But through world wars and a Great Depression, through painful social upheaval and a Cold War, and now through the attacks of September 11, 2001, our Nation has indeed survived.

So instead of talking about theoretical ways of ending the war and violence, I say that we have to get rid of the individual asholes in each office and situation.

Thus, the use of fiat money is more justifiable in financing a depression than in financing a war.

Armaments are necessary - or are maintained on the pretext of necessity - because of a real or an imagined danger of war.

Let us assume that the ideal were reached; let us imagine a state of international life in which the danger of war no longer exists. Then no one would dare to demand a penny for obviously completely superfluous armaments.

Lightly armed nations can move toward war just as easily as those which are armed to the teeth, and they will do so if the usual causes of war are not removed.

When distrust exists between governments, when there is a danger of war, they will not be willing to disarm even when logic indicates that disarmament would not affect military security at all.

War, I have always said, forces men to change their standards, regardless of whether their country has won or lost.

But to the fighting soldier that phase of the war is behind. It was left behind after his first battle. His blood is up. He is fighting for his life, and killing now for him is as much a profession as writing is for me.

All the rest of us - you and me and even the thousands of soldiers behind the lines in Africa - we want terribly yet only academically for the war to get over.

If I can just see the European war out I think I might feel justified in quitting the war.

War makes strange giant creatures out of us little routine men who inhabit the earth.

The front-line soldier wants it to be got over by the physical process of his destroying enough Germans to end it. He is truly at war. The rest of us, no matter how hard we work, are not.

He was a degenerate gambler. That is, a man who gambled simply to gamble and must lose. As a hero who goes to war must die. Show me a gambler and I'll show you a loser, show me a hero and I'll show you a corpse.

Like its politicians and its war, society has the teenagers it deserves.