It's always the generals with the bloodiest records who are the first to shout what a hell it is. And it's always the war widows who lead the Memorial Day parades.
Interpretation
This quote highlights the irony of those who perpetuate violence often lamenting its consequences while those who suffer the most take the lead in honoring the fallen.
Paddy Chayefsky's quote reflects on the contradiction that arises in discussions about war. It points out that those who have caused the most destruction—often military leaders—are the quickest to denounce the horrors of conflict, while the ones who truly understand its cost, like the widows of war, are the ones actively participating in tributes to those lost. This commentary invites reflection on the discrepancies between the experiences of those who wage war and those who bear its consequences, serving as a critique of the glorification of military power while acknowledging the profound sorrow of ordinary people affected by war.
In practice
During a speech on Veterans Day discussing the impact of war.
We no longer live in a world of nations and ideologies. The world is a college of corporations, inexorably determined by the immutable bylaws of business...There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM, and ITT, and AT&T, and DuPont, Dow, Union Carbide, and Exxon. Those are the nations of the world today.
Television will do anything for a rating... anything!
Television is democracy at its ugliest.
We've established the most enormous medical entity ever conceived... and people are sicker than ever. We cure nothing! We heal nothing!
The man who said 'I'd rather be lucky than good' saw deeply into life. People are afraid to face how great a part of life is dependent on luck. It's scary to think so much is out of one's control. There are moments in a match when the ball hits the top of the net and for a split second it can either go forward or fall back. With a little luck it goes forward and you win. Or maybe it doesn't and you lose.
It will always be the same possibilities, in sum or on the average, that go on repeating themselves until a man comes along who does not value the actuality above idea. It is he who first gives the new possibilities their meaning, their direction, and he awakens them.
War can only be qualified by its object, and there is neither foreign war nor civil war, there is only just or unjust war.
Government control gives rise to fraud, suppression of Truth, intensification of the black market and artificial scarcity. Above all, it unmans the people and deprives them of initiative, it undoes the teaching of self-help.
The wise soul feareth not death; rather she sometimes striveth for death, she goeth beyond to meet her. Yet eternity maintaineth her substance throughout time, immensity throughout space, universal form throughout motion.
Most climbers aren't in fact deranged, they're just infected with a particularly virulent strain of the Human Condition.
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