Best Non-WW2 Quotes -Split from best WW2 quotes-

"Damn the torpedoes! Full speed ahead!"

Admiral David G. Farragut

 

"Never interrupt an enemy when he is making a mistake".

Napoleon Bonaparte.

 

"There's two ways to approach your people. You must either befriend them or annihilate them."
- Macchiavelli

 

"If an injury has to be done to a man, it should be so severe that his vengeance need not be feared".
Niccolo Machiavelli

 

It worth noting that this quote doesn't quite mean the same thing as it did then. What they called a torpedoe we would now call a mine

 

That's right, and I should have mentioned it. Thanks, Ebar!

 

This is so very, very, true!!!!!!

 

"Great people, great people, those Germans"
- Charles de Gaulle to Molotov when latter was showing the ruins of Stalingrad




(This could be put to that WW2-quotes too)

 

"It is much better to be feared than loved."
- Machiavelli

 

"When neither their property nor their honour is touched, the majority of men live content".
Niccolo Machiavelli.
This is looking like a Machiavelli's quotes collection. Anyway, he said many truths we should all learn, because as philosophers say, life is creul and unfair.

 

"People grieve shorter over the death of their father than over the loss of their patrimony."
Machiavelli, again... Meaning that you should kill people before you take their lands from them, or never take their lands.

 

Here's a bunch of quotes from a Dutch magazine, quoting "what famous and less famous people have said about the US of A". Just for amusement people; no serious criticism intended.

"Americans don't mind anything as long as it doesn't jam traffic."
-Dan Rather

"America is the only country that went straight from barbarism to decadence, without civilization in between."
-Oscar Wilde

"The discovery of America was great, but it would have been greater if no one had ever found it."
-Mark Twain

"Every American has the right to have a universitary degree, even if it is in Hamburgerology."
-Clive James

"America is like a big friendly dog in a small room. Every time it wags its tail, it knocks over a chair."
-Arnold Toynbee

"What impressed me most about America is the way in which parents obey their children."
-Edward VIII

"Great Britain and the US are two nations separated only by a common language."
-George Bernard Shaw

"Illegal immigrants have always been a problem to America. Ask the Indians for example."
-Robert Orben

"Every third American dedicates himself to the enlightenment and improvement of his fellow citizens, usually by way of violence."
-H.L. Mencken

"America is a big conspiracy aiming to make you happy."
-John Updike

"Of course I'm waving an American flag. Do you know any better flag to wave with?"
-John Wayne

"In America you have freedom of choice, but nothing to choose from."
-Peter Ustinov

"Every American who is prepared to run for presidency should be automatically excluded from it."
-Gore Vidal

"You can be certain that Americans will make all the stupid mistakes you can imagine, plus some mistakes that are beyond your imagination."
-Charles de Gaulle

"Americans will always try to do the right thing, after they've tried everything else."
-Winston Churchill (strikes again! )

 

Field Marshal Ferdinand Foch, supreme commander of Allied forces at the end of the First World War, on being shown the Grand Canyon from an aeroplane, remarked :
" What a marvellous place to drop one's mother in law. "