Civil Wars

Famous quotes containing the words civil wars, civil and/or wars:

    Luxury, or a refinement on the pleasures and conveniences of life, had long been supposed the source of every corruption in government, and the immediate cause of faction, sedition, civil wars, and the total loss of liberty. It was, therefore, universally regarded as a vice, and was an object of declamation to all satyrists, and severe moralists.
    David Hume (1711–1776)

    We are too civil to books. For a few golden sentences we will turn over and actually read a volume of four or five hundred pages.
    Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)

    It took nine years, and a great depression, and two wars ending in defeat, and one surrender without war, to break my faith in the benign power of the press. Gradually I came to realize that people will more readily swallow lies than truth, as if the taste of lies was homey, appetizing: a habit.
    Martha Gellhorn (b. 1908)