"I hate war for its consequences, for the lies it lives on and propagates, for the undying hatreds it arouses"
About this Quote
War isn’t condemned here as spectacle or strategy, but as a moral technology: a machine that runs on deception and keeps running by manufacturing more of it. Fosdick, a prominent liberal Protestant voice in the early 20th century, is less interested in battlefield horror than in the quieter afterlife of conflict - the way it reorganizes truth, memory, and community long after the shooting stops. That framing fits a clergyman who watched modern mass warfare (and the propaganda systems that fed it) harden publics into believers.
The line’s power is its escalation. “Consequences” feels almost administrative, a word politicians hide behind. Then Fosdick tightens the moral noose: war “lives on” lies, as if falsehood isn’t collateral damage but oxygen. The phrasing implies complicity. Lies aren’t only told by governments; they’re adopted by citizens who want their suffering to mean something and their side to be clean. War requires that kind of psychic laundering.
The final clause - “undying hatreds” - is the real indictment. Fosdick isn’t warning about temporary rage; he’s pointing to intergenerational inheritance, the way violence becomes culture. Hatred outlasts the treaty, becomes a family story, a national identity, a political resource. In that sense, his hatred of war isn’t sentimental pacifism. It’s a suspicion of war’s spiritual economics: it converts grief into certainty, complexity into slogans, neighbors into permanent enemies.
The line’s power is its escalation. “Consequences” feels almost administrative, a word politicians hide behind. Then Fosdick tightens the moral noose: war “lives on” lies, as if falsehood isn’t collateral damage but oxygen. The phrasing implies complicity. Lies aren’t only told by governments; they’re adopted by citizens who want their suffering to mean something and their side to be clean. War requires that kind of psychic laundering.
The final clause - “undying hatreds” - is the real indictment. Fosdick isn’t warning about temporary rage; he’s pointing to intergenerational inheritance, the way violence becomes culture. Hatred outlasts the treaty, becomes a family story, a national identity, a political resource. In that sense, his hatred of war isn’t sentimental pacifism. It’s a suspicion of war’s spiritual economics: it converts grief into certainty, complexity into slogans, neighbors into permanent enemies.
Quote Details
| Topic | War |
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