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William Kirby

"You could argue that war is always an irrational act, and yet many states enter into military conflict out of rational calculation or national interest or the stability or longevity of their regime."

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"You could argue that war is always an irrational act, and yet many states enter into military conflict out of rational calculation or national interest or the stability or longevity of their regime."

Exlpore more War quotes

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Amber Hurdle

"In war, when a commander becomes so bereft of reason and perspective that he fails to understand the dependence of arms on Divine guidance, he no longer deserves victory."

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Amber Hurdle

"In war there is no prize for runner-up."

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Amber Hurdle

"Look now -- in all of history men have been taught that killing of men is an evil thing not to be countenanced. Any man who kills must be destroyed because this is a great sin, maybe the worst we know. And then we take a soldier and put murder in his hands and we say to him, "use it well, use it wisely." We put no checks on him. Go out and kill as many of a certain kind or classification of your brothers as you can. And we will reward you for it because it is a violation of your early training."

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Amber Hurdle

"There were people who gave everything they had to the war because it was the last war and by winning it we would remove war like a thorn from the flesh of the world and there wouldn't be any more such horrible nonsense."

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Amber Hurdle

"That's the attractive thing about war, said Rosewater. "Absolutely everybody gets a little something."

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Amber Hurdle

"Take the diplomacy out of war and the thing would fall flat in a week."

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Amber Hurdle

"There was murder, there was rape, there were unspeakable practices, and all of them were for the good, the bloody good, the bloody myth, for the grail, for the Tower."

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Amber Hurdle

"It was how wars really ended, Dieffenbaker supposed -- not at truce tables but in cancer wards and office cafeterias and traffic jams. Wars died one tiny piece at a time, each piece something that fell like a memory, each lost like an echo that fades in winding hills. In the end even war ran up the white flag. Or so he hoped. He hoped that in the end even war surrendered."

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Amber Hurdle

"But the pistol, this Walther...it was as if it had been made for the express purpose of shooting people. With a chill Richie realized that was why it had been made. What else could you do with a pistol? Use it to light your cigarettes?"

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Amber Hurdle

"War is what happens when language fails."

Explore more quotes by William Kirby

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William Kirby
"So, anything that avoids a conflict that could draw in, unhappily again, outside powers such as the United States or revisit, for example, Japan's interests in the Taiwan area would be the last thing that anyone would want."
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William Kirby
"And look at the mess that Russia is; most Chinese don't want to follow that."
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William Kirby
"There is no question that Taiwan is a state in any political science definition of a state."
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William Kirby
"Another goal is to look to the resources we have and to see how we could do better to plan, in a sense, for the faculty and infrastructure that we will need to study Asia well into the 21st century."
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William Kirby
"I don't believe that economic and cultural interaction automatically brings greater peace and understanding, although it may help in that regard."
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William Kirby
"Harvard is first and foremost a university and not a consulting operation, and our job here is to teach and to research and to create knowledge on Asia in conjunction and in cooperation with scholars as well as with political, intellectual, and cultural leaders in Asia."
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William Kirby
"The Chinese government since 1979 has been very successful in economic development, and successful enough, simply by surviving, in the realm of political development."
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William Kirby
"A war in the Taiwan Strait would destroy China's international relations overnight. It would destroy Chinese - Japanese relations, not to mention Chinese - American relations."
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William Kirby
"So, I think China desperately needs to legitimize some form of opposition."
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William Kirby
"The reform of state industry, and most directly related to that, the banking sector, is enormously daunting."
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