38 Neutrality Quotes

Topography displays no favorites; North's as near as West. More delicate than the historians' are the map-makers' colors.

You cannot have power for good without having power for evil too. Even mother's milk nourishes murderers as well as heroes.

Standing in the middle of the road is very dangerous; you get knocked down by the traffic from both sides.

The doctor should be opaque to his patients and, like a mirror, should show them nothing but what is shown to him.

Science does not have a moral dimension. It is like a knife. If you give it to a surgeon or a murderer, each will use it differently.

The perfect way is only difficult for those who pick and choose. Do not like, do not dislike; all will then be clear. Make a hairbreadth difference and heaven and earth are set apart; if you want the truth to stand clear before you, never be for or against. The struggle between 'for' and 'against' is the mind's worst disease.

It was an axiom of 'containment' that no part of the known world could be considered neutral. 'Neutralism' was among the Cold Warriors' gravest curse words, applied with caustic hostility to India and even France. Those who were not with were against, subjected to intense economic and ideological - and sometimes military - pressure to fall into line.

I am bound by my own definition of criticism: a disinterested endeavour to learn and propagate the best that is known and thought in the world.

The great rule of conduct for us, in regard to foreign nations, is, in extending our commercial relations, to have with them as little political connexion as possible. So far as we have already formed engagements, let them be fulfilled with perfect good faith. Here let us stop.

The duty of holding a neutral conduct may be inferred, without any thing more, from the obligation which justice and humanity impose on every nation, in cases in which it is free to act, to maintain inviolate the relations of peace and amity towards other nations.

The after-silence, when the feast is o'er, And void the places where the minstrels stood, Differs in nought from what hath been before, And is nor ill nor good.

But I have been sought out, as each individual has been sought out. Artists of the past could at least keep silent in the face of tyranny. The tyrannies of today are improved; they no longer admit of silence or neutrality. One has to take a stand, be either for or against. Well, in that case, I am against.

I've never done good things I've never done bad things I never did anything out of the blue.

He is interested in the feelings of the squash ball, and of the champagne bottle that launches the ship. In a football match his sympathy is not with either of the teams but with the ball, or, in a match ending nil-nil, with the hunger of the goalmouth.

When one thinks of the cruelty, squalor, and futility of War - and in this particular case of the intrigues, the persecutions, the lies and the misunderstandings - there is always the temptation to say: 'One side is as bad as the other. I am neutral'. In practice, however, one cannot be neutral, and there is hardly such a thing as a war in which it makes no difference who wins.

Even after he had completely abjured violence he was honest enough to see that in war it is usually necessary to take sides. He did not - indeed, since his whole political life centred round a struggle for national independence, he could not - take the sterile and dishonest line of pretending that in every war both sides are exactly the same and it makes no difference who wins.

This is what economics now does. It tells the young and susceptible (and also the old and vulnerable) that economic life has no content of power and politics because the firm is safely subordinate to the market and the state and for this reason it is safely at the command of the consumer and citizen. Such an economics is not neutral. It is the influential and invaluable ally of those whose exercise of power depends on an acquiescent public. If the state is the executive committee of the great corporation and the planning system, it is partly because neoclassical economics is its instrument for neutralizing the suspicion that this is so.

Io sono un militare e non so nulla di correnti politiche.

We had no shape Because he never took sides; And no sides Because he never allowed them to take shape.

The rights of neutrality will only be respected, when they are defended by an adequate power. A nation, despicable by its weakness, forfeits even the privilege of being neutral.

Even to observe neutrality you must have a strong government.

What, then, was that policy? It was a policy of conditional neutrality. Under the circumstances of the case we did not believe that it was for the honour or interest of England or Turkey that we should take any part in the impending contest; but while we enforced the neutrality which we prepared to observe, we declared at the same time that that neutrality must cease if British interests were assailed or menaced. Cosmopolitan critics, men who are the friends of every country save their own, have denounced this policy as a selfish policy. My Lord Mayor, it is as selfish as patriotism.

Sooner or later...one has to take sides - if one is to remain human.

No historian can take part with- or against- the forces he has to study. To him even the extinction of the human race should merely be a fact to be grouped with other vital statistics.

To avoid entangling alliances has been a maxim of our policy ever since the days of Washington, and its wisdom no one will attempt to dispute.

In the wars of the European powers in matters relating to themselves we have never taken any part, nor does it comport with our policy so to do.

I will give everything from myself to make sure that Yugoslavia is great, not just geographically but great in spirit, and that it hold firmly to its neutrality and sovereignty that has been established through great sacrifice in the last battle (referring to World War II).

Jestem za, a nawet przeciw.

To write history, one must be more than a man, since the author who holds the pen of this great justiciary should be free from all pre-occupation of interest or of vanity.

I don't think anybody who looks carefully at us thinks that we are a left-wing or a right-wing organization.