quotes

View Quote Imagine, sire, imagine that you are a factory worker. You're really poor. Your belly is never full. You freeze eight months of the year. Your children have no school, no doctor. Your country taxes you and sends your sons a continent away to die on a piece of land on the Pacific. Now sir, Japan is a third-rate power. If she defeats us, if Port Arthur falls, we shall be disgraced in the eyes of the world and here at home we shall have an insurrection on our hands.

View Quote [Begging the Tsar to stay out of World War One] We can't run a modern war, sir. We're not fighting Napoleon this time! Germany has ten miles of railway to every one of ours and they have a hundred factories for every one of ours. All we have is men! We'll be slaughtered like flies!

View Quote [Continuing to plead to the Tsar to stay out of World War One] I'm old, sir. I've seen so many wars. They all seemed so important at the time. Now I don't even remember what they were called. Millions of dead men. I don't know why. Nobody knows. You could so easily stop this war, sir. All you have to do is get up. Now, quietly go home to your family. You'd be the greatest of all the tsars.

View Quote None if you will be here when this war ends. Everything we've fought for will be lost. Everything we've loved will be broken. The victors will be as cursed as the defeated. The world will grow old and men will wander about lost in the ruins and go mad. Tradition, virtue, restraint, they'll all go. I'm not mourning for myself, but for the people who will come after me. They will live without hope. And all they will have will be guilt, revenge, and terror, and the world will be full of fanatics and trivial fools.