“That the administration of war becomes so routine that its end would be a bureaucratic inconvenience is the precise moment action vanishes, replaced by the mere functioning of a machine.”

“All I know is what I read in the papers, and it appears we've progressed from declaring wars to declaring what they're not, which is a curious form of diplomacy.”

“You are told this conflict is not a spectacle to placate you, yet its continuation serves no reasoned interest of the people who bleed for it.”

“Consider the pilot a fool for fearing the storm, but a greater fool is the man who sends him into it for a trophy.”

“From the markets of Damascus to those of Hamburg, I observe that the guest who is first welcomed and then asked when he will leave is treated not with law but with caprice.”

“It is a most efficient doctrine, this: we must destroy the village in order to save it from being destroyed, and we must be very serious while doing so.”

“You control your judgment of this war, not its jets or its duration, a distinction the anxious mind spends fortunes to obscure.”

“If we define a circle as the set of all points equidistant from a center, then a policy that constantly shifts its rationale describes no geometry at all.”

“Observe how the inherited structures of alliance and enmity, under prolonged stress, produce adaptations in rhetoric that are as specialized and fragile as any beak.”

“A conflict over power dressed in the garments of necessity is a theological error, mistaking the demonstrative realm of cause and effect for the rhetorical realm of persuasion.”

“The statesman's solemn assurance that the slaughter is 'not a show' is, in fact, the precise cue for the booboisie to lean forward in their seats.”

“The spiral of escalation and the vortex of displacement share a structural principle: both draw everything toward a center that cannot hold.”

“A most modest proposal for preserving the dignity of our allies: having invited the stranger in, we should now politely inquire if he finds our hospitality tedious.”

“To declare a war serious is to deny its theatricality, just as declaring women naturally suited for the drawing-room denies their capacity for the council-chamber.”