"You might hold an ethical position that it's wrong to lie, but if you have plans for a war in Iraq, and you want to keep them secret for practical reasons - to reduce casualties, perhaps - and someone asks you about those plans, you may need to lie for a 'good' outcome."

War, Lie, Iraq, May

39

Create Your Own Wallpaper

Standard

Customized

"You might hold an ethical position that it's wrong to lie, but if you have plans for a war in Iraq, and you want to keep them secret for practical reasons - to reduce casualties, perhaps - and someone asks you about those plans, you may need to lie for a 'good' outcome."

Exlpore more War quotes

"This country was filled with violent children orphaned by war."

Cormac McCarthy, American Writer

War, Trauma, Youth, Violence

"Women and children make you weak, get rid of them when you are in war."

M.F. Moonzajer, Afghan Author

War, Women, Children, Weakness

"A war between Europeans is a civil war."

Victor Hugo, French Author

War,

"The doctrine that war is always a greater evil seems to imply a materialist ethic, a belief that death and pain are the greatest evils. But I do not think they are... All men die, and most men miserably. That two soldiers on opposite sides, each believing his own country to be in the right, each at the moment when his selfishness is most in abeyance and his will to sacrifice in the ascendant, should kill [each] other in plain battle seems to me by no means one of the most terrible things in this terrible world."

C. S. Lewis, British Author

War, Ethics, Death, Humanity

"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."

Stephen King, American Author

War, Regret, Today, Future

"What branch do you want to go in? "I don' give a god-damn, said Pilon jauntily. "I guess we need men like you in the infantry. And Pilon was written so. He turned then to Big Joe, and the Portagee was getting sober. "Where do you want to go? "I want to go home, Big Joe said miserably. The sergeant put him in the infantry too."

John Steinbeck, American Author

War, Desire, Home, Misery

"They call upon us to supply American boys to do the job that Asian boys should do."

Lyndon B. Johnson, American President

War, Boys, Job

"We can best help you to prevent war not by repeating your words and following your methods but by finding new words and creating new methods."

Virginia Woolf, British Author

War, Help, Words

"The evil we create during the wars to save us, it can also end us when the war is over."

M.F. Moonzajer, Afghan Author

War, Evil, Survival, Destruction

"Man lives by habits indeed but what he lives for is thrill and excitements. ... From time immemorial war has been ... the supremely thrilling excitement."

William James, American Philosopher

War, Habit, Excitement, Life

Explore more quotes by Peter Singer

"I don't think nationalism is alone holding the field; it's in contention with a lot of different things."

Nationalism, Contention

"More often there's a compromise between ethics and expediency."

Compromise, Ethics, Expediency

"In a situation where many national leaders do the same thing and look out for national interests, and with an issue like global warming, you're likely to get no solution, so I think you have to have some kind of ethical trump on some of those issues."

Ethics, Globalwarming, Leaders, Solution

"In the sense that you're not at the centre of power, like a president or prime minister of a major power, everyone is marginalised; my position doesn't isn't unique in that respect. I think there are different sorts of relevance in different contexts."

Power, President, Respect, Sense

"Had Rumsfeld said at any time 'get me a report on what's going on', he could have had it. You're right, it depends on choices that we make, which parts of the world we want to be in immediate contact with."

Time, Choices, Right, Want

"My work is based on the assumption that clarity and consistency in our moral thinking is likely, in the long run, to lead us to hold better views on ethical issues."

Work, Consistency, Clarity, Thinking

"I think ethics is always there; it's not always a very thoughtful or reflective ethics."

Ethics, Thoughtful

"I would just like to get him to think about these things; whether what's happening in Iraq is promoting the culture of life. The worry is that he is so certain that he know where he's going to lead the country."

Life, Country, Culture, Iraq

"You might hold an ethical position that it's wrong to lie, but if you have plans for a war in Iraq, and you want to keep them secret for practical reasons - to reduce casualties, perhaps - and someone asks you about those plans, you may need to lie for a 'good' outcome."

War, Lie, Iraq, May

"The notion that human life is sacred just because it is human life is medieval."

Life,