It is a socialist idea that making profits is a vice; I consider the real vice is making losses.
Winston ChurchillRead
A study of Disease-of Pestilences methodically prepared and deliberately launched upon man and beast-is certainly being pursue in the laboratories of more than one great country. Blight to destroy crops, Anthrax to slay horses and cattle, Plague to poison not armies but whole districts - such are the lines along which military science is remorselessly advancing.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote addresses the troubling advancements in military science that involve using diseases as weapons.
Winston Churchill highlights the alarming trend in military science where various diseases are being weaponized to inflict harm on both humans and animals. He reflects on the ethical implications of research focused on creating blights, anthrax, and plagues for military purposes, raising concerns about the destructive potential such advancements hold for society and the natural world.
Themes
DiseasePestilenceMilitaryScienceBiological WarfareDestruction
In practice
Example use cases
During a debate on ethical military practices, one might quote Churchill to illustrate the dangers of biological warfare.
More from Winston Churchill
All quotes →The United States is like a gigantic boiler. Once the fire is lit under it, there's no limit to the power it can generate.
Winston ChurchillRead
Politics is almost as exciting as war, and quite as dangerous. In war you can only be killed once, but in politics many times.
Winston ChurchillRead
I will not pretend that if I had to choose between communism and Nazism I would choose communism.
Winston ChurchillRead
Mountaintops inspire leaders but valleys mature them.
Winston ChurchillRead
True genius resides in the capacity for evaluation of uncertain, hazardous, and conflicting information.
Winston ChurchillRead
Similar quotes
A fundamental principle of information theory is that you can’t guarantee outcomes… in order for an experiment to yield knowledge, it has to be able to fail. If you have guaranteed experiments, you have zero knowledge
George GilderRead
We do not know what the rules of the game are; all we are allowed to do is to watch the playing. Of course, if we watch long enough, we may eventually catch on to a few of the rules. The rules of the game are what we mean by fundamental physics.
Richard P. FeynmanRead
If the experience of science teaches anything, it's that the world is very strange and surprising. The many revolutions in science have certainly shown that.
John PolkinghorneRead
[T]here are depths of thousands of miles which are hidden from our inquiry. The only tidings we have from those unfathomable regions are by means of volcanoes, those burning mountains that seem to discharge their materials from the lowest abysses of the earth.
Oliver GoldsmithRead
The human race may be the only intelligent beings in the galaxy.
Stephen HawkingRead
Perhaps most ridiculous of all is the suggestion that we 'keep' our radioactive garbage for the use of our descendants. This 'solution', I think, requires an immediate poll of the next 20,000 generations.
David R. BrowerRead