QuoteProject
No weapon has ever settled a moral problem. It can impose a solution but it cannot guarantee it to be a just one. You can wipe out your opponents. But if you do it unjustly you become eligible for being wiped out yourself.
Ernest Hemingway
ShareWTF𝕏

Interpretation

What this quote means

Moral problems cannot be resolved through force; true justice requires ethical considerations.

Ernest Hemingway's quote suggests that while violence or coercion may provide a temporary solution to conflicts, it does not equate to moral correctness. When one chooses to resolve disputes through unjust actions, they themselves become susceptible to similar treatment, highlighting the cyclical nature of violence and the importance of ethics in conflict resolution.

Themes

MoralityViolenceJusticeConflictEthics

In practice

Example use cases

This quote can be used in a speech about the futility of violence in resolving social issues.

More from Ernest Hemingway

He no longer dreamed of storms, nor of women, nor of great occurrences, nor of great fish, nor fights, nor contests of strength, nor of his wife. He only dreamed of places now and the lions on the beach. They played like young cats in the dusk and he loved them as he loved the boy. He never dreamed about the boy. He simply woke, looked out the open door at the moon and unrolled his trousers and put them on.
Ernest HemingwayRead
How did you go bankrupt?" Two ways. Gradually, then suddenly.
Ernest HemingwayRead
When you have shot one bird flying you have shot all birds flying. They are all different and they fly in different ways but the sensation is the same and the last one is as good as the first.
Ernest HemingwayRead
There is never any ending to Paris and the memory of each person who has lived in it differs from that of any other. We always returned to it no matter who we were or how it was changed or with what difficulties, or ease, it could be reached. Paris was always worth it and you received return for whatever you brought to it. But this is how Paris was in the early days when we were very poor and very happy.
Ernest HemingwayRead
Wine is the most civilized thing in the world.
Ernest HemingwayRead
There is no rule on how to write. Sometimes it comes easily and perfectly; sometimes it's like drilling rock and then blasting it out with charges.
Ernest HemingwayRead

Similar quotes

And in that line now was a whiskered old man, with a linen cap and a crooked nose, who waited in a place called the Stardust Band Shell to share his part of the secret of heaven: that each affects the other and the other affects the next, and the world is full of stories, but the stories are all one.
Mitch AlbomRead
All the evidence that we have indicates that it is reasonable to assume in practically every human being, and certainly in almost every newborn baby, that there is an active will toward health, an impulse towards growth, or towards the actualization.
Abraham MaslowRead
Islam has always been part of America
Barack ObamaRead
When the first living thing existed, I was there waiting. When the last living thing dies, my job will be finished. I'll put the chairs on the tables, turn out the lights and lock the universe behind me when I leave.
Neil GaimanRead
Color is not a human or a personal reality; it is a political reality.
James A. BaldwinRead
In order to understand the interrelation of truth and falsehood in life, a man must understand falsehood in himself, the constant incessant lies he tells himself.
G. I. GurdjieffRead

A little wisdom, now and then

Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.