Hacker News Reader

Comment by inc | Hacker News Reader

"He who joyfully marches to music in rank and file has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would fully suffice. This disgrace to civilization should be done away with at once. Heroism at command, senseless brutality, and all the loathsome nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism, how violently I hate all this, how despicable and ignoble war is; I would rather be torn to shreds than be part of so base an action! It is my conviction that killing under the cloak of war is nothing but an act of murder."

- Albert Einstein

View on HN

Says the man who lent his good name to the Manhattan Project. I saw a pretty detailed documentary about this, explaining how he was eventually persuaded that the dangers of Hitler getting the bomb first outweighed his initial reticence to promote the project. If Einstein had not signed the letter sent to FDR suggesting development of this weapon, FDR probably would not have taken it seriously, and the bombs would not have been available to drop on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, at least at that point in time.

I wonder if this quote came before or after the Manhattan Project.

Looks like before, in 1931. He follows with "My opinion of the human race is high enough that I believe this bogey would have disappeared long ago, had the sound sense of the peoples not been systematically corrupted by commercial and political interests acting through the schools and the Press" ... Why would there ever be peace when we celebrate war and warriors, on the highest pedestals?

> Why would there ever be peace when we celebrate war and warriors, on the highest pedestals?

This has been well understood for 340 year, but let's take it one more time:

When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.

- Edmund Burke, Thoughts on the Cause of Present Discontents, 1770

"An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind." -Gandhi

The wars that are generally found on pedestals are not wars of revenge, but of defence.

Non-violence works best when you are a large majority against a small, civil minority, which was the case in India, as well as for the civil right movements Ghandi inspired. Ask Chamberlain how well it worked against a large, angry, un-civil nation.

It's all too common that scientists, and engineers in particular, consider society to be a machine that can be tinkered with, oiled, something that, through progress, can be made to run better.

As well articulated Einstein's observation is, it is hopelessly naïve, as well as ironic, considering his membership of a group that owes it's very existence today to large-scale heroism at command and killing under the cloak of war.

Einstein was a great physicist. But try this test: if you saw this posted, without attribution, as a comment on Reddit about an article on Veterans' Day, would it seem out of place? (Except for the Edwardian idiom, obviously.)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com