Something I wanted to share..
what an amazing book..
p111:
‘It seems almost as if to be is to quarrel, or at least to differ, to be in contrast with something else. If so, whoever does not put up a fight has no identity; whoever is not self-ish has no self. Nothing unites a community so much as common cause against an external enemy, yet, in the same moment, that enemy becomes the essential support of social unity. Therefore larger societies require larger enemies, bringing us in due course to the perilous point of our present situation, where the world is virtually divided into two huge camps. But if high officers on both sides have any intelligence at all, they make a secret agreement to contain the conflict: to call each other the worse names, but to refrain from dropping bombs. Or, if they insist that there must be some fighting to keep armies in trim, they restrict it to local conflicts in “unimportant” countries. Voltaire should have said that if the Devil did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him.’
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