Your Quote of the Day

Sehr gut, Herr vonHamburg.

If certain acts of violation of treaties are crimes, they are crimes whether the United States does them or whether Germany does them, and we are not prepared to lay down a rule of criminal conduct against others which we would not be willing to have invoked against us.

Robert H Jackson

International Conference on Military Trials, London, 1945, Dept. of State Pub.No. 3080 (1949), p.330.

That's one of the reasons why the Nazis were never prosecuted for bombing major population centres.

That's true, Izzy. From the get go, Jackson's dictum was not followed.

The US took under its wing the worst of the worst trading justice away in exchange for the evil secrets those war criminals possessed.

“One thing is certain: the arts keep you alive. They stimulate, encourage, challenge, and, most of all, guarantee a future free from boredom. They allow growth and even demand it in that time of life we call maturity but too often enter it with a childish faith that what we learned in youth is sustenance enough for the years when most men are mentally famished but won't admit it—or when they are apt to curb their hunger with the sops of complacency, security, and the assurance of death.”
― Vincent Price, I Like What I Know: A Visual Autobiography

Folks here at A2K really have a strong dislike for the truth.

“For me life is continuously being hungry. The meaning of life is not simply to exist, to survive, but to move ahead, to go up, to achieve, to conquer.”
Arnold Schwarzenegger

Yeah right, Arnold. Where is that damn puking emoticon?

The words of Harry Patch, the last WWI veteran (he too is now dead)

The War in Harry Patch's Words
The trenches were about six feet deep, about three feet wide - mud, water, a duckboard if you were lucky. You slept on the firing step, if you could, shells bursting all around you. From the time I went to France - the second week in June 1917 - until I left 23rd December 1917, injured by shellfire, I never had a bath. I never had any clean clothes.

You daren't show above [the trench] otherwise a sniper would have you.

That is another thing with shell shock - I never saw anyone with it, never experienced it - but it seemed you stood at the bottom of the ladder and you just could not move. Shellshock took all the nervous power out of you. An officer would come down and very often shoot them as a coward. That man was no more a coward than you or I. He just could not move. That's shell shock. Towards the end of war they recognised it as an illness. The early part of the war - they didn't. If you were there you were shot.

Rats as big as cats. Anything they could gnaw, they would - to live. ... As you went to sleep, you would cover your face with a blanket and you could hear the damn things run over you.

He was laying there in a pool of blood. As we got to him, he said, 'Shoot me.' He was beyond all human aid. Before we would pull out the revolver to shoot him, he died. ... And when that fellah died, he just said one word: 'Mother.' It wasn't a cry of despair. It was a cry or surprise and joy. I think - although I wasn't allowed to see her - I am sure his mother was in the next world to welcome him. ... And from that day until today - and now I'm nearly 106 years old - I shall always remember that cry and I shall always remember that death is not the end.

[Excerpts above from: Duke of Cornwall's Light Infantry Website ]

“Knowledge is of no value unless you put it into practice.”

anton checkov

“I had to stop him from arresting an old lady who let her dog urinate against the fire hydrant that was in front of Burgerville headquarters.
"You'll blow our cover."
"But what if there is a fire?"
"The fire department will come and put it out," I said.
"With what?"
"Water," I said.
"Not from that hydrant," Monk said. "It's inoperable."
"No, it's not," I said. "It can still be used."
"There is urine all over it," Monk said. "no fireman would dare touch it, nor would any other human being."
"Firefighters run into burning buildings," I said."They aren't going to care about some dog pee on a fire hydrant."
"They would if they knew," Monk said. "We should call and warn them. Call Joe right now. He can get the word out faster than we can."
"Every fire hydrant in the city has dog pee on it, Mr. Monk. It's how dogs mark their territory. I can guarantee you that every male dog that has passed that hydrant has pissed on it."
He looked at me, wide eyed, "No."
"It's what dogs do," I said. "The firefighters knows this."
Monk swallowed hard. "And they still use the hydrants?"
"Of course they do."
"They are the bravest men on earth," Monk said solemnly.”
― Lee Goldberg, Mr. Monk in Outer Space

"Courage is almost a contradiction in terms. It means a strong desire to live taking the form of readiness to die."
G.K. Chesterton

The cur ran into the boy Bill.
G.R.

"I work in whatever medium likes me at the moment."
Marc Chagall

“But people love a hypocrite, you know——they recognize one of their own, and it always feels so good when someone gets caught with his pants down and his dick up and it isn't you.”
― Stephen King, The Green Mile

A poignant reminder for all the gung ho armchair generals out there.

"Children are educated by what the grown-up is and not by his talk."
Carl Jung

“Wine is the most healthful and most hygienic of beverages.”
― Louis Pasteur

Bacon, Francis

Alonso of Aragon was wont to say in commendation of age, that 'age appears to be best in four things - old wood best to burn, old wine to drink, old friends to trust, and old authors to read.