the road. — Richard Price

I'm from England, and like every other great empire who stole bits of the world, there is a price to pay. And I was born in 1935. So, since I've been conscious of the world, I've either been in, or been on the periphery of, a war zone. — Don McCullin

The price works so well, so efficiently, that we are not aware of it most of the time. — Milton Friedman

Wars are not caused by the buildup of weapons. They are caused when an aggressor believes he can achieve his objectives at an acceptable price. — Margaret Thatcher

"You, who are on the road, must have a code that you can live by-"* You'll find universal agreement on the value of a behavior code, on the need for some sort of ethical system. Even the crooks count on "honor among thieves," and countries actually wage war according to certain rules. On the job and in the rest of our day-to-day living, we each need a "code for the road." — Price Pritchett

Military foolishness is ultimately suicidal. They believe that by risking death they pay the price of any violent behavior against enemies of their own choosing. They have the invader mentality, that false sense of freedom from responsibility for your own actions. — Frank Herbert

History teaches that wars begin when governments believe the price of aggression is cheap. To keep the peace, we and our allies must be strong enough to convince any potential aggressor that war could bring no benefit, only disaster. — Ronald Reagan

Rhys told himself that everything came with a price. He'd made a difficult choice years ago to regain all he had, and some days he could convince himself that life was like war: bitter, desperate choices were often made in the name of survival, and some inevitably survived at the expense of others. — Julie Anne Long

Good pictures. Tragedy and violence certainly make powerful images. It is what we get paid for.But there is a price extracted with every such frame: some of the emotion, the vulnerability, the empathy that makes us human, is lost every time the shutter is released. — Greg Marinovich

I'm a Veteran. I was in the Navy, in the submarine corps. I come from a military family. Both of my grandparents were in World War II and retired as officers. One fought in the Pacific and one fought in Europe. The whole family was in the war. I grew up exposed to it and hearing the stories, but the stories I heard weren't kind of the whole "Rah, rah, rah! We saved the world!" They were about the personal price and the emotional price. — David Ayer

When I die and go to hell, the devil is going to make me the marketing director for a cola company. I'll be in charge of trying to sell a product that no one needs, is identical to its competition, and can't be sold on its merits. I'd be competing head-on in the cola wars, on price, distribution, advertising, and promotion, which would indeed be hell for me. Remember, I'm the kid who couldn't play competitive games. I'd much rather design and sell products so good and unique that they have no competition. — Yvon Chouinard

Enemies,' the wizard said, 'are the price of honour. — Terry Goodkind

During the war, my mother used to take me to the local repertory theatre on a Monday night, and we used to get two seats for the price of one, for nine pence, in the gods. — Geraldine McEwan

Heavy as they are, the costs of action must be weighed against the price of inaction. If Saddam defies the world and we fail to respond, we will face a far greater threat in the future. Saddam will strike again at his neighbors; he will make war on his own people. And mark my words, he will develop weapons of mass destruction. He will deploy them, and he will use them. — William J. Clinton

They maintain he wrote The Art of War. Personally, I believe it was a woman. On the surface, The Art of War is a manual about tactics on the battlefield, but at its deepest level it describes how to win conflicts. Or to be more precise, the art of getting what you want at the lowest possible price. The winner of a war is not necessarily the victor. Many have won the crown, but lost so much of their army that they can only rule on their ostensibly defeated enemies' terms. With regard to power, women don't have the vanity men have. They don't need to make power visible, they only want the power to give them the other things they want. Security. Food. Enjoyment. Revenge. Peace. They are rational, power-seeking planners, who think beyond the battle, beyond the victory celebrations. And because they have an inborn capacity to see weakness in their victims, they know instinctively when and how to strike. And when to stop. You can't learn that, Spiuni. — Jo Nesbo

But most of these women -- the famous and the obscure -- had one thing in common: they did not think of themselves as heroes. They followed their consciences, saw something that needed to be done, and they did it. And all of them helped win a war, even though many of them paid the ultimate price for their contribution. But their sacrifice was not in vain, especially if their courage continues to inspire others to fight injustice and evil wherever they find it.
--From Women Heroes of WWII — Kathryn J. Atwood

I am a man of peace. I believe in peace. But I do not want peace at any price. — Mahatma Gandhi

Soon a whole guild of low-priced shrine keepers around Europe named their own pope - Boldface the Relatively Shameless, Discount Pope of Prague. The price war was on [ ... ] The Retail Pope would offer cheesy bacon toppings on the Host with communion and the Discount Pope would counter with topless nun night for midnight mass. — Christopher Moore

By 1950, Brennan was settling into a schedule that saw him making three films a year, giving him more time on his ranch and with a new business he started in Joseph, a 487-seat movie theater that opened on July 27, 1950. It was housed in a Quonset hut made out of surplus war materials also used to build the civic center. "The reason he got the theater built," Mike recalled, "was because the civic center was the same size, and they [Frank McCully and Walter] got the chance to buy two of them for half the price." At the theater's grand opening, actors Chill Wills and Forrest Tucker said a few words and signed autographs, and Joseph's mayor and other local dignitaries attended the event. A La Grande radio station broadcast the event. Curtain Call at Cactus Creek was the feature, following a musical short with the Nat King Cole trio. — Carl Rollyson

The war on terrorism has made national security a legitimate concern, and a rising deficit, changes brought on by globalization and even the price of oil have thrown the nation's economic health into question. — Roger Mahony

One less desirable aspect of democracy is that it seems to require serious demonization of the enemy if the nation and public opinion are to be galvanized sufficiently to pay a serious price in blood or treasure at war. — Graham E. Fuller

I think that Donald Rumsfeld will go down in history as one of the worst secretaries of defense in history. We are paying a very heavy price for the mismanagement - that's the kindest word I can give you - of Donald Rumsfeld, of this war. — John McCain

What is good? All that enhances the feeling of power, the Will to Power, and the power itself in man. What is bad? All that proceeds from weakness. What is happiness? The feeling that power is increasing
that resistance has been overcome. Not contentment, but more power; not peace at any price, but war; not virtue, but competence. The first principle of our humanism: The weak and the failures shall perish. They ought even to be helped to perish. — Friedrich Nietzsche

But, like all metaphoric wars, the copyright wars are not actual conflicts of survival. Or at least, they are not conflicts for survival of a people or a society, even if they are wars of survival for certain businesses or, more accurately, business models. Thus we must keep i mind the other values or objectives that might also be affected by this war. We must make sure this war doesn't cost more than it is worth. We must be sure it is winnable, or winnable at a price we're willing to pay. — Lawrence Lessig

Peace without Justice is a low estate,- A coward cringing to an iron Fate! But Peace through Justice is the great ideal,- We'll pay the price of war to make it real. — Henry Van Dyke

Price of peace could only be valued by
people who had suffered loss in the war. — Toba Beta

I was seized on the 8th of June, 1824, in consequence of the war with Bengal and, in company with Dr. Price, three Englishmen, one American, and one Greek, was thrown into the death prison at Ava, where we lay eleven months - nine months in three pairs and two months in five pairs of fetters. — Adoniram Judson

Paper money in time of war, the new notes will first go into the pockets of the war contractors. 'As a result, these persons' demands for certain articles will increase and so also the price and the sale of these articles, but especially in so far as they are luxury articles. Thus the position of the producers of these articles will be improved, their demand for other commodities will also increase, and thus the increase of prices and sales will go on, distributing itself over a constantly augmented number of articles, until at last it has reached them all. — Ludwig Von Mises

In times of war and in hours of crisis, Senator Kerry has turned his back on 'pay any price' and 'bear any burden', and he's replaced those commitments with 'wait and see' and 'cut and run — George W. Bush

For nearly twenty years, Bismarck preserved the peace and eased international tension with his moderation and flexibility. But he paid the price of misunderstood greatness, for his successors and would-be imitators could draw no better lesson from his example than multiplying arms and waging a war which would cause the suicide of European civilization. — Henry Kissinger

Politics is beginning to gather itself into an election season in which the price of a candidate's haircuts will be as important for a time as his position on war. The country is entertained, but not engaged. It is drowning in information and thirsty for knowledge. — Charles P. Pierce

This is the war where we change. This is the trickster war. It's where we disappear, just like they desire us disappear. I spoke it you before: They wish us blank," he said, gesturing without thinking at Dr. Trefusis, who was the nearest exemplar of the white race. "They want us with no history and no memory. They want us empty as paper so they can write on us, so we ain't nothing but a price and an owner's name and a list of tasks. And that's what we'll give them. We'll give them your Nothing. We'll give them my William Williams and Henry Henry. We'll slip through and we'll change to who we must needs be and I will be all sly and have my delightful picaresque japes. But at the end of it, when it's over, I shall be one thing. I shall be one man, fixed, and not have to take no other name. I shall be one person steadily for some years."
"This is why we got to win ... If we ever wish to be one person, we got to win. — M T Anderson

I hadn't found out yet that mankind consists of two very different races, the rich and the poor. It took me ... and plenty of other people ... twenty years and the war to learn to stick to my class and ask the price of things before touching them, let alone setting my heart on them. — Louis-Ferdinand Celine

It is almost inconceivable that citizens of that time were willing to support so bloody a war, by putting so high a price upon Union and Liberty. — Michael Novak

We should stop worrying so much about the price of gasoline and start considering its cost. You really want to be patriotic? Don't change your car by putting a flag on it, change the car. — Bill Maher

After World War II, a lot of people moved to the cities for work and abandoned the old vineyards. Then in the 1950s and 1960s, wineries were paid to produce volume at a cheap price. That's when the Lambruscos and bad Chianti were popular. — Joe Bastianich

The United States was born through war, reunited by war, and saved from destruction by war. No future generation, however comfortable and affluent, can escape that terrible knowledge. Our freedom is not entirely our own; in some sense it is mortgaged from those who paid the ultimate price for its continuance. My own life of security, freedom, opportunity, and relative affluence certainly has been made possible because a grandfather fought and was gassed in the Argonne; an uncle in the Marines died trying to stop Japanese imperialism on Okinawa; a cousin in the Army lost his life at twenty-two trying to stop Hitler in France; and my father in the Army Air Force flew forty times over Japan hoping to end the idea of the expansive Greater East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere. I have spent some time these past decades trying to learn where, how, and why they and their generations fought as they did - and what our own obligations are to acknowledge their sacrifices. — Victor Davis Hanson

During the battle, Spartacus himself tried with frenzied
determination, the symbolism of which is obvious, to reach Crassus, who was commanding the Roman
legions. He wanted to perish, but in single combat with the man who symbolized, at that moment, every
Roman master; it was his dearest wish to die, but in absolute equality. He did not reach Crassus:
principles wage war at a distance and the Roman general kept himself apart. Spartacus died, as he wished,
but at the hands of mercenaries, slaves like himself, who killed their own freedom with his. In revenge for
the one crucified citizen, Crassus crucified thousands of slaves. The six thousand crosses which, after
such a just rebellion, staked out the road from Capua to Rome demonstrated to the servile crowd that
there is no equality in the world of power and that the masters calculate, at a usurious rate, the price of
their own blood. — Albert Camus

From the days of the Founding Fathers, right to this (2008) election, how and where America fights to defend its freedom, has been the ultimate question in its politics. The one that triggers rage and sorrow; the one that asks is the price of blood too dear? Or, if it is to stay true to its convictions, does America have no coice but to put its lives on the line? — Simon Schama

The reality is that we've seen the last of any serious price wars for a long time. I don't think any of the others could afford it, certainly not on a long-term basis. — Rupert Murdoch

We were children of the 1950s and John Kennedy's young stalwarts of the early 1960s. He told the world that Americans would "pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship" in the defense of freedom. We were the down payment on that costly contract, but the man who signed it was not there when we fulfilled his promise. John Kennedy waited for us on a hill in Arlington National Cemetery, and in time we came by the thousands to fill those slopes with out white marble markers and to ask on the murmur of the wind if that was truely the future he had envisioned for us. — Joseph L. Galloway

History teaches that war begins when governments believe the price of aggression is cheap. — Ronald Reagan

There is a price which is too great to pay for peace, and that price can be put in one word. One cannot pay the price of self-respect. — Woodrow Wilson

We will not let the price of peace be greater than the price of war, we will firmly safeguard the achievements of the past 13 years under former President Karzai. — Ashraf Ghani

Somehow this madness must cease. We must stop now. I speak as a child of God and brother to the suffering poor of Vietnam. I speak for those whose land is being laid waste, whose homes are being destroyed, whose culture is being subverted. I speak for the poor in America who are paying the double price of smashed hopes at home and death and corruption in Vietnam. I speak as a citizen of the world, for the world as it stands aghast at the path we have taken. I speak as an American to the leaders of my own nation. The great initiative in this war is ours. The initiative to stop it must be ours. — Martin Luther King Jr.

If in fact your time to be called before God, you typically won't know it. Sometimes you will, and these are the hardest of times: When the blood pours from your nose and down your throat, clogging it, causing you to spit and gag. You heave for breath in the smoke and dust. Your equipment seems to suffocate you. You wipe the salty sweat and grime from your eyes, only to realize that it is blood, either yours or that of the enemy. You would stand, but you can't move your legs. You grasp the open, gaping wounds in your body, trying not to pass out from the pain. You feel the anger thinking of the loved ones you will never see again, and losing your life infuriates your soul. You rage to get to your feet and grab for a weapon, any weapon. Regardless of your race, culture, or religion, you want to die standing, fighting like a warrior, an American, so others won't have to. For those looking for a definition, this is the price of freedom. — Rusty Bradley

Emerson abandoned irony for blunt and passionate speech.
'This war has been a monumental blunder from the start! Britain is not solely responsible, but by God, gentlemen, she must share the blame, and she will pay a heavy price: the best of her young men, future scholars and scientists and statesmen, and ordinary, decent men who might have led ordinary, decent lives. And how will it end, when you tire of your game of soldiers? A few boundaries redrawn, a few transitory political advantages, in exchange for an entire continent laid waste and a million graves! What I do may be of minor importance in the total accumulation of knowledge, but at least I don't have blood on my hands. — Elizabeth Peters

By not burning their poppy fields to the ground but instead maintaining a security umbrella that international development agencies could safely work under as they improved these ordinary people's lives, we would win their 'hearts and minds' in the classic manifestation of a successful counter-insutgency operation.
[...]
Maybe our Western values world somebe instilled in these people. But in country where the average life expectancy was 42 and with the price of that life coming in contrasting cheap at $10 plus the bonus of martyrdom, or alien values might just as equally not be snapped up. — Jake Wood

Between 1965 (the beginning of LBJ's "Great Society") and 1994, welfare spending has cost the taxpayers $5.4 trillion in constant 1993 dollars. The War on Poverty has cost us 70 % more than the total price tag for defeating both Germany and Japan in World War II, after adjusting for inflation. Many believe that Welfare has destroyed millions of families and cost a huge portion of our national wealth in the process. — Rush Limbaugh

[T]he enduring problem for liberals, as for everyone else, is not whether history will judge them wise or foolish regarding the war on terrorism; it is, rather, the way that the past decade has splintered them away from other Americans. This fracture comes with a steep price: in today's toxic atmosphere, liberals are no less cynical, shortsighted, and parochial than anyone else, and they understand their fellow-Americans just as badly as they themselves are understood. When liberals look at red-state voters, they see either a mob of pious know-nothings or the insensible victims of militarism and class warfare. Yet ... [such people] defy fixed categories, which means that they have to be figured out the hard way
on their own terms. — George Packer

Maybe that was the price of ignorance, I thought, looking at the naked vagrant. Maybe Japan had to pay for the ignorant things it did in Nanking. Because ignorance as I'd got tired of hearing, is no excuse for evil. — Mo Hayder

Our mission is to report these horrors of war with accuracy and without prejudice. We always have to ask ourselves whether the level of risk is worth the story. What is bravery, and what is bravado? Journalists covering combat shoulder great responsibilities and face difficult choices. Sometimes they pay the ultimate price. — Marie Colvin

Something had broken inside her. No past or future, no sense of time, each day as endless as it was to a child. Linh had been right about her being a tourist of the war in the beginning, but with that detachment there had also been a kind of strength. As Darrow had said, there was a price to mastery. Now she was in limbo, neither an observer of the country, nor a part of it. For the first time since she was a child, she considered praying, but it seemed small and cowardly this late in the game. — Tatjana Soli

The war for freedom will never really be won because the price of freedom is constant vigilance over ourselves and over our Government. — Eleanor Roosevelt

A really great people, proud and high spirited, would face all the disasters of war rather than purchase that base prosperity which is bought at the price of national honor. — Theodore Roosevelt

Everything failed to subdue me. Soon everything seemed dull: another sunrise, the lives of heroes, falling in love, war, the discoveries people made about each other. The only thing that didn't bore me, obviously enough, was how much money Tim Price made, and yet in its obviousness it did. There wasn't a clear, identifiable emotion within me, except for greed and, possibly, total disgust. I had all the characteristics of a human being - flesh, blood, skin, hair - but my depersonalization was so intense, had gone so deep, that the normal ability to feel compassion had been eradicated, the victim of a slow, purposeful erasure. I was simply imitating reality, a rough resemblance of a human being, with only a dim corner of my mind functioning. Something horrible was happening and yet I couldn't figure out why - I couldn't put my finger on it. — Bret Easton Ellis

We will continue to ignore political and economic forecasts, which are an expensive distraction for many investors and businessmen. Thirty years ago, no one could have foreseen the huge expansion of the Vietnam War, wage and price controls, two oil shocks, the resignation of a president, the dissolution of the Soviet Union, a one-day drop in the Dow of 508 points, or treasury bill yields fluctuating between 2.8% and 17.4%. — Warren Buffett

Not contentment, but more power; not peace at any price, but war; not virtue, but efficiency (virtue in the Renaissance sense, virtu , virtue free of moral acid). — Friedrich Nietzsche

War is like any other bad relationship. Of course you want out, but at what price? And perhaps more importantly, once you get out, will you be any better off?
- Quellcrist Falconer — Richard K. Morgan

People of the world, the time for decision is short. It is measured in a few years. The choice is ours as to whether or not we will pay the price of peace. If we are not willing to pay it, all that we hold dear will be consumed in the flame of war. The darkness in our world today is due to the disintegration of things which are contrary to God's laws. Let us never say hopelessly this is the darkness before a storm; rather let us say with faith this is the darkness before the dawn of the golden age of peace, which we cannot now even imagine. For this, let us hope and work and pray. — Peace Pilgrim

and more warriors than there were in Utentok. There was an impromptu war that broke out and Delanoa was faced with two choices. To remain in Utentok for the sake of his wife, her tender midnight touch and the passionate love making she fed him with all the time recommended as they newly got wedded and the excitement was fresh for a week's honey — Alyssa Price

When I was a teenager I took freedom for granted until I got through the army and saw what the Nazis had done in Germany. Then I realized that freedom isn't automatic; it has a price.

World War II was a justified and necessary war. Last year I met five survivors of Auschwitz concentration camp. The things that happened to those people should never have happened to any human being.

- Ed Tipper — Marcus Brotherton

The price of gold was fixed at $35 an ounce in 1934, but by the time the U.S. got through the Korean War, the Vietnam war, with all the associated secular inflation, the price level had gone up nearly three times. — Robert Mundell

Life is such an effort, Child. It's a war that is renewed each day, and its moments of joy are brief parentheses for which you pay a cruel price. — Oriana Fallaci

Since the war I have stressed altogether five main objectives. The true union of Europe; the union of government with science; the power of government to act rapidly and decisively, subject to parliamentary control; the effective leadership of government to solve the economic problem by use of the wage-price mechanism at the two key-points of the modern industrial world; and a clearly defined purpose for a movement of humanity to ever higher forms. — Oswald Mosley

The senseless destruction that war brings," he explains. "The ones who always pay the price of another's greed is the simple man who just wants to go about his life, take joy in his family, and find peace at the end. They didn't ask for it, don't understand why it's happening, but theirs are the lives ruined, turned upside down, families destroyed. — Brian S. Pratt

At the end of World War II, we had wage and price controls. Under wartime inflationary conditions, many employers found it difficult to recruit employees. To get around the limitations of wage control, many began to offer health care as a fringe benefit to attract workers. As a new benefit, it took some years for the Internal Revenue Service to get around to requiring the cost of the medical care to be included in the reported taxable income of the employees. By the time it did, workers had come to regard nontaxable medical care provided by the employer as a right - or should I say entitlement? They raised such a big political fuss that Congress legislated nontaxable status for employer-provided medical care. — Milton Friedman

They, and we, are the legacies of an unbroken chain of proud men and women who served their country with honor, who waged war so that we might know peace, who braved hardship so that we might know opportunity, who paid the ultimate price so that we might know freedom. — Barack Obama

That doctrine of peace at any price has done more mischief than any I can well recall that have been afloat in this country. It has occasioned more wars than any of the most ruthless conquerors. It has disturbed and nearly destroyed that political equilibrium so necessary to the liberties and the welfare of the world. — Benjamin Disraeli

The bigger the issue, the smaller you write. Remember that. You don't write about the horrors of war. No. You write about a kid's burnt socks lying on the road. You pick the smallest manageable part of the big thing, and you work off the resonance. — Richard Price

It made economic sense, if you looked at it from the right angle; it was not in the Clan's interest for the price of the commodity they shifted to drop - and drop it surely would, if it was legalized or if the pressure to keep up the war on drugs ever slackened. But for Mike Fleming, who'd willingly given the best years of his life to the DEA, it was a deeply unsettling idea; nauseating, even. Bought and sold: We're doing the dealers' work for them, keeping prices high. — Charles Stross

A bargain is in its very essence a hostile transaction do not all men try to abate the price of all they buy? I contend that a bargain even between brethren is a declaration of war. — Lord Byron

Blood for honor. That was the price then, as it was the price now. It was always the price of honor. Always blood. Always pain. And as the queen was scourged, he wondered if such a thing as honor really existed at all. For what was honor if it could not strip the pride from a barbarian woman even as she was beaten before her people? What was honor if he could only defend his own by doing this to her? Honor, Decianus thought, was just an excuse for war and mayhem. An excuse for taking. Whether the taking of a woman or the taking of one tribe against another, one empire over another, one emperor over the world. An emperor like the one he served . . . If this was honor, he wanted no part in it. — Ruth Downie

It is the women of Europe who pay the price while war rages, and it will be the women who will pay again when war has run its bloody course and Europe sinks down into the slough of poverty like a harried beast too spent to wage the fight. It will be the sonless mothers who will bend their shoulders to the plough and wield in age-palsied hands the reaphook. — Kate Richards O'Hare

The nineteenth and twentieth centuries have given us as much terror as we can take. We have paid a high enough price for the nostalgia of the whole and the one, for the reconciliation of the concept and the sensible, of the transparent and the communicable experience. Under the general demand for slackening and for appeasement, we can hear the mutterings of the desire for a return of terror, for the realization of the fantasy to seize reality. The answer is: Let us wage a war on totality; let us be witnesses to the unpresentable; let us activate the differences ... — Jean-Francois Lyotard

Once, back home, I decided to count how many days out of my twenty months in Afghanistan I'd been on combat missions. 217 days. And I'm still paying the price for every one of those days. — Vladislav Tamarov

The unchangeable price of everything more precious and valuable is blood. — Auliq Ice

Of course God knew what would happen if they used their freedom the wrong way: apparently He thought it worth the risk. Perhaps we feel inclined to disagree with Him. But there is a difficulty about disagreeing with God. He is the source from which all your reasoning power comes: you could not be right and He wrong any more than a stream can rise higher than its own source. When you are arguing against Him you are arguing against the very power that makes you able to argue at all: it is like cutting off the branch you are sitting on. If God thinks this state of war in the universe a price worth paying for free will - that is, for making a live world in which creatures can do real good or harm and something of real importance can happen, instead of a toy world which only moves when He pulls the strings - then we may take it it is worth paying. When — C.S. Lewis

Failure of government programs prompts more determined effort, while the loss of liberty is ignored or rationalized away ... whether is it is the war on poverty, drugs, terrorism ... or the current Hitler of the day, an appeal to patriotism is used to convince the people that a little sacrifice of liberty, here or there, is a small price to pay ... The results, though, are frightening and will soon become even more so. — Ron Paul

Well, then he would be at war with the government, and death was an unfortunate side effect of any revolution. Change always had a price tag. But once he took over, the people would realize he was a better ruler than the disorganized, self-interested mob that called themselves Congress
men who didn't know anything, being led by a president who knew even less. — C.J. Hill

I was in charge of price controls in World War II and had a ceiling on overall prices. Everybody who was subject to general maximum price regulation wanted an exception and went to Congress to persuade a Congressman, or a group of people on the Hill, that I was being a menace to their industry. — John Kenneth Galbraith

You know better than I," he said, "that all courts-martial are farces and that you're really paying for the crimes of
other people, because this time we're going to win the war at any price. Wouldn't you have done the same in my place?"
General Moncada got up to clean his thick horn-rimmed glasses on his shirttail. "Probably," he said. "But what
worries me is not your shooting me, because after all, for people like us it's a natural death." He laid his glasses on
the bed and took off his watch and chain. "What worries me," he went on "is that out of so much and thinking about them so much, you've ended up as bad as they are. And no ideal in life is worth that much baseness." He took off his wedding ring and the medal of the Virgin of Help and put them alongside his glasses and watch.
"At this rate," he concluded, "you'll not only be the most despotic and bloody dictator in our history, but you'll shoot
my dear friend Ursula in an attempt to pacify your conscience. — Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Americans are wonderfully courteous to strangers, yet indiscriminately shoot kids in schools. They believe they are masters of the world, yet know nothing about what goes on outside their shores. They are people who believe the world stretches from California to Boston and everything outside is the bit they have to bomb to keep the price of oil down. Only one in five Americans hold a passport and the only foreign stories that make their news are floods, famine, and wars, because it makes them feel good to be an American. Feeling good to be American is what they live for. — Brian Reade

All the ideals and beliefs you ever had have crashed about your gun-deafened ears - you don't believe in God or them or the infallibility of England or anything but bloody war and wounds and foul smells and smutty stories and smoke and bombs and lice and filth and noise, noise, noise - you live in a world of cold sick fear, a dirty world of darkness and despair - you want to crawl ignominiously home away from these painful writhing things that once were men, these shattered, tortured faces that dumbly demand what it's all about in Christ's name ... — Evadne Price

This section of Scripture reminds me of the rows of white crosses along the wind-swept hills of Normandy. We're free today because, in June 1944, during the three-month battle of Normandy, nearly fifty-three thousand "nobodies" paid the ultimate price to defeat Nazi tyranny. No fewer than 9, 387 grave markers overlook Omaha Beach, many of them bearing the names of men who died during the first hours of the invasion called D-day. Beneath every white marker lies a person of significance because each one had an impact on the rest of history; each one made a difference. It's a very moving place to be. Visitors to that patch of land near Colleville-sur Mer, France, frequently weep quietly because there the real heroes of the war are silently honored. — Charles R. Swindoll

Without shedding of blood there is no anything ... Everything, it seems to me, has to be purchased by self-sacrifice. Our race has marked every step of its painful ascent with blood. And now torrents of it must flow again ... I don't think the war has been sent as a punishment for sin. I think it is the price humanity must pay for some blessing - some advance great enough to be worth the price which we may not live to see but which our children's children will inherit. — L.M. Montgomery

An independent state does not pay too dear a price for its independence in accepting the sufferings of war when it cannot avoid them; a state which has lost its independence may find at least some compensation in the fact that its protector procures for it peace with its neighbours. — Theodor Mommsen

Surveyors showed up unannounced at the twenty-acre campus of Mount Vernon Seminary and Junior College, a private girls' school on Ward Circle in Northwest Washington. The Navy announced it was taking immediate possession "in the interest of the war effort." It offered $800,000 for the property worth over $5 million, eventually agreeing to a $1.1 million purchase price. Over 5,000 codebreakers soon arrived to transform the school grounds into a Communications Annex. — Cindy Gueli

No price is too great to preserve the health of the fleet. — John B. Jervis

The United States basically accepted protection abroad as the price of post-war recovery. Now, that these countries have caught up to our level of prosperity, it is time for them to catch up to our level of openness. — Lawrence Summers

If God thinks this state of war in the universe a price worth paying for free will - that is, for making a live world in which creatures can do real good or harm and something of real importance can happen, instead of a toy world which only moves when He pulls the strings - then we may take it (that) it is worth paying. — C.S. Lewis

So much simpler, to kill for gold. It did not matter what anyone thought about that. The only rules he abided were those of the Old One, and she cared nothing for war beyond forcing mortals to consider the price of it. — F.T. McKinstry

The Army's new pitch was simple. Good pay, good benefits, a manageable amount of adventure ... but don't worry, we're not looking to pick fights these days. For a country that had paid so dear a price for its recent military buccaneering, the message was comforting. We still had the largest and most technologically advanced standing army in the world, the most nuclear weapons, the best and most powerful conventional weapons systems, the biggest navy. At the same time, to the average recruit the promise wasn't some imminent and dangerous combat deployment; it was 288 bucks a month (every month), training, travel, and experience. Selling the post-Vietnam military as a career choice meant selling the idea of peacetime service. It meant selling the idea of peacetime. Barf. — Rachel Maddow