As you can easily imagine we often ask ourselves here despairingly: “What, oh, what is the use of the war? Why can’t people live peacefully together? Why all this destruction?”
The question is very understandable, but no one has found a satisfactory answer to it so far. Yes, why do they make still more gigantic planes, still heavier bombs and, at the same time, prefabricated houses for reconstruction? Why should millions be spent daily on the war and yet there’s not a penny available for medical services, artists, or for poor people?
Why do some people have to starve, while there are surpluses rotting in other parts of the world? Oh, why are people so crazy?
I don’t believe that the big men, the politicians and the capitalists alone, are guilty of the war. Oh no, the little man is just as guilty, otherwise the peoples of the world would have risen in revolt long ago! There’s in people simply an urge to destroy, an urge to kill, to murder and rage, and until all mankind, without exception, undergoes a great change, wars will be waged, everything that has been built up, cultivated, and grown will be destroyed and disfigured, after which mankind will have to begin all over again.
I don’t believe that the big men, the politicians and the capitalists alone, are guilty of the war. Oh no, the little man is just as guilty, otherwise the peoples of the world would have risen in revolt long ago!
Rising in revolt tends to mean civil war. Perhaps if she thought that through a little more she would find at least one answer. One reason to stop other crazy people destroying things you value is to kill them.
Defense is necessary, I agree. But perhaps the revolt she was looking for was one of peaceful protest on both sides. The leaders can’t do much damage without followers and supporters, armies and engineers. This site has already covered many of the biases which would lead one to support war, regardless of cause.
Haven’t been able to find a cite for this. It’s listed as unsourced on Wikiquote, no real sources in a Google search, Google Books can only attribute it to a random quote collection book, and volume 106 of U.S. New & World Report attributes it to Yassir Arafat!
-- Anne Frank, 3 May 1944, aged 14
Rising in revolt tends to mean civil war. Perhaps if she thought that through a little more she would find at least one answer. One reason to stop other crazy people destroying things you value is to kill them.
Defense is necessary, I agree. But perhaps the revolt she was looking for was one of peaceful protest on both sides. The leaders can’t do much damage without followers and supporters, armies and engineers. This site has already covered many of the biases which would lead one to support war, regardless of cause.
The other side seems to agree:
-- Adolf Hitler
Haven’t been able to find a cite for this. It’s listed as unsourced on Wikiquote, no real sources in a Google search, Google Books can only attribute it to a random quote collection book, and volume 106 of U.S. New & World Report attributes it to Yassir Arafat!
Too true!