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Quote by Georg Henrich Von Berenhorst

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Georg Henrich Von Berenhorst

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“The delibarate placing of the highest intellectual gifs and achievement at the service of the lowest human instincts is a phenomenon with which the twentieth century is acquainted on a scale never previously attained. And whether the instinct be fear (the main defensive one) or revenge possessed (the main offensive ones) makes little difference in the end, so readily do they pass into one another. It is no recent discovery that brain as well as brawn is esential to the efficient figher. The Trojan Horse is the perennial symbol of that truth, and it is appropriate that Shakespeare put on the lips of Ulysses an encomium on the “still and mental parts” of war. But it remained for war in our time to effect the total mobilization of those still and mental parts. The ideological warfare that precedes and precipitates the physical conflict (cold war as it has significantly come to be called); the propaganda that prepares and unifies public opinion; the conscription, in a dozen spheres, of the nation’s brains; the organization of what is revealingly known as the intelligence service; but most of all the practical absorption of science into the military effort; these things, apart from the knowledge and skill required for actual fighting, permit us to define modern war, once it is begun, as an unreserved dedication of the human intellect to death and destruction.”

“The deliberate placing of the highest intellectual gifs and achievement at the service of the lowest human instincts is a phenomenon with which the twentieth century is acquainted on a scale never previously attained. And whether the instinct be fear (the main defensive one) or revenge possessed (the main offensive ones) makes little difference in the end, so readily do they pass into one another. It is no recent discovery that brain as well as brawn is esential to the efficient figher. The Trojan Horse is the perennial symbol of that truth, and it is appropriate that Shakespeare put on the lips of Ulysses an encomium on the “still and mental parts” of war. But it remained for war in our time to effect the total mobilization of those still and mental parts. The ideological warfare that precedes and precipitates the physical conflict (cold war as it has significantly come to be called); the propaganda that prepares and unifies public opinion; the conscription, in a dozen spheres, of the nation’s brains; the organization of what is revealingly known as the intelligence service; but most of all the practical absorption of science into the military effort; these things, apart from the knowledge and skill required for actual fighting, permit us to define modern war, once it is begun, as an unreserved dedication of the human intellect to death and destruction.”

“The deliberate placing of the highest intellectual gifts and achievement at the service of the lowest human instincts is a phenomenon with which the twentieth century is acquainted on a scale never previously attained. And whether the instinct be fear (the main defensive one) or revenge possessed (the main offensive ones) makes little difference in the end, so readily do they pass into one another. It is no recent discovery that brain as well as brawn is esential to the efficient figher. The Trojan Horse is the perennial symbol of that truth, and it is appropriate that Shakespeare put on the lips of Ulysses an encomium on the “still and mental parts” of war. But it remained for war in our time to effect the total mobilization of those still and mental parts. The ideological warfare that precedes and precipitates the physical conflict (cold war as it has significantly come to be called); the propaganda that prepares and unifies public opinion; the conscription, in a dozen spheres, of the nation’s brains; the organization of what is revealingly known as the intelligence service; but most of all the practical absorption of science into the military effort; these things, apart from the knowledge and skill required for actual fighting, permit us to define modern war, once it is begun, as an unreserved dedication of the human intellect to death and destruction.”

“The uniqueness of Iago, like the uniqueness of modern war, does not lie in the spirit of destruction. That has always been common enough. It lies in the genius he dedicates to destructive ends. Modern war would not recognize itself in the portraits of Shakespeare’s classical and feudal fighters, in Hector and Hotspur, in Faulconbridge and Coriolanus, or in Othello himself. But let it look in the glass and it will behold Iago. In him Shakespeare reveals , with clarity of nightmare, the unrestrained intellect, instead of being opposite of force, and an antidote for it, as much of the modern world thinks, is force functioning on another plane. It is the immoral equivalent of war, and as certain to clead to it in due seasons as Iago’s machinations were to lead to death. “All other knowledge is hurtful,” says Montaigne, “to him who has not the science of honesty and goodness.”

“The deliberate placing of the highest intellectual gifts and achievement at the service of the lowest human instincts is a phenomenon with which the twentieth century is acquainted on a scale never previously attained. And whether the instinct be fear (the main defensive one) or revenge possessed (the main offensive ones) makes little difference in the end, so readily do they pass into one another. It is no recent discovery that brain as well as brawn is essential to the efficient figher. The Trojan Horse is the perennial symbol of that truth, and it is appropriate that Shakespeare put on the lips of Ulysses an encomium on the “still and mental parts” of war. But it remained for war in our time to effect the total mobilization of those still and mental parts. The ideological warfare that precedes and precipitates the physical conflict (cold war as it has significantly come to be called); the propaganda that prepares and unifies public opinion; the conscription, in a dozen spheres, of the nation’s brains; the organization of what is revealingly known as the intelligence service; but most of all the practical absorption of science into the military effort; these things, apart from the knowledge and skill required for actual fighting, permit us to define modern war, once it is begun, as an unreserved dedication of the human intellect to death and destruction.”

“Except in Punjab and the NWFP, the central government’s Kashmir policy had little support in Sindh or Balochistan and even less in East Bengal. Instead of serving the people, civil servants and their allies in the army hoisted the political leaders with their Kashmir petard to become the veritable masters of the manor through autocratic and unconstitutional means.”

“Альтруизм, сострадание, сочувствие, любовь, совесть, чувство справедливости — всё это скрепляет общество, и даёт людям основания для высокой самооценки. И всё это, как теперь можно уверенно полагать, имеет твёрдый генетический базис. Это хорошие новости. Плохие новости в том, что хотя эти качества в каком-то роде и осчастливливают человечество в целом, но они не сделали человека «хорошим» видом и не слишком надёжно служат людям до конца. Скорее наоборот, и теперь это яснее, чем когда-либо, как (точнее — почему?) моральные чувства используются с отвратительной гибкостью, включаются или выключаются в зависимости от личного интереса, и сколь непринуждённо мы часто не осознаём такие переключения. Новый взгляд на людей полагает их видом, обладающим великолепным набором моральных инструментов, но трагически склонным использовать их не по назначению, и находящимся в жалостном институциональном невежестве насчёт этих злоупотреблений.”

“Whenever there is a breakdown in...stability, as has happened frequently in Pakistan, the military translates its potential into the will to dominate, and we have military intervention followed by military rule,’ states former army chief General Jehangir Karamat. ‘But,’ he states, ‘As far as the track record of the military as rulers in the past is concerned, I am afraid it is not much better than the civilians.”