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Jonathan Schell

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Famous Jonathan Schell Quotes

“It was not unless one lifted one's gaze from all the allegedly normal events occurring before one's eyes and looked at the executioner's sword hanging over everyone's head that the normality was revealed as a sort of mass insanity. . . Passengers on a ship who are . . . engaging in all the usual shipboard activities appear perfectly normal as long as their ship is sailing safely in quiet seas, but . . . deranged if in full view of them all their ship is caught in a vortex that may shortly drag it and them to destruction.”

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Book:The Fate of the Earth
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“The machinery of destruction is complete, poised on a hair trigger, waiting for the 'button' to be 'pushed' by some misguided or deranged human being or for some faulty computer chip to send out the instruction to fire. That so much should be balanced on so fine a point--that the fruit of four and a half billion years can be undone in a careless moment--is a fact against which belief rebels.”

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Book:The Fate of the Earth: And, The Abolition
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“It has been said that the United States was deceived into entering and expanding the Vietnam War by its own overoptimistic propaganda. The record suggests, however, that the policy-makers stayed in Vietnam not so much because of overly optimistic hopes of winning ... as because of overly pessimistic assessments of the consequences of losing.”

Has BeensSaidWarStatesWinningUnitedUnited StatesRecordsPolicyLosingConsequenceOptimisticPropagandaMakersVietnamEnteringExpandingDeceivedVietnam WarPessimisticAssessmentPolicy Makers
Book:The real war: the classic reporting on the Vietnam War with a new essay
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“It is a key fact about American policy in Vietnam that the withdrawel of American troops was built into it from the start. None of the presidents who waged war in Vietnam contemplated an open-ended campaign; all promised the public that American troops would be able to leave in the not-too-remote future. The promise of withdrawel precluded a policy of occupation of the traditional colonial sort, in which a great power simply imposes its will on a small one indefinitely.”

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Author:Jonathan Schell
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“The nuclear peril is usually seen in isolation from the threats to other forms of life and their ecosystems, but in fact it should be seen at the very center of the ecological crisis, as the cloud-covered Everest of which the more immediate, visible kinds of harm to the environment are the mere foothills.”

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Book:The Fate of the Earth: And, The Abolition
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“Lovers of freedom, lovers of social justice, disarmers, peacekeepers, civil disobeyers, democrats, civil-rights activists, and defenders of the environment are legions in a single multiform cause, and they will gain strength by knowing it, taking encouragement from it, and when appropriate and opportune, pooling their efforts.”

SocialCausesJusticeEffortKnowingEnvironmentRightsStrengthLoversGainsEncouragementSocial JusticeDemocratCivil RightsAppropriateActivistDefendersLegionPeacekeepers
Book:The Unconquerable World: Power, Nonviolence, and the Will of the People
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“The spread of democracy is a wonderful thing-it is a necessary foundation for peace-and it can happen. But it cannot be advanced by force, and still less by the creation of a new empire, an idea that is as unworkable as it morally mistaken. Empire, the embodiment of force, violates equity on a global scale. No lover of freedom can give it support. It is especially contrary to the founding principles of the United States.”

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Author:Jonathan Schell
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“The use of a mere dozen nuclear weapons ... would be a human catastrophe without parallel. ... Because so few weapons can kill so many people, even far-reaching disarmament proposals would leave us implicated in plans for unprecedented slaughter of innocent people. The sole measure that can free us from this burden is abolition.”

PeopleHumansUseWould BePlansWeaponsMereBurdenNuclearInnocentReachingDozenSoleNuclear WeaponsCatastropheParallelsProposalSlaughterUnprecedentedDisarmamentAbolition
Author:Jonathan Schell
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“[A] new generation, innocent of the divisions of the Cold War, this coming-of-age. ... If its members do not feel the urgency to escape the nuclear danger that some of its parents felt, neither has it developed the deep attachment to nuclear arms also often found among their parents, including most of the governing class. ... The call for abolition should therefore be, among other things, a call from an older generation to younger one.”

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Author:Jonathan Schell
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