When they are preparing for war, those who rule by force speak most copiously about peace until they have completed the mobilization process.
Interpretation
This quote highlights the hypocrisy of those in power who promote peace while preparing for conflict.
Stefan Zweig's quote reflects on the contradiction often seen in governance, especially regarding war. Leaders who emphasize the need for peace may do so manipulatively, using rhetoric as a tool to mask their true intentions, which revolve around preparing for conflict. This duality serves to illustrate the moral complexities of leadership, where the prioritization of power can overshadow genuine aspirations for peace.
In practice
This quote can be used in a political debate about military intervention and its justifications.
All my life I have been passionately interested in monomaniacs of any kind, people carried away by a single idea. The more one limits oneself, the closer one is to the infinite; these people, as unworldly as they seem, burrow like termites into their own particular material to construct, in miniature, a strange and utterly individual image of the world.
Only ambition is fired by the coincidences of success and easy accomplishment but nothing is quite as splendidly uplifting to the heart as the defeat of a human being who battles against the invincible superiority of fate. This is always the most grandiose of all tragedies, one sometimes created by a dramatist but created thousands of times by life.
Now I am discovering the world once more. England has widened my horizon.
In history, the moments during which reason and reconciliation prevail are short and fleeting.
Only the person who has experienced light and darkness, war and peace, rise and fall, only that person has truly experienced life.
Memory is so corrupt that you remember only what you want to; if you want to forget about something, slowly but surely you do.
Sometimes it is said that man cannot be trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then be trusted with the government of others? Or have we found angels in the form of kings to govern him? Let history answer this question.
All words, in every language, are metaphors.
Not even the lichen of the tundra is at peace. All is struggle, all is war for dominance. Those who lose, vanish. -And we’re no different you’re saying- We are, soldier. We possess the privilege of choice. The gift of foresight. Though often we come too late in acknowledging responsibilities….
Gods always behave like the people who make them.
Some animals utter a loud cry. Some are silent, and others have a voice, which in some cases may be expressed by a word; in others, it cannot. There are also noisy animals and silent animals, musical and unmusical kinds, but they are mostly noisy about the breeding season.
At times one remains faithful to a cause only because its opponents do not cease to be insipid.
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