Quotes from David Livingstone Smith

Science is a tool, and if we were an esentially kind and peaceful species, it would not occur to us to use this tool for destructive purposes.

We exploit science to make war because we are warlike creatures.

The more we learn about ourselves and our history, the more we are confronted with our extraordinarily violent character.

People have moral standing and inanimate objects don't—people can be harmed, but inanimate objects can only be damaged. But where do all the other life-forms stand? Oddly enough, our judgments about this depend in large measure on where we position them on the great chain of being. This ancient, discredited, prescientific model of the cosmos still unconsciously serves as a guideline for our moral judgments.

even the most zealous vegans can weed their garden and wipe out untold millions of germs with disinfectants ("green" ones, of course) without suffering a single pang of guilt.

the closer we judge a creature is to us on the hierarchy, the more inclined we are to grant it moral standing.

To understand war, we must understand ourselves.

There are some truths that no one likes to hear, but it is precisely these that we need to pursue if we are to understand where war lives in human nature.