Something about doing a hateful and dangerous action for the sake of decency — for they knew that the fight was to be fought in blood and death witho… - T. H. White

Perhaps man was neither good nor bad, was only a machine in an insensate universe — his courage no more than a reflex to danger, like the automatic jump at the pin-prick. Perhaps there were no virtues, unless jumping at pin-pricks was a virtue, and humanity only a mechanical donkey led on by the iron carrot of love, through the pointless treadmill of reproduction.

No. There is one fairly good reason for fighting — and that is, if the other man starts it. You see, wars are a wickedness, perhaps the greatest wickedness of a wicked species. They are so wicked that they must not be allowed. When you can be perfectly certain that the other man started them, then is time when you might have a sort of duty to stop him.

for few people can hate so bitterly and so self-righteously as the members of a ruling caste which is being dispossessed.