Home / Quotes / Quote by Robert Penn Warren

Quote by Robert Penn Warren

“Let us leave in suspension such debates about the economic costs of the War and look at another kind of cost, a kind more subtle, pervasive, and continuing, a kind that conditions in a thousand ways the temper of American life today. This cost is psychological, and it is, of course, different for the winner and the loser.”

Book:The Legacy of the Civil War

Work

The Legacy of the Civil War

This comprehensive study delves into the long-term effects of the Civil War, examining its influence on political, social, and cultural aspects of American life. more

Author

Robert Penn Warren

Robert Penn Warren was an American poet, novelist, and literary critic. His works are known for their profound social insight and unique portrayal of Southern culture. Warren's poetry and novels have won numerous literary awards, including the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1947 and the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1955. more

“The frost which kills the harvest of a year, saves the harvests of a century, by destroying the weevil or the locust. Wars, fires, plagues, break up immovable routine, clear the ground of rotten races and dens of distemper, and open a fair field to new men. There is a tendency in things to right themselves, and the war or revolution or bankruptcy that shatters a rotten system, allows things to take a new and natural order. The sharpest evils are bent into that periodicity which makes the errors of planets, and the fevers and distempers of men, self-limiting. Nature is upheld by antagonism. Passions, resistance, danger, are educators. We acquire the strength we have overcome. Without war, no soldier; without enemies, no hero.”

War Nature Revolution Debt Cycles

Book:The Conduct of Life: By Ralph Waldo Emerson

Source: The Conduct of Life: By Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Nobody today is nearly smart enough to make the sorts of weapons even the poorest nations had a million years ago. Yes, and they were being used all the time. During my lifetime, there wasn’t a day when, somewhere on the planet, there weren’t at least three wars going on. And the Law of Natural Selection was powerless to respond to such new technologies. No female of any species, unless maybe she was a rhinoceros, could expect to give birth to a baby who was fireproof, bombproof, or bulletproo”

War Weapons Natural Selectionction

Book:Galápagos

Source: Galápagos

“Fraternity means that the father no longer sacrifices the sons; instead the brothers kill one another. Wars between nations have been replaced by civil war. The great settling of accounts, first under national ‘pretexts,’ led to a rapidly escalating world civil war.”

War Globalization Fraternity

Book:Eumeswil

Source: Eumeswil