Kiona-Benton High School
Benton City, Washington
War and Peace
Teacher:Dea Podhajsky
Eric Foss
11th
Albert Einstein was a German born physicist. He is well known for his inventions and theories and was well known for his theory of relativity. He is known as one of the best thinkers of all time and also is known for writing a letter to Franklin D. Roosevelt on the possibilities of the Germans having the atomic bomb. Einstein also was one of the leading scientists helping in the American research of the atomic bomb. Albert
Einstein once had a good quote on war and peace, “ I don’t know what kind of weapons will be used in the third world war, assuming there will be a third world war. But I can tell you what the fourth world war will be fought with --- stone clubs.”
I do agree with this quote. I think that if we have another world war that the countries involved could very easily bomb the world back to the Stone Age. In World War I there was nearly 10 million soldiers killed and 21 million wounded. In the World War II, 17 million lost their lives. These figures are just of military casualties; they do not include civilian casualties. This shows how many more lives would most likely lose their lives in the next world war. Today up to ten countries have nuclear capabilities. This tells me that it would be easy for there to be more then three countries that would attack each other with their nuclear arsenals. This would cause the world to go into a nuclear winter where most of the people on the earth would die. The invention of even more weapons of mass destruction could also likely add to the death toll. Also the amount of countries that have the ability to use the atomic bomb will add to the chance of the world being destroyed.
I feel this quote is ironic. Albert Einstein thought that the fourth world war would be fought with stones and clubs, but if there is a world war that causes this to happen it will be caused by one invention that Einstein worked on. The invention I am talking about is the atomic bomb. Though Einstein was not solely responsible for making the atomic bomb, he was with the group of scientists that made it and was the person that suggested that the atomic bomb should be followed. If the world is bombed back to the
Stone age it will be caused by the atomic bomb, because it is the biggest destroyer of lives in the world. If a lot of these bombs are used at a time it could kill most of the people in the world.
“ My dynamite will sooner lead to peace than a thousand world conventions. As soon as men will find that in one instant whole armies can be destroyed, they surely will abide by golden peace.” Alfred Bernard Nobel
Another scientist who had a quote on war and peace was Alfred Bernard Nobel. Alfred Nobel is most famous for inventing dynamite and the Nobel Prizes. He manufactured and sold dynamite as a living and made a fortune making it because it has many useful uses. He wanted the dynamite to be used only peacefully. In his will he said his fortune should be used to give prizes for people who make inventions for peaceful uses. The prize is awarded for medicine, physics, chemistry, literature, and peace. The prize is regarded as one of the highest awards you can get in one of these fields. The quote he made about war and peace was ”My dynamite will sooner lead to than a thousand world inventions. As soon as men find that in one instant armies can be utterly destroyed, they will abide by golden peace.”
When Alfred Nobel made his quote about his dynamite, I am sure felt that this quote was true. The fact is that the invention of dynamite probably has caused more deaths and wars then he would have ever imagined. He invented dynamite in 1867, since then there have been more deaths in wars then before this time. Dynamite did not cause peace like Nobel would have wished; it caused a lot of deaths. Even though dynamite is used for many peaceful uses, such as bombing holes in rock for dams and mining. I do not agree with Alfred Nobel’s quote. If he made a substance that could cause mass destruction he should have known that sooner or later somebody would use it to kill another person, that is just the nature of warfare, people do whatever possible to get ahead of the competition. Nobel may have wanted the dynamite to be used only for peaceful reasons but it was used in many war situations. If Nobel had got his wish, perhaps tens of thousands of people would have lived in wars. This quote had good intentions but was not likely to happen.
“To preserve peace, we need weapons of smaller and men of larger
caliber.” Unknown. Whoever made this quote knew what he was talking about when it comes to war. If you have many mass destruction weapons this may stop the war because the other side is afraid of you, but if someone really wants the war to be ended they need high caliber men working the peace tables. This is the best way to get the war to end.
I agree with this quote totally because of another saying. The saying I am thinking of is one you see on bumper stickers and shirts. The quote is supposed to be comedic but it is also truthful, the quip I am talking about is “Guns don’t kill people, people kill people.” This is along the same lines as the quote we are talking about, it doesn't matter what kind of weapons you have, if you don’t have people operating the weapons they cannot kill other people. Also you need people working towards peace instead of just killing other people to conserve peace. This quote should be used more often when talking about war and peace situations. “Peace is rare: Less than 8% of the time since the beginning of recorded time has the world been entirely at peace. In a total of 3,530 years,
286 have been warless. Eight thousand treaties have been broken in this time.”
Unknown
This quote has a lot to do with war and peace. When countries sign treaties they are supposed to be in peace with each other, but yet eight thousand treaties have been broken. This shows how hard it is to keep in peace with other countries, because one country is always trying to get some land that another country has or there leaders may have personal differences or other reasons to start wars. The small percentage of peaceful years shows, how it isn’t easy to keep the world totally peaceful.
I agree with what this quote is saying, it is very rare for the world to be totally in peace. A few months ago before September 11, if a person asked if the world was in peace a majority of people would of said yes. Yet it wasn’t actually peace, there was still fighting over in the Middle East over the west bank. That is why this quote would shock many people. The quote shows how hard it is to keep peace and how un often it happens, because two countries always have quarrels with each other over indifference's which could be easily be solved if they would sit down and be sensible about their differences. I liked this quote because it explains the difficulty of the whole world being peaceful.
As anyone would see, many people have made quotes about war and peace.
Some of these quotes could be used in war and peace talks if you wanted to.
I think if everybody was given a list of these quotes and actually thought of them it would help with world peace greatly. The quotes could also have a negative effect on peace though, if they were taken the wrong way. All in all I liked writing about these quotes because it taught me more about how people think about peace.