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Creativity Quote by Rosanne Cash

"War is idiocy. We live on a small, small planet, and what we do to others is what we do to ourselves"

About this Quote

Calling war "idiocy" is a deliberate stylistic choice: Rosanne Cash refuses the ceremonial language that usually shields violence from scrutiny. Idiocy is plainspoken, almost domestic. It punctures the myth that war is tragic-but-necessary, noble, or strategically inevitable. Cash frames it instead as a failure of basic judgment, the kind you look back on and can barely believe you entertained.

The pivot to "small, small planet" does two things at once. It’s scale management and moral accounting. By shrinking the backdrop, she collapses the psychological distance that makes state violence feel abstract. Borders, rivalries, and ideological pageantry start to look like petty theater when you picture everyone packed onto the same fragile rock. The repetition of "small" is quiet emphasis, the way a songwriter underlines a refrain: you can’t miss it, but it doesn’t yell.

Then comes the hard subtext: self-harm disguised as policy. "What we do to others is what we do to ourselves" lands like a secular karma, less mystical than practical. War boomerangs through trauma, refugees, environmental ruin, economic extraction, and the normalization of cruelty at home. Cash’s intent isn’t to deliver a thesis; it’s to rewire the listener’s instinctive story about conflict. She’s arguing that interconnectedness isn’t a feel-good slogan - it’s the strategic reality we keep denying, because denial is politically convenient and emotionally easier than accountability.

Quote Details

TopicWar
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Citation Formats

APA Style (7th ed.)
Cash, Rosanne. (2026, January 16). War is idiocy. We live on a small, small planet, and what we do to others is what we do to ourselves. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/war-is-idiocy-we-live-on-a-small-small-planet-and-95736/

Chicago Style
Cash, Rosanne. "War is idiocy. We live on a small, small planet, and what we do to others is what we do to ourselves." FixQuotes. January 16, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/war-is-idiocy-we-live-on-a-small-small-planet-and-95736/.

MLA Style (9th ed.)
"War is idiocy. We live on a small, small planet, and what we do to others is what we do to ourselves." FixQuotes, 16 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/war-is-idiocy-we-live-on-a-small-small-planet-and-95736/. Accessed 6 Feb. 2026.

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War Is Idiocy by Rosanne Cash
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About the Author

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Rosanne Cash (born May 24, 1955) is a Musician from USA.

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