As I am bored stiff watching 48 thousand static html files to ftp to spam server #3, I would like to don my 'devils advocate' cap and take a couple of shots at a couple of these :
Rome did not create a great empire by having meetings, they did it by killing everyone who got in their way. -anon
Much as I like the sentiment - it isn't exactly true. 'Killing everyone who got in their way' was the failed strategy adopted by most of Rome's enemies.
The Roman Empire survived so long through a series of 'meetings' - they engaged their enemy's enemies as allies and buffer states, and used politics to keep client kingdoms and rogue states at each others throats.
Of course, my corrected version....
Rome did not create a great empire by killing everyone who got in their way immediately, they had lots of meetings to try and persuade other people to do it for them, and only if that failed did it themselves... ermm, most of the time anyway - 4eyes
.... isn't quite as pithy, and is unlikely to catch on.
"George Washington didn't use his right to fr## sp##ch to defeat the British. He shot them."
errrmmm... surely he didn't have a 'right' to fr## sp##ch at that stage? (.... and he wasn't shooting the British.... Brits on both sides, also other colonists, German mercenaries .... yada yada yada).
One could perhaps find more use in the quote (which I just made up)...
Thomas Paine did more to change the world with words than any single man armed with a gun
To be perfectly honest, had I been alive then I would have been on the side of the colonists myself rather than support a country ruled by a mad king who was more German than English and an elite upper class who were mostly descended from Norman French. I'd have been right there with Thomas Paine using as much 'slightly-free' speech as I could to try and get rid of the 'slightly' bit.
(can we get away with politics if it is 18 century politics? I would never advocate killing the Queen now, honest)
I guess my point is that the 'shoot first, ask questions later' quotes are 100% appropriate when hunting deer, but less so when someone spills your drink in the pub.
Not that I am a pacifist, I am perfectly happy with the :
Diplomacy is the art of saying "Nice doggie!"... till you can find a rock.
.. for example.
I was going to write something eloquent that explained why we should not rely on quotations to fill in the gaps in our knowledge, and then I found a good quotation that says it better than I could :
All maxims have their antagonist maxims; proverbs should be sold in pairs, a single one being but a half truth. ~William Mathews
Listen, don't mention the war! I mentioned it once, but I think I got away with it all right. --- Basil Fawlty
