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Any government has as much of a duty to avoid war as a ship's captain has to avoid a shipwreck.

— Guy de Maupassant Sur l’eau (1888)

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Every government has as much of a duty to avoid war as a ship's captain has to avoid a shipwreck.

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More quotes by Guy de Maupassant

In the East men know panic, but they do not know what fright is.

Our memory is a more perfect world than the universe: it gives back life to those who no longer exist.

Legitimized love always despises its easygoing brother.

Boule de Suif (1880)

A legal kiss is never as good as a stolen one.

There is only one good thing in life, and that is love. And how you misunderstand it! how you spoil it! You treat it as something solemn like a sacrament, or something to be bought, like a dress.

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All religions, arts and sciences are branches of the same tree. All these aspirations are directed toward ennobling man's life, lifting it from the sphere of mere physical existence and leading the individual towards freedom.

Albert Einstein Moral Decay (1937)

The last half of the 20th century will seem like a wild party for rich kids, compared to what's coming now.

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Only the dead have seen the end of war.

George Santayana Soliloquies in England and Later Soliloquies (1922)

Wars produce many stories of fiction, some of which are told until they are believed to be true.

Ulysses S. Grant Personal Memoirs of General U. S. Grant (1885)

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Guy de Maupassant (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.