War & Peace Quote by Graham Greene

Leave it to Greene to turn “five hundred years of democracy and peace” into a punchline. The barb works because it inverts the usual moral math: we’re trained to treat stability as inherently productive, a slow-cooked recipe for greatness. Greene’s line treats it as a kind of cultural decaf. Switzerland becomes the pristine control group, and the “result” is a gimmicky souvenir that literally chirps on schedule.

The intent isn’t really to dunk on Swiss craftsmanship (also: the cuckoo clock is more German than Swiss, which is part of the joke). It’s to needle a smug, tourist-brochure idea of civilization: that harmony automatically yields masterpieces. Greene, a writer drawn to espionage, betrayal, and compromised souls, is suspicious of societies that sand down friction. The subtext is that conflict, danger, and even moral mess are what generate art with teeth. If nothing is at stake, creativity risks becoming ornament.

Context matters: the line is popularly associated with The Third Man, where postwar Europe is carved into occupation zones and “peace” can read as neutrality bordering on complicity. Switzerland’s long calm gets recast as insulated comfort while the continent burns. The cuckoo clock lands because it’s unserious and mechanical, a symbol of timekeeping without history - precision without drama.

Greene’s cynicism isn’t just snobbery; it’s a theory of culture. Peace may be humane, but it doesn’t automatically make a story worth telling.