Quote #5

Born enemies don't fight. Nations you would say were designed to go to war against each other--by their skins, their language, their smell: always jealous of each other, always hating each other--they're not the ones who fight. You will find the real antagonists in nations fate has groomed and made ready for the same war.

More from Jean Giraudoux

  1. As soon as war is declared it will be impossible to hold the poets back. Rhyme is still the most effective drum.
  2. There is no better way of exercising the imagination than the study of law. No poet ever interpreted nature as freely as a lawyer interpret…
  3. Everyone always dies for his country. If you have lived in it, well and wisely and actively, you die for it too.
  4. A golf course is the epitome of all that is purely transitory in the universe; a space not to dwell in, but to get over as quickly as possi…
  5. In wartime a man is called a hero. It doesn't make him any braver, and he runs for his life. But at least it's a hero who is running away.
  6. A man has only one way of being immortal on earth: he has to forget he is a mortal.
  7. To win a woman in the first place one must please her, then undress her, and then somehow get her clothes back on her. Finally, so she will…
  8. Education makes us more stupid than the brutes. A thousand voices call to us on every hand, but our ears are stopped with wisdom.

All Jean Giraudoux quotes