Please help me find a famous quote

[429CJ]

My local radio station is taking callers about opinions on the anti-war protests tomorrow.

There is a famous quote that says something about there being some things that are worse than war and that the protesters have that right to protest only because better men than they were willing to fight and die for them.

Can anyone direct me to the exect quote?

I hope I am doing this right.

Thanks

[kaylar]

"pacifists are the parasites of liberty"

This site says the quote is a parody of a phrase by Reinhold Niebuhr:

"...the old Niebuhrian indictment: Pacifists are "parasites on the sins of others."

[null and void]

No one dies to bestow rights on others.

Bestow maybe not, protect, certainly.

As a bonus exercise: Suppose the slaves in the US had sucessfully earned their freedom? Since another (Lincoln) granted their freedom, couldn't another recind it?

Has the subconcious awareness of this "unearned" freedom sapped the vigor of that particular group for the last 140 years?

Extra points awarded for comparisons to any group that paid for it's own freedom in blood...

[kaylar]

It's obviously a very old and continually updated quote , so why not !?!

[Skooz]

Yeah, maybe I'll copywrite it. Collect some royalties. Retire.

[PaulJ]

"Where there is only a choice between cowardice and violence I advise violence."

"I would risk violence a thousand times rather than risk the emasculation of a whole race."

" To run away from danger, instead of facing it, is to deny one's faith in man and God, even one's own self. It were better for one to drown oneself than live to declare such bankruptcy of faith."

"I have been repeating over and over again that he who cannot protect himself or his nearest and dearest or their honour by non-violently facing death may and ought to do so by violently dealing with the oppressor. He who can do neither of the two is a burden. He has no business to be the head of a family. He must either hide himself, or must rest content to live for ever in helplessness and be prepared to crawl like a worm at the bidding of a bully".

"Whilst I may not actually help anyone to retaliate, I must not let a coward seek shelter behind non-violence so-called. Not knowing the stuff of which non-violence is made, many have honestly believed that running away from danger every time was a virtue compared to offering resistance, especially when it was fraught with danger to one's life. As a teacher of non-violence I must, so far as it is possible for me, guard against such an unmanly belief".

Mahatma Gandhi

[Gritty]

How about this one?

"If ye love wealth greater than liberty, the tranquility of servitude greater than the animating contest for freedom, go home from us in peace. We seek not your consul, nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you. May your chains set lightly upon you; and may posterity forget ye were our countrymen." -- Samuel Adams

[Jimmyclyde]

Try this one...

"You a war protester?"

"Mans got to do something these days to make a living".

"Dying an't much of a living boy."

[Positive]

"No one would be foolish enough to choose war over peace--in peace sons bury their fathers, but in war fathers bury their sons."
-- Croesus of Lydia

[Positive]

"In war there is no substitute for victory."
-- Douglas MacArthur (1880-1964), American general, US chief of staff

[Positive]

"We have always said that in our war with the Arabs we had a secret weapon-no alternative."
-- Golda Meir (1898-1978), Prime Minister of Israel

[Positive]

"The object of war is not to die for your country, but to make the other bastard die for his."
-- George Smith Patton, Jr. (1885-1945), American general in WWII, led sweep across France into Germany

[scouse]

NEVILLE CHAMBERLAIN,

Prime Minister Chamberlain confronted the threat to peace posed by Germany and Italy. Seeking to appease Adolf HITLER and Benito MUSSOLINI, he first negotiated a treaty with Italy accepting the conquest of Ethiopia on condition that Italy withdraw from the Spanish Civil War. Turning to the Czech question, Chamberlain conferred with Hitler and Mussolini. In the Munich pact (1938), signed also by France, Chamberlain accepted Hitler's territorial claims to predominantly German areas of Czechoslovakia. Though Chamberlain assured Britain that his concession had brought "peace in our time, Hitler soon broke his agreement and occupied the rest of Czechoslovakia

[Positive]

"He is neither a strategist nor is he schooled in the operational arts, nor is he a tactician, nor is he a general. Other than that he's a great military man." (describing Saddam Hussein of Iraq, 1991)
-- H. Norman Schwarzkopf (b. 1934), American general, served Vietnam War, invasion of Grenada, Gulf War commander

[Positive]

"I believe that forgiving them is God's function. Our job is simply to arrange the meeting." (on those behind the 9/11 attacks)
-- H. Norman Schwarzkopf (b. 1934), American general, served Vietnam War, invasion of Grenada, Gulf War commander

[Positive]

"There is only one principle of war and that's this. Hit the other fellow, as quickly as you can, as hard as you can, where it hurts him most, when he ain't lookin'."
-- Sir William Joseph Slim, British Army, Field Marshal

[Positive]

"Only the winners decide what were war crimes."
-- Gary Wills

[kaylar]

If you get a dime for every time it's used, in one form or other, you just about could retire! :-)

Or better yet, copyright "...for the children", "pristine arctic circle" and "unilateralist". Just one speech nowadays should produce a hefty check.

[Skooz]

Great idea. If I would have copywritten "risky scheme" before the 1996 election, I could have bought one of these.

[Grut]

As I remember it, Niebuhr said something like: "In a world in which sin is a condition of existence, a pacifist is a parasite who lives on the sins of others." This is from a twenty-plus year old memory, though, so it may not be accurate.

Another great line is from a anarchist executed for bomb-throwing in Nineteenth century France: "You cannot give up violence, you can only volunteer to be the victim." Sorry, but once again I can't source it or guarantee its accuracy.

[Skooz]

"Smoking kills. If you're killed, you've lost a very important part of your life." -Brooke Shields

"Outside of the killings, Washington has one of the lowest crime rates in the country." -Mayor Marion Barry, Washington, DC