War & Peace Quote by Lin Yutang

Lin Yutang’s line works like a three-part verdict: liberty, peace, justice are not destroyed only by obvious tyrants but by overgrown institutions that claim to protect them. The rhythm is the weapon. Each sentence begins with the same conditional drumbeat - “Where there are too many…” - and ends with an absolute negation. It’s not “less liberty” or “less peace.” It’s none. The exaggeration is the point: once a society tips into excess, the system’s original purpose flips into its opposite.

The subtext is a warning about rule by apparatus rather than rule by principle. “Policemen” stand for surveillance and everyday coercion; too many means citizens begin to live as suspects. “Soldiers” represent the permanent security mindset, where the state treats stability as something to be enforced rather than earned; too many means conflict becomes the default language. “Lawyers” is the sharpest jab: when the legal class proliferates, justice risks becoming procedural combat, captured by those who can afford representation and time. Law expands, litigation multiplies, outcomes turn into technicalities - legality replacing legitimacy.

Context matters: Lin wrote across the collapse of empire, warlord politics, Japanese invasion, civil war, and the rise of competing modernizing states. He also lived long enough to watch “order” become a justification for repression across ideologies. His cosmopolitan humanism, shaped by both Chinese tradition and Western liberal thought, distrusts the machinery of authority when it grows beyond necessity. The line isn’t anti-law or anti-police; it’s anti-saturation, insisting that a healthy society needs restraint built into power itself.