leonidas50's Blog

An excerpt from Steven Pressfield's GATES OF FIRE. I whole heartedly agree with this statement.

   "Mankind as it is constituted is a boil and a canker. Observe the specimens in any nation. Man is weak, greedy, craven, lustful, prey to every species of vice and depravity. He will lie, steal, cheat, murder, delt down the very statues of the gods and coim their gold as money for whores. This is man. This is his nature, as all the poets attest....

"Fortunately God in his mercy has provided a conterpoise to our species' inate depravity. That gift my young friend is war.

  " War, not peace, produces virtue. War, not peace, purges vice. War, and prepartation for war, call forth all that is noble and honorable in a man. It unites him with his brothers and binds them in a selfless love, eradicating in the crucible of necessity all which is base and ignoble. There in the holy mill of murder the meanest of men may seek and find that part of himself, concealed beneath the corrupt, which shines forth brilliant and cirtuous, worthy of honor before the gods. Do not despise war, my young friend, nore delude yourself that mercy and compassion are virtues superior to andreia, to manly valor. "