Any decent person who knows what warfare is can never go into battle with a whole heart.

Good people aren't good because they never cause harm to others. They're good because they treat others the best way they know how, with the understanding that they have.

Nobody ever completely means what they say. Even when they think they're telling the truth, there's always something hidden behind their words.

All the common people want is to be left alone. All the ordinary soldier wants is to collect his pay and not get killed. That's why the great forces of history can be manipulated by astonishingly small groups of determined people.

That was interesting, to find that it wasn't hunger that caused children to become bullies on the street. The bulliness was already in the child, and whatever the stakes were, they would find a way to act as they needed to act. … Intelligence and education, which all these children had, apparently didn't make any important difference in human nature.

So the whole war is because we can't talk to each other.

Maybe we're the fools, for thinking we know things. Maybe humans are the only ones who can deal with the fact that nothing can ever be known at all.