more from this thinker | more from this text
Full Idea
Your desire to extend your territory by war, in order to bring peace, is like looking for fish by climbing a tree.
Gist of Idea
Seeking peace through war is like looking for fish up a tree
Source
Mengzi (Mencius) (The Mengzi (Mencius) [c.332 BCE], 1.A.7)
Book Ref
Mencius: 'Mencius', ed/tr. Lau,D.C. [Penguin 1970], p.57
A Reaction
Mencius had a flair for analogies. Just occasionally I suppose he might be wrong on this point, but I would think that experiments in the laboratory of history have shown that he is right in nearly all cases.
| 23401 | A military victory is not a thing of beauty [Laozi (Lao Tzu)] |
| 8238 | Seeking peace through war is like looking for fish up a tree [Mengzi (Mencius)] |
| 19783 | A state of war remains after a conquest, if the losers don't accept the winners [Rousseau] |
| 21074 | Some trust in the enemy is needed during wartime, or peace would be impossible [Kant] |
| 24100 | If you don't want war, remove your borders; but you set up borders because you want war [Nietzsche] |
| 23858 | War is perpetuated by its continual preparations [Weil] |
| 23592 | We can only lead war towards peace if we firmly enforce the rules of war [Walzer] |
| 23618 | Unconditional surrender can't be demanded, since evil losers still have legitimate conditions [McMahan] |
| 20691 | Real peace is the implausibility of war (and not just its absence) [Harari] |