"It takes in reality only one to make a quarrel. It is useless for the sheep to pass resolutions in favor of vegetarianism, while the wolf remains of a different opinion"
About this Quote
Peace is not a committee decision; it is a power relation. Dean Inge’s line lands because it refuses the comforting liberal fantasy that conflict can be voted out of existence. “It takes in reality only one to make a quarrel” strips away the sentimental idea that hostility is always a mutual failure. Sometimes one side simply chooses predation, and the other side’s virtue is irrelevant.
Then comes the cruelly efficient fable: sheep passing “resolutions in favor of vegetarianism” while the wolf dissents. The satire is aimed at moral self-congratulation dressed up as policy. Inge isn’t mocking ideals like nonviolence so much as the performative machinery that often surrounds them: meetings, statements, pledges, the warm glow of consensus. The wolf’s “different opinion” turns diplomacy into absurdity, because it treats appetite as if it were a negotiable preference rather than an existential threat. The joke has teeth: calling the wolf’s hunger an “opinion” exposes how bureaucratic language can launder brutality into something debatable.
Context matters. Inge, writing across the era of imperial rivalry, World War I, and the uneasy interwar years, watched high-minded internationalism collide with regimes and actors unpersuaded by moral suasion. The subtext is a warning against unilateral restraint when your counterpart is incentivized to exploit it. It’s also a rebuke to intellectuals and institutions that mistake articulation for leverage: resolutions are cheap; deterrence, solidarity, and realism are not.
Then comes the cruelly efficient fable: sheep passing “resolutions in favor of vegetarianism” while the wolf dissents. The satire is aimed at moral self-congratulation dressed up as policy. Inge isn’t mocking ideals like nonviolence so much as the performative machinery that often surrounds them: meetings, statements, pledges, the warm glow of consensus. The wolf’s “different opinion” turns diplomacy into absurdity, because it treats appetite as if it were a negotiable preference rather than an existential threat. The joke has teeth: calling the wolf’s hunger an “opinion” exposes how bureaucratic language can launder brutality into something debatable.
Context matters. Inge, writing across the era of imperial rivalry, World War I, and the uneasy interwar years, watched high-minded internationalism collide with regimes and actors unpersuaded by moral suasion. The subtext is a warning against unilateral restraint when your counterpart is incentivized to exploit it. It’s also a rebuke to intellectuals and institutions that mistake articulation for leverage: resolutions are cheap; deterrence, solidarity, and realism are not.
Quote Details
| Topic | Wisdom |
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