# Can Anyone Identify \*This\* Quote? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [August 22, 2000, 2:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-anyone-identify-this-quote/30256 "2000-08-22T02:38:41Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 9\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![BobSchroeck](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/13edae/32.png) [@BobSchroeck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BobSchroeck)\ **Post date:** [August 22, 2000, 2:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-anyone-identify-this-quote/30256/1 "2000-08-22T02:38:41Z")
> [@](#): > > “Beware the honorable man of peace who is forced to war. He will do anything necessary to end the conflict in his favor in order to protect his own and restore the peace.” I want to use this as a chapter heading quote in a piece that I’m writing, but I would really like an attribution for it. It’s not in my Bartlett’s 16th Ed., nor can I find it anywhere on the Web using just about _any_ search engine. I’ve had it in a quote file for years without attribution, and have no memory of where I got it. Can anyone help? Thanks! – Bob ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [August 22, 2000, 3:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-anyone-identify-this-quote/30256/2 "2000-08-22T03:44:52Z")
All I can say, is it sounds like it _might_ be referring to Abraham Lincoln. That might give you some leads… Or it might just be another dead end. ---
**Author:** ![darkcool](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/5f8ce5/32.png) [@darkcool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/darkcool)\ **Post date:** [August 22, 2000, 3:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-anyone-identify-this-quote/30256/3 "2000-08-22T03:58:53Z")
Chronos, Don’t be so modest. Just wolfin’ you. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Sofa\_King](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/58956e/32.png) [@Sofa\_King](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sofa_King)\ **Post date:** [August 22, 2000, 7:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-anyone-identify-this-quote/30256/4 "2000-08-22T07:08:53Z")
Weird. I’m reading Joseph Heller’s _Picture This_ right now, and I swear I read a very similar passage just today. In typical Heller fashion, he attributes it to “Lyndon Johnson, quoting Lincoln and paraphrasing Hitler.” Or something like that. Unfortunately, my book is at work and I’m living the life of an insomniac. I’ll try to find it for you tomorrow. ---
**Author:** ![Sofa\_King](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/58956e/32.png) [@Sofa\_King](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sofa_King)\ **Post date:** [August 22, 2000, 8:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-anyone-identify-this-quote/30256/5 "2000-08-22T20:55:19Z")
\*And it led as well to that prolonged sequence of events in which Athens suffered defeat; the empire was destroyed; the democracy was outlawed and restored; Socrates and Asclepius were tried, found guilty, and executed; Plato wrote his philosophies and started his school; Aristotle came to Athens as a student and departed as a fugitive and was later, during a different war, painted by Rembrandt in Amsterdam contemplating a bust of Homer that was a copy, and, as a consequence of this, as a conclusion to centuries of hazardous travels, and as a matter of verifiable fact, made in 1961 his triumphant passage from the Parke-Bernet Galleries on Madison Avenue and Seventy-seventh Street in the city now called New York to the Metropolitan Museum of Art on Fifth Avenue and Eighty-second Street before John F. Kennedy was shot between the Korean War and the Vietnam War and was succeeded as president of the United States by Lyndon B. Johnson, who, counseled by an inner circle of educated dumbbells associated mainly with Harvard and other prestigious universities, lied to the American people and the American Congress and secretly and deceitfully took the nation openly into a war in Southeast Asia it could not win and did not, persevering obstinately on that destructive course as resolutely as did Pericles when he moved Athens ahead onto her self-destructive course of war with Sparta. **"We make war that we may live in peace," said Lyndon Johnson, quoting Aristotle, who was embarrassed, and paraphrasing Adolf Hitler.** The desire of some men for peace is a frequent cause of war. \*–Joseph Heller, _Picture This_ ---
**Author:** ![DennisKy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/58f4c7/32.png) [@DennisKy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DennisKy)\ **Post date:** [August 23, 2000, 1:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-anyone-identify-this-quote/30256/6 "2000-08-23T01:13:53Z")
Have you tried Sun Tzu’s _The Art of War_ or perhaps Musashi’s _A Book of Five Rings_? ---
**Author:** ![BobSchroeck](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/13edae/32.png) [@BobSchroeck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BobSchroeck)\ **Post date:** [August 23, 2000, 3:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-anyone-identify-this-quote/30256/7 "2000-08-23T03:00:38Z")
Yow. What a mouthful. Doesn’t help me, though. \ Thanks anyway. ---
**Author:** ![BobSchroeck](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/13edae/32.png) [@BobSchroeck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BobSchroeck)\ **Post date:** [August 23, 2000, 3:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-anyone-identify-this-quote/30256/8 "2000-08-23T03:05:41Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by DennisKy \* > \*\*Have you tried Sun Tzu’s _The Art of War_ or perhaps Musashi’s _A Book of Five Rings_? \*\* I admit, it does sound a little like Sun Tzu; fortunately, I have a copy of _The Art of War_ that I will consult right away. I’ll have to find a copy of Musashi, though; I don’t own that one. Thanks! ---
**Author:** ![silent\_rob](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e9a140/32.png) [@silent\_rob](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/silent_rob)\ **Post date:** [August 23, 2000, 3:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-anyone-identify-this-quote/30256/9 "2000-08-23T03:28:53Z")
Perhaps a little Machiovelli? Maybe from _The Prince_? The next sentence could be something like, “So make sure to kill that man right away.” 😉 Seriously though, it could be Machiovelli.