Skip to content
quotesby

About this quote

What does it mean?
Swift defines soldiers as mercenaries who kill others without personal offense.
In plain terms
Soldiers are hired to kill people who did nothing wrong.
What can you take from it?
War often involves killing without personal cause.

Where it applies

  • military ethics
  • anti-war debate
  • history

Putting it to work

  • question war motives
  • study military role

Questions to consider

  • Is killing ever justified?
  • What is a soldier's role?

Another view

It ignores defensive war contexts.

More from Jonathan Swift

  1. Poor Nations are hungry, and rich Nations are proud, and Pride and Hunger will ever be at Variance.

    Permalink to quote #62
  2. I told him...that we ate when we were not hungry, and drank without the provocation of thirst.

    Permalink to quote #64
  3. I said the thing which was not. (For they have no word in their language to express lying or falsehood.)

    Permalink to quote #61

Related quotes

  1. Killing Japanese didn't bother me very much at that time... I suppose if I had lost the war, I would have been tried as a war criminal.... Every soldier thinks…

    Curtis LeMayCurtis LeMay quote #4
  2. In thinking about the costs of this war, and thinking about renewing it, we have to reconsider what it has done to America. It has turned the U.S. military int…

    Andrew SullivanAndrew Sullivan quote #5
  3. How do you ask a man to be the last man to die in Vietnam? How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?

    John KerryJohn Kerry quote #1