"War grows out of the desire of the individual to gain advantage at the expense of his fellow man"
About this Quote
The intent is bluntly didactic. By rooting war in "the individual", Hill shifts responsibility away from abstract forces - destiny, economics, ideology - and back onto human choice. It's a rebuke to the comforting story that violence is inevitable once "nations" get involved. Nations don't have desires; people do. That simplification is the point: if war begins in advantage-seeking, then peace begins in disciplining that impulse.
The subtext is a critique of competitive culture disguised as common sense. Hill's world - early 20th-century America, industrial winners and losers, the cult of getting ahead - prized advantage as a virtue. Here he draws a hard boundary: the same drive celebrated in business becomes monstrous when amplified. "At the expense" is the key phrase; it's not ambition he's condemning, it's zero-sum ambition that requires someone else's loss.
Context matters: Hill lived through two world wars and the Great Depression, eras when "advantage" wasn't metaphorical. His sentence reads like an attempt to make mass slaughter legible in the language he knew best: motivation, desire, the inner story that precedes outward action.
Quote Details
| Topic | War |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
| Cite |
Citation Formats
APA Style (7th ed.)
Hill, Napoleon. (2026, January 18). War grows out of the desire of the individual to gain advantage at the expense of his fellow man. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/war-grows-out-of-the-desire-of-the-individual-to-20619/
Chicago Style
Hill, Napoleon. "War grows out of the desire of the individual to gain advantage at the expense of his fellow man." FixQuotes. January 18, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/war-grows-out-of-the-desire-of-the-individual-to-20619/.
MLA Style (9th ed.)
"War grows out of the desire of the individual to gain advantage at the expense of his fellow man." FixQuotes, 18 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/war-grows-out-of-the-desire-of-the-individual-to-20619/. Accessed 5 Feb. 2026.
