Armageddon Quotes

We've searched our database for all the quotes and captions related to Armageddon. Here they are! All 100 of them:

Honestly, if you're given the choice between Armageddon or tea, you don't say 'what kind of tea?
Neil Gaiman
No. Not even in the face of Armageddon. Never compromise.
Alan Moore (Watchmen)
Armageddon was yesterday, today we have a serious problem.
Stieg Larsson (The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (Millennium #1))
As far as her mom was concerned, tea fixed everything. Have a cold? Have some tea. Broken bones? There's a tea for that too. Somewhere in her mother's pantry, Laurel suspected, was a box of tea that said, 'In case of Armageddon, steep three to five minutes'.
Aprilynne Pike (Illusions (Wings, #3))
Are you ready for nuclear Armageddon?
Michael Parker (The Devil's Trinity)
Don't wake me for the end of the world unless it has very good special effects.
Roger Zelazny (Prince of Chaos (The Chronicles of Amber, #10))
When Paris Hilton can top the bestsellers' lists, we are one more Connect Four move closer to Armageddon.
Corey Taylor (Seven Deadly Sins: Settling the Argument Between Born Bad and Damaged Good)
Its not over, until the Lord says its over.
T.D. Jakes
Never tell anyone to be careful, never ask what that noise was, and for the love of God, never, ever say that you'll be right back." —Evelyn Baker
Seanan McGuire (Discount Armageddon (InCryptid, #1))
What if nobody showed up at Armageddon?
C.R. Strahan
The problem with people who say monsters don't really exist is that they're almost never saying it to the monsters." —Alice Healy
Seanan McGuire (Discount Armageddon (InCryptid, #1))
Yeah, Vi, unless Armageddon hit while i was fuckin' you this morning and we missed it, I'm thinkin' grocery stores still exist and they're all still stocked.
Kristen Ashley (At Peace (The 'Burg, #2))
There's no such thing as a normal life. Some lives are just more interesting than others, and we shouldn't judge people for being boring. —Evelyn Price
Seanan McGuire (Discount Armageddon (InCryptid, #1))
When she cried, he would say, "there is nothing wrong with crying. Your feelings tell you who are. They tell what is important. Don't ever be ashamed of them.
Terry Brooks (Armageddon's Children (Genesis of Shannara, #1))
But that's how it goes; you think you're on top of the world, and suddenly they spring Armageddon on you.
Neil Gaiman (Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch)
My advice to writers just starting out? Don't use semi-colons! They are transvestite hermaphrodites, representing exactly nothing. All they do is suggest you might have gone to college.
Kurt Vonnegut Jr. (Armageddon in Retrospect)
Armageddon is not around the corner. This is only what the people of violence want us to believe. The complexity and diversity of the world is the hope for the future.
Michael Palin
We all make mistakes. Luckily for us, there are very few mistakes that cant be solved with a suitable application of either lipstick or hand grenades" —Frances Brown
Seanan McGuire (Discount Armageddon (InCryptid, #1))
..She had that brand of pragmatism that would find her the first brewing tea after Armageddon.
Clive Barker (Weaveworld)
The world is a goddamned evil place, the strong prey on the weak, the rich on the poor; I’ve given up hope that there is a God that will save us all. How am I supposed to believe that there’s a heaven and a hell when all I see now is hell.
Aaron B. Powell (Doomsday Diaries III: Luke the Protector)
Crazy gets all the knives.
Seanan McGuire (Discount Armageddon (InCryptid, #1))
Never compromise. Not even in the face of Armageddon.
Alan Moore (Watchmen)
Yes It could happen any time, tornado, earthquake, Armageddon. It could happen. Or sunshine, love, salvation. It could, you know. That's why we wake and look out - no guarantees in this life. But some bonuses, like morning, like right now, like noon, like evening.
William Stafford
That was the big cure-all with these people, wasn’t it? Girl got you down? Get laid. No money? Get laid. Armageddon ensuing? Get laid a lot.
Cherrie Lynn (Rock Me (Ross Siblings, #2))
You know your life is shit when you’re handwashing baby bottles, praying for Armageddon.
Colleen Hoover (Regretting You)
And starward drifts the stricken world, Lone in unalterable gloom Dead, with a universe for tomb, Dark, and to vaster darkness whirled. (“The Testimony of the Suns”)
George Sterling (The Thirst of Satan: Poems of Fantasy and Terror)
Apocalypse does not point to a fiery Armageddon but to the fact that our ignorance and our complacency are coming to an end… The exclusivism of there being only one way in which we can be saved, the idea that there is a single religious group that is in sole possession of the truth—that is the world as we know it that must pass away. What is the kingdom? It lies in our realization of the ubiquity of the divine presence in our neighbors, in our enemies, in all of us.
Joseph Campbell (Thou Art That: Transforming Religious Metaphor)
Bringing about Armageddon can be dangerous. Do not attempt it in your own home.
Terry Pratchett
What would you pack for Armageddon? Sunscreen and shades? Flame-proof underwear? Maybe a travel guide to the Underworld?
Jana Oliver (Forgiven (The Demon Trappers, #3))
Have you ever thought what a God would be like who actually ordained and executed the cruelty that is in [the biblical Book of Revelation]? A holocaust of mankind. Yet so many of these Bible-men accept the idea without a second thought.
C.J. Sansom (Revelation (Matthew Shardlake, #4))
The thing I want to know is, if you tell your brain not to do stuff... and it keeps doing it anyway, does that mean your mind has a mind of its own? And if it does, then who's in charge here, anyway?
Jane Yolen (Armageddon Summer)
When Armageddon takes place, parking is going to be a major problem.
J.G. Ballard (Millennium People)
Why is it that every so often history demands a bloodbath, a holocaust, an Armageddon? And why is it that every time the time before has taught us nothing?
Graham Swift (Waterland)
Mother Nature is a freaky lady who probably created pot so she could spend all her time smoking it.
Seanan McGuire (Discount Armageddon (InCryptid, #1))
If it should happen you wake up and Armageddon has come, lie still.
William Stafford (Every War Has Two Losers: William Stafford on Peace and War)
I was learning that people are, on the whole, more at ease believing in vampires or aliens than vengeful angels intent on a biblical Armageddon. Yes, we are naïve by choice.
Jessica Shirvington (Enticed (The Violet Eden Chapters, #2))
No amount of expertly choreographed PR could prevail, in the end, against Armageddon. It strolled over the barricades and took its pleasure.
M.R. Carey (The Girl with All the Gifts (The Girl With All the Gifts, #1))
Didn't we talk about this?" "HAIL!" "That isn't an answer." I planted my hands on my hips. "Was there a reason for shoving the gummy bears off the counter? Did they tell you they were suicidal? On second thought," I raised a hand, palm out, "don't answer that. If the candy is talking, I don't want to know.
Seanan McGuire (Discount Armageddon (InCryptid, #1))
Nite-Owl: Rorschach...? Rorschach, wait! Where are you going? This is too big to be hard-assed about! We have to compromise! Rorschach: No. Not even in the face of Armageddon. Never compromise.
Alan Moore (Watchmen)
The Argentine tango isn't here to play nicely with the other children. The Argentine tango is here to seduce your women, spill things on your rug, and sneak out your bedroom window in the middle of the night.
Seanan McGuire (Discount Armageddon (InCryptid, #1))
If she’s so important, why aren’t you here guarding her? (Wulf) Mostly because this ain’t Buffy and there’s not one single Hellmouth to guard. I’m up to my armpits in Armageddon down here in New Orleans and not even I can physically be in two places at once. (Acheron)
Sherrilyn Kenyon (Kiss of the Night (Dark-Hunter, #4))
Nothing lasts forever. That's the tragedy and the miracle of existence—that everything is impermanent. Everything changes. All we can do is make the best of the time we have. And go down shooting, naturally. —Enid Healy
Seanan McGuire (Discount Armageddon (InCryptid, #1))
A proper lady should be able to smile pretty, wear sequins like she means it, and kick a man's ass nine ways from Sunday while wearing stiletto heels. If she can't do that much, she's not trying hard enough. —Francis Brown
Seanan McGuire (Discount Armageddon (InCryptid, #1))
I really don’t think you should put your hand inside the manticore, dear. You don’t know where it’s been. —Enid Healy
Seanan McGuire (Discount Armageddon (InCryptid, #1))
Pronouns are only useful when you combine them with other words. I have a few I can give you, if you're at a loss.
Seanan McGuire (Discount Armageddon (InCryptid, #1))
The hugest changes were the ones that could not be seen – that’s where the real apocalypse lay: in people’s hearts, their souls, their beings.
Dianna Hardy (The Last Dragon)
Also, we will make promise. So long as The Blood endures, I shall know that your good is mine: ye shall feel that my strength is yours: In the day of Armageddon, at the last great fight of all, That Our House stand together and the pillars do not fall.
Rudyard Kipling
Mayhem now, please.
Seanan McGuire (Discount Armageddon (InCryptid, #1))
ya better come inside when you're ready to but no chance if ya don't wanna dance you like four letter words when you're ready to but then you won't 'cos you know that you can
Def Leppard
There was nothing else to do but call upon the Creator, praying, begging, pleading, bargaining—anything to make him protect Xavier. I couldn’t have him ripped away from me like that. I could survive emotional turmoil; I could survive the most intense physical torture. I could survive Armageddon and holy fire raining down upon the earth, but I could not survive without him.
Alexandra Adornetto (Hades (Halo, #2))
Red Rover, Red Rover, send Ardor right over," Eliza said. They laughed. The asteroid was a little bigger now, brighter, and still they went on laughing. Laughing in the face of what they couldn't predict or change or control. Would it be fire and brimstone? Would it be Armageddon? Or would it be a second chance? Eliza held tight to her friends, laughing, and a pair of hands land soft as feathers on her shoulders, like the hands of a ghost, laughing and laughing as Ardor swept along its fated course, laughing and through that laughter, praying. Praying for forgiveness. Praying for grace. Praying for mercy. 0
Tommy Wallach (We All Looked Up)
Even as I speak, the very last polar bear may be dying of hunger on account of climate change, on account of us. And I sure miss the polar bears. Their babies are so warm and cuddly and trusting, just like ours.
Kurt Vonnegut Jr. (Armageddon in Retrospect)
It is love and reason,' I said,'fleeing from all the madness of war.
H.G. Wells (A Dream of Armageddon)
The most radical, audacious thing to think is that there might be some point to working hard and thinking hard and reading hard and writing hard and trying to be of service
Kurt Vonnegut Jr. (Armageddon in Retrospect)
Reading and writing are in themselves subversive acts. What they subvert is the notion that things have to be the way they are, that you are alone, that no one has ever felt the way you have.
Kurt Vonnegut Jr. (Armageddon in Retrospect)
Soon there will be war. Millions will burn. Millions will perish in sickness and misery. Why does one death matter against so many? Because there is good and there is evil, and evil must be punished. Even in the face of Armageddon I shall not compromise in this. But there are so many deserving of retribution ... and there is so little time.
Alan Moore (Watchmen)
Anyone who thinks cryptozoology is the study of the impossible has never really taken a very good look at the so-called "natural world." Once you get past the megamouth sharks, naked mole rats, and spotted hyenas, then the basilisks, dragons, and cuckoos just don't seem that unreasonable. Unpleasant, yes, but unreasonable? Not really.
Seanan McGuire (Discount Armageddon (InCryptid, #1))
Never a good sign, he thought, when the crows showed up.
Justin Cronin (The Twelve (The Passage, #2))
Do we have to have the 'don't lie to the telepath' talk again? It won't take long. I say 'don't lie to the telepath, it never works,' you glare at me, and then you go find something you can hit.
Seanan McGuire (Discount Armageddon (InCryptid, #1))
What they didn't want to believe, what they tried repeatedly to dismiss, was that whatever good and evil existed in the world came from within themselves and not from some abstract source.
Terry Brooks (Armageddon's Children (Genesis of Shannara, #1))
The reason that 'guru' is such a popular word is because 'charlatan' is so hard to spell.
William J. Bernstein (The Investor's Manifesto: Preparing for Prosperity, Armageddon, and Everything in Between)
What silence rules the ghostly hours That guard the close of human sleep! (“The Testimony of the Suns”)
George Sterling (The Thirst of Satan: Poems of Fantasy and Terror)
Growing up in my family meant ambushes on your birthday, crossbows for Christmas, and games of dodge ball where the balls were occasionally rigged to explode. It also meant learning how to work your way out of a wide variety of death traps. Failure to get loose on your own could lead to missing dinner, or worse, being forced to admit that you missed dinner because your baby sister had tied you to the couch. Again.
Seanan McGuire (Discount Armageddon (InCryptid, #1))
The children of the nuclear age, I think, were weakened in their capacity to love. Hard to love, when you're bracing yourself for impact. Hard to love, when the loved one, and the lover, might at any instant become blood and flames, along with everybody else.
Martin Amis (Experience: A Memoir)
The very best thing you can be in life is a teacher, provided you are crazy in love with what you teach, and that your classes consist of eighteen students or fewer. Classes of eighteen students or fewer are a family, and feel and act like one.
Kurt Vonnegut Jr. (Armageddon in Retrospect)
Life as the chosen religious figure for a colony of cryptid mice can be a lot of things, but it's definitely never boring.
Seanan McGuire (Discount Armageddon (InCryptid, #1))
I think you talk big,” said Pleasant. “I think you talk about death like it’s your friend. But if you really want to get acquainted, we can help you with that.
Derek Landy (Armageddon Outta Here (Skulduggery Pleasant, #8.5))
I mean, you're right about the fire and war, all that. But that Rapture stuff--well, if you could see them all in Heaven--serried ranks of them as far as the mind can follow and beyond, league after league of us, flaming swords, all that, well, what I'm trying to say is who has time to go round picking people out and popping them up in the air to sneer at the people dying of radiation sickness on the parched and burning earth below them? If that's your idea of a morally acceptable time, I might add.
Terry Pratchett (Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch)
Alternative Anthem. Put the kettle on Put the kettle on It is the British answer to Armageddon. Never mind taxes rise Never mind trains are late One thing you can be sure of and that’s the kettle, mate. It’s not whether you lose It’s not whether you win It’s whether or not you’ve plugged the kettle in. May the kettle ever hiss May the kettle ever steam It is the engine that drives our nation’s dream. Long live the kettle that rules over us May it be limescale free and may it never rust. Sing it on the beaches Sing it from the housetops The sun may set on empire but the kettle never stops.
John Agard (Alternative Anthem: Selected Poems (with DVD))
He had also gone through a bad divorce, become estranged from his only daughter and been diagnosed with skin cancer, but he insisted that all of that, however painful, was secondary to the sudden realization that it was mathematics—not nuclear weapons, computers, biological warfare or our climate Armageddon—which was changing our world to the point where, in a couple of decades at most, we would simply not be able to grasp what being human really meant.
Benjamín Labatut (When We Cease to Understand the World)
You know how it is: as soon as you decide to forget something, your brain comes to the conclusion that it's the most fascinating thing in the world.
Jane Yolen (Armageddon Summer)
If we cannot find our way to a time when most of us are willing to admit that, at the very least, we are not sure whether or not God wrote some of our books, then we need only count the days to Armageddon—because God has given us far many more reasons to kill one another than to turn the other cheek.
Sam Harris
When you decide to be the immovable object standing in front of the unstoppable force, you'd better pray that you're right about being immovable, and they're wrong about being unstoppable.' 'Otherwise, you'll wind up like a bug on a windshield.
Seanan McGuire (Discount Armageddon (InCryptid, #1))
If you offered me the chance to do it all over, knowing what I know now, after the things I’ve seen . . . I’d shoot you in the head. That ain’t the kind of thing you ask a lady. —Frances Brown
Seanan McGuire (Discount Armageddon (InCryptid, #1))
He often said he had to be a writer because he wasn't good at anything else. He was not good at being an employee. Back in the mid-1950's, he was employed for Sports Illustrated, briefly. He reported back to work, was asked to write a short piece on a racehorse that jumped over a fence and tried to run away. Kurt stared at the blank piece of paper all morning and then typed, "The horse jumped over the fucking fence," and walked out, self-employed again.
Kurt Vonnegut Jr. (Armageddon in Retrospect)
Telepaths have ethics?" Dominic's eyes narrowed, tone and posture united to convey disbelief. "My mother and I do," said Sarah, letting her head settle against the back of the chair. "We mostly got them from Babylon 5, but they still work.
Seanan McGuire (Discount Armageddon (InCryptid, #1))
And somebody might now want to ask me, "Can't you ever be serious?" The answer is, "No.
Kurt Vonnegut Jr. (Armageddon in Retrospect)
Trebali smo promijeniti svijet,zar ne?Sranje.Umjesto toga svijet je promijenio nas.
George R.R. Martin (The Armageddon Rag)
I think this is irresponsible preaching and very dangerous, and especially when it is slanted toward children, I think it's totally irresponsible, because I see nothing biblical that points up to our being in the last days, and I just think it's an outrageous thing to do, and a lot of people are making a living—they've been making a living for 2,000 years—preaching that we're in the last days.
Charles M. Schulz (Charles M. Schulz: Conversations (Conversations with Comic Artists Series))
And how should we behave during this Apocalypse? We should be unusually kind to one another, certainly. But we should also stop being so serious. Jokes help a lot. And get a dog, if you don't already have one.
Kurt Vonnegut Jr. (Armageddon in Retrospect)
And what gift of America to the rest of the world is actually most appreciated by the rest of the world? It is African American jazz and its offshoots. What is my definition of jazz? "Safe sex of the highest order.
Kurt Vonnegut Jr. (Armageddon in Retrospect)
We're Human beings with the blood of a million savage years on our hands, but we can stop it. We can admit that we're killers, but we're not going to kill, today. That's all it takes. Knowing that we won't kill, today.
Robert Hamner (A Taste of Armageddon (Star Trek Fotonovel #4))
First, check your ammunition. Then, check your escape routes. Finally, check your hair. —Frances Brown
Seanan McGuire (Discount Armageddon (InCryptid, #1))
We accepted their congratulations with good grace and proper modesty, but I felt then as I feel now, that I would have given my life to save Dresden for the world’s generations to come. That is how everyone should feel about every city on earth.
Kurt Vonnegut Jr. (Armageddon in Retrospect)
Hello carnivore,' said the mouse priest. He turned and bowed to Uncle Mike and Dominic. 'Hail to the High Priest of Goddammit Eat Something Already, and to the God of Hard Choices in Dark Places.' Ryan blinked. 'What?' 'It's a mouse thing, just roll with it, you'll be happier that way,' I advised.
Seanan McGuire (Discount Armageddon (InCryptid, #1))
Sarah turned her narrow-eyed gaze on him, making me glad once more that Antimony's comic books got it wrong, and telepaths can't actually kill you with their brains. Give you a whopping headache and earworm you with annoying jingles, yes; kill you, no. (Although sometimes, when she's managed to stick "The Happy Banana Song" in my head for a week, I sort of wish she could kill people with her brain. It would be kinder.)
Seanan McGuire (Discount Armageddon (InCryptid, #1))
Humanity was heaved back to the paper age in half a second. Life-support systems spat out bolts of energy and died. Precious manuscripts were lost. Banks collapsed as all financial records for the past fifty years were completely wiped out. Planes fell from the sky, the Graum II space station drifted off into space, and defense satellites that were not supposed to exist stopped existing. People took to the streets, shouting into their dead cell phones as if volume could reactivate them. Looting spread across countries like a computer virus while actual computer viruses died with their hosts, and credit cards became mere rectangles of plastic. Parliaments were stormed worldwide as citizens blamed their governments for this series of inexplicable catastrophes. Gouts of fire and foul blurts of actual brimstone emerged from cracks in the earth. These were mostly from ruptured pipes, but people took up a cry of Armageddon. Chaos reigned, and the survivalists eagerly unwrapped the kidskin from their crossbows.
Eoin Colfer (The Last Guardian (Artemis Fowl, #8))
Zombies are not just fictional creatures that devour the flesh of the living. They also include those who follow the words of others without thinking for themselves. This world is falling apart. I don’t think anyone can disagree with that. People live in their twenty-mile-radius realities and don’t notice the world happening around them, until it finally breaks down their front door.
Joseph McGinnis (The Weathering, Dawn of the Apocalypse)
Of course, he was in favor of Armageddon in general terms. If anyone had asked him why he'd been spending centuries tinkering in the affairs of mankind he'd have said, "Oh, in order to bring about Armageddon and the triumph of Hell." But it was one thing to work to bring it about, and quite another for it to actually happen. Crowley had always known that he would be around when the world ended, because he was immortal and wouldn't have any alternative. But he'd hoped it would be a long way off. Because he rather liked people. It was a major failing in a demon. Oh, he did his best to make their short lives miserable, because that was his job, but nothing he could think up was half as bad as the stuff they thought up themselves. They seemed to have a talent for it. It was built into the design, somehow. They were born into a world that was against them in a thousand little ways, and then devoted most of their energies to making it worse. Over the years Crowley had found it increasingly difficult to find anything demonic to do which showed up against the natural background of generalized nastiness. There had been times, over the past millenium, when he'd felt like sending a message back Below saying, Look, we may as well give up right now, we might as well shut down Dis and Pandemonium and everywhere and move up here, there's nothing we can do to them that they don't do to themselves and they do things we've never even though of, often involving electrodes. They've got what we lack. They've got imagination. And electricity, of course.
Terry Pratchett (Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch)
She’s a telepath?” demanded Dominic. “And he catches up with the conversation.” I patted his knee. “Yes, she’s a telepath. Sarah reads minds. Don’t worry, she’s not reading yours.” “It would be rude,” said Sarah. Putting her phone down, she began arranging herself carefully in the chair. “Telepathic ethics say you should never read a sentient creature’s mind without permission, provocation, or legitimate reason to fear for your life.” “Telepaths have ethics?” Dominic’s eyes narrowed, tone and posture united to convey his disbelief. “My mother and I do,” said Sarah, letting her head settle against the back of the chair. “We mostly got them from Babylon 5, but they still work.
Seanan McGuire (Discount Armageddon (InCryptid, #1))
Paganism has no fixed creeds or dogmas, no self-proclaimed gurus or prophets, no holy books or saviours. Earth Herself is our teacher. Pagans, like all, natural peoples, desire to live in harmony with Earth and see all Her manifestations, whether animal, plant, insect, rock or mountain, or, as Native Americans say, four-legged, two-legged, crawling and flying, as our relations and as ensouled.
Monica Sjöö (Return of the Dark/Light Mother or New Age Armageddon? Towards a Feminist Vision of the Future)
Helen?" Not Helen of -?" "Ten years the Trojan War raged. No god was spared. No hero. No Amazon. So it will be if Alia is allowed to live. She is haptandra. Where she goes, there will be strife. With each breath, she draws us closer to Armageddon." "But it was Helen's beauty that caused the war." The Oracle cut a dismissive hand through the air and the torches flickered. "Who tells those stories? Tales of vengeful goddesses who wager in human lives for vanity's sake? Of course men believed a wonam's power must lie in the fineness of her features, the shapeliness of her limbs. You know better, Daughter of Earth. Helen's blood carried in it war, and in her seventeenth year, those powers reached their peak. So it was with every Warbringer. So it will be will Alia. You have seen it in the waters.
Leigh Bardugo (Wonder Woman: Warbringer)
Today the guns are silent. A great tragedy has ended. A great victory has been won... A new era is upon us. Even the lesson of victory itself brings with it profound concern, both for our future security and the survival of civilization. The destructiveness of the war potential, through progressive advances in scientific discovery, has in fact now reached a point which revises the traditional concepts of war. Men since the beginning of time have sought peace... Military alliances, balances of power, leagues of nations, all in turn have failed, leaving the only path to be by way of the crucible of war. We have had our last chance. If we do not now devise some greater and more equitable system, Armageddon will be at our door. The problem basically is theological and involves a spiritual recrudescence and improvement of human character that will synchronize with our matchless advances in science, art, literature and all material and cultural developments of the past two thousand years. It must be of the spirit if we are to save the flesh.
Douglas MacArthur
Abraham Lincoln, a predecessor of Barack Obama in both the White House and the Illinois state legislature, had eighteen months of formal education and became a soldier, surveyor, postmaster, rail-splitter, tavern keeper, and self-taught prairie lawyer. Obama went to Occidental College, Columbia University, and Harvard Law School, and became a "community organizer." I'm not sure that's progress--and it's certainly not "sustainable.
Mark Steyn (After America: Get Ready for Armageddon)
Long before it was known to me as a place where my ancestry was even remotely involved, the idea of a state for Jews (or a Jewish state; not quite the same thing, as I failed at first to see) had been 'sold' to me as an essentially secular and democratic one. The idea was a haven for the persecuted and the survivors, a democracy in a region where the idea was poorly understood, and a place where—as Philip Roth had put it in a one-handed novel that I read when I was about nineteen—even the traffic cops and soldiers were Jews. This, like the other emphases of that novel, I could grasp. Indeed, my first visit was sponsored by a group in London called the Friends of Israel. They offered to pay my expenses, that is, if on my return I would come and speak to one of their meetings. I still haven't submitted that expenses claim. The misgivings I had were of two types, both of them ineradicable. The first and the simplest was the encounter with everyday injustice: by all means the traffic cops were Jews but so, it turned out, were the colonists and ethnic cleansers and even the torturers. It was Jewish leftist friends who insisted that I go and see towns and villages under occupation, and sit down with Palestinian Arabs who were living under house arrest—if they were lucky—or who were squatting in the ruins of their demolished homes if they were less fortunate. In Ramallah I spent the day with the beguiling Raimonda Tawil, confined to her home for committing no known crime save that of expressing her opinions. (For some reason, what I most remember is a sudden exclamation from her very restrained and respectable husband, a manager of the local bank: 'I would prefer living under a Bedouin muktar to another day of Israeli rule!' He had obviously spent some time thinking about the most revolting possible Arab alternative.) In Jerusalem I visited the Tutungi family, who could produce title deeds going back generations but who were being evicted from their apartment in the old city to make way for an expansion of the Jewish quarter. Jerusalem: that place of blood since remote antiquity. Jerusalem, over which the British and French and Russians had fought a foul war in the Crimea, and in the mid-nineteenth century, on the matter of which Christian Church could command the keys to some 'holy sepulcher.' Jerusalem, where the anti-Semite Balfour had tried to bribe the Jews with the territory of another people in order to seduce them from Bolshevism and continue the diplomacy of the Great War. Jerusalem: that pest-house in whose environs all zealots hope that an even greater and final war can be provoked. It certainly made a warped appeal to my sense of history.
Christopher Hitchens (Hitch 22: A Memoir)
Freedom is messy. In free societies, people will fall through the cracks--drink too much, eat too much, buy unaffordable homes, fail to make prudent provision for health care, and much else. But the price of being relieved of all those tiresome choices by a benign paternal government is far too high. Big Government is the small option: it's the guarantee of smaller freedom, smaller homes, smaller cars, smaller opportunities, smaller lives.
Mark Steyn (After America: Get Ready for Armageddon)
As the night air started to creep in, he lifted her in his arms and walked the back way to their home on campus. He spent the evening digging her grave, not even caring who came his way. He didn’t care whether he lived or died, now that he had lost his only love. Mike glanced into her face one more time, and then covered her with dirt. “We bury our own. We take care of the ones we love.” He spoke softly, then placed a flower on her grave and made his way back to their dorm room.
Joseph McGinnis (The Weathering, Dawn of the Apocalypse)
In this second Randy made an important decision. Yesterday, he would have stopped instantly. There would have been no question about it. When there was an accident, and someone was hurt, a man stopped. But yesterday was a past period in history, with laws and rules as archaic as ancient Rome's. Today the rules had changed, just as Roman law gave way to atavistic barbarism as the empire fell to Hun and Goth. Today a man saved himself and his family and to hell with everyone else. Already millions must be dead and other millions maimed, or doomed by radiation . . . And the war was less than a half hour old. So one stranger on the roadside meant nothing, particularly with a blinded child, his blood kin, depending on his mission. With the use of the hydrogen bomb, the Christian era was dead, and with it must die the tradition of the Good Samaritan.
Pat Frank (Alas, Babylon (Perennial Classics))
In July, 1950, one news commentator rather plaintively remarked that warfare had not changed so much, after all. For some reason, ground troops still seemed to be necessary, in spite of the atom bomb. And oddly and unfortunately, to this gentleman, man still seemed to be an important ingredient in battle. Troops were still getting killed, in pain and fury and dust and filth. What happened to the widely-heralded pushbutton warfare where skilled, immaculate technicians who never suffered the misery and ignominy of basic training blew each other to kingdom come like gentlemen? In this unconsciously plaintive cry lies the buried a great deal of the truth why the United States was almost defeated. Nothing had happened to pushbutton warfare; its emergence was at hand. Horrible weapons that could destroy every city on Earth were at hand—at too many hands. But, pushbutton warfare meant Armageddon, and Armageddon, hopefully, will never be an end of national policy. Americans in 1950 rediscovered something that since Hiroshima they had forgotten: you may fly over a land forever; you may bomb it, atomize it, pulverize it and wipe it clean of life—but if you desire to defend it, protect it and keep it for civilization, you must do this on the ground, the way the Roman legions did, by putting your young men in the mud.
T.R. Fehrenbach
That’s the thing about the collapse of civilization, Blake. It never happens according to plan – there’s no slavering horde of zombies. No actinic flash of thermonuclear war. No Earth-shuddering asteroid. The end comes in unforeseen ways; the stock market collapses, and then the banks, and then there is no food in the supermarkets, or the communications system goes down completely and inevitably, and previously amiable co-workers find themselves wrestling over the last remaining cookie that someone brought in before all the madness began.
Mark A. Rayner (The Fridgularity)