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Quotes from Ralph Peters

Make no mistake: the anti-war voices long for us to lose any war they cannot prevent.
~ Ralph Peters
The great paradox of the 21st century is that, in this age of powerful technology, the biggest problems we face internationally are problems of the human soul.
~ Ralph Peters
Each day, each one of us chooses not to do many things that would be legal but offensive to those around us.
~ Ralph Peters
Imam Rauf and his backers have every legal right to build their extravagant Islamic center within the lethal radius of Ground Zero. But the rest of us have the right to question why they insist on doing so.
~ Ralph Peters
Writing is wretched, discouraging, physically unhealthy, infinitely frustrating work. And when it all comes together it's utterly glorious." National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) Pep Talk
~ Ralph Peters
Human beings may hate a distant enemy in theory, but they generally prefer to kill their neighbors.
~ Ralph Peters
Our history deserves honesty and our citizens need it. Without understanding who we really were, we'll never quite grasp who we have become, leaving us prey to demagogues and despicable entertainments.
~ Ralph Peters
But a man lies to himself, and never more so than he does about a woman.
~ Ralph Peters
These books are so splendid, they frustrate readers conditioned to lesser historical fiction in which every Confederate officer was young, dashing, and raised with a free-black best friend on a progressive plantation, or that features a feisty, clandestinely educated, proto-liberated woman rebelling valiantly against the constricting patriarchal societies of bygone centuries (all the while wearing enthralling dresses). The first sort of novel romanticizes the past, the second euthanizes it. The
~ Ralph Peters
But in the real world-in which even academics perish-war often changes everything. The blood-drunk killer is rarely disarmed by the man who lives in books-or by the eternal adolescent clinging to the lie that all men want peace.
~ Ralph Peters
I wish you to place your division across this road, and I wish you to get there
~ Ralph Peters
Lee was tough as hickory, but the tree was old.
~ Ralph Peters
He had learned long ago that dying was not hard. The harder course was to defy the odds, to endure life's torments stoically.
~ Ralph Peters
War was a sorrier business than storybooks told.
~ Ralph Peters
Don't go thinking I was one of these hellfire-and-brimstone fellers. No, sir. I put more stock in Jesus than Jeremiah. And I never tried to tell a man Jesus really turned that wine into water, not the other way around. Just tried to persuade him that getting hog-drunk and killing his own brother wasn't Christian.
~ Ralph Peters
the Confederacy had been poisoned by more jealousies than a hundred high-bred gals could muster in competition for a single male.
~ Ralph Peters
A Christian man ponders eternity for decades, only to find it's fifteen minutes long.
~ Ralph Peters
Social peace requires reciprocity.
~ Ralph Peters
Vladimir Putin hates America, he wants to hurt us. Suddenly Vladimir Putin is a good guy, Russia is okay, no it's not. Russia is evil, Russia is our enemy.
~ Ralph Peters
We [the U.S.] think nothing... of attempting to inflict upon other peoples forms of government ill-tailored to their needs.
~ Ralph Peters
The great paradox of the 21st century is that, in this age of powerful technology, the biggest problems we face internationally are problems of the human soul.
~ Ralph Peters
I've been to many countries and watched a number of conflicts or their residue, and I've served in the military.
~ Ralph Peters
If there is a single power the West underestimates, it is the power of collective hatred.
~ Ralph Peters
There is no lack of bravery in the ranks of our armed forces, but bureaucratic cowardice rules in our intelligence establishment (as well as at the higher levels of military command).
~ Ralph Peters