All Elihu Root Quotes
The methods of peace propaganda which aim at establishing peace doctrine by argument and by creating a feeling favorable to peace in general seem to fall short of reaching the springs of human action and of dealing with the causes of the conduct which they seek to modify.
Elihu Root
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Human nature must have come much nearer perfection than it is now, or will be in many generations, to exclude from such a control prejudice, selfishness, ambition, and injustice.
Elihu Root
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The popular tendency is to listen approvingly to the most extreme statements and claims of politicians and orators who seek popularity by declaring their own country right in everything and other countries wrong in everything.
Elihu Root
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The law of the survival of the fittest led inevitably to the survival and predominance of the men who were effective in war and who loved it because they were effective.
Elihu Root
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It is to be observed that every case of war averted is a gain in general, for it helps to form a habit of peace, and community habits long continued become standards of conduct.
Elihu Root
56% of people like this quote
It is not uncommon in modern times to see governments straining every nerve to keep the peace, and the people whom they represent, with patriotic enthusiasm and resentment over real or fancied wrongs, urging them forward to war.
Elihu Root
55% of people like this quote
Nothing is more important in the preservation of peace than to secure among the great mass of the people living under constitutional government a just conception of the rights which their nation has against others and of the duties their nation owes to others.
Elihu Root
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Honest people, mistakenly believing in the justice of their cause, are led to support injustice.
Elihu Root
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The point of departure of the process to which we wish to contribute is the fact that war is the natural reaction of human nature in the savage state, while peace is the result of acquired characteristics.
Elihu Root
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Secretary of War Stanton used to get out of patience with Lincoln because he was all the time pardoning men who ought to be shot.
Elihu Root
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Human life is held in much higher esteem, and the taking of it, whether in private quarrel or by judicial procedure, is looked upon much more seriously than it was formerly.
Elihu Root
52% of people like this quote
Nobody knows through how many thousands of years fighting men have made a place for themselves while the weak and peaceable have gone to the wall.
Elihu Root
52% of people like this quote
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