Weekend Words: Gun
The New York Times reports that fear of restrictive gun laws causes a spike in gun sales.
The New York Times reports that fear of restrictive gun laws causes a spike in gun sales.
Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.
—Dwight Eisenhower, speech, 1953
This may be the year when we finally come face to face with ourselves — that we really are just a nation of two hundred million used car salesmen with all the money we need to buy guns, and no qualms at all about killing anyone else in the world who tries to make us uncomfortable.
—Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail
Hi! handsome hunting man
Fire your little gun.
Bang! Now the animal
Is dead and dumb and done.
Nevermore to peep again, creep again, leap again,
Eat or sleep or drink again, oh, what fun!
—Walter de la Mare, “Hi!”
I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. It’s when you know you’re licked before you begin but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what.
—Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird
Grip your gun like a man, brother!
Let’s have a crack at Holy Russia,
Mother
Russia
with her big, fat are!
Freedom, freedom! Down with the cross!
—Alexander Blok, “The Twelve”
The guns and bombs, the rockets and the warships, all are symbols of human failure.
—Lyndon B. Johnson
We owe to the Middle Ages the two worst inventions of humanity — gunpowder and romantic love.
—Andre Maurois
I have no gun but I can spit.
—W. H. Auden, “Prologue: The Birth of Architecture”
I saw guns and sharp words in the hands of young children…
—Bob Dylan, “A Hard Rain’s a Gonna Fall”
A lawyer with his briefcase can steal more than a hundred men with guns.
—Mario Puzo
Bullets cannot be recalled. They cannot be uninvented. But they can be taken out of the gun.
—Martin Amis
Guns aren’t lawful;
Nooses give;
Gas smells awful;
You might as well live.
—Dorothy Parker, “Resume”
The bitterest creature under heaven is the wife who discovers that her husband’s bravery is only bravado, that his strength is only a uniform, that his power is but a gun in the hands of a fool.
—Pearl Buck
What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?
— Only the monstrous anger of the guns.
Only the stuttering rifles’ rapid rattle
Can patter out their hasty orisons.
—Wilfred Owen, “Anthem for Doomed Youth”
For my part, I wish all guns with their belongings and everything could be sent to hell, which is the proper place for their exhibition and use.
—Alfred Nobel, arms manufacturer and the inventor of dynamite, three years before his death
Life is a game in which the rules are constantly changing; nothing spoils a game more than those who take it seriously. Adultery? Phooey! You should never subjugate yourself to another nor seek the subjugation of someone else to yourself. If you follow that Crispian principle you will be able to say Phooey, too, instead of reaching for your gun when you fancy yourself betrayed.
—Quentin Crisp
