39 Quotes by Michael Shaara

Harriet Beecher Stowe published Uncle Tom’s Cabin in 1852. It became a publishing sensation. Lincoln was later wryly to remark to her: ‘So you’re the little woman who wrote the book that made this great war.’ The South reacted with fury to her attack on slavery.

It wasn’t the dying. He had seen men die all his life, and death was the luck of the chance, the price you eventually paid. What was worse was the stupidity. The appalling sick stupidity that was so bad you thought sometimes you would go suddenly, violently, completely insane just having to watch it. It was a deadly thing to be thinking on. Job to be done here. And all of it turns on faith.

How can they look in the eyes of a man and make a slave of him and then quote the Bible?

This is free ground. All the way from here to the Pacific Ocean. No man has to bow. No man born to royalty. Here we judge you by what you do, not by what your father was. Here you can be something. Here’s a place to build a home. It isn’t the land.

And so it was not even patriotism but a new faith. The Frenchman may fight for France, but the American fights for mankind, for freedom; for the people, not the land.

Then after that I asked this fella what rights he had that we were offendin’, and he said, well, he didn’t know, but he must have some rights he didn’t know nothin’ about.

If you are not affected, if you are not hurt by what we do, then you will not do anything to stop it. The war will simply continue.

If men were equal in America, all these former Poles and English and Czechs and blacks, then they were equal everywhere, and there was really no such thing as a foreigner; there were only free men and slaves. And so it was not even patriotism but a new faith. The Frenchman may fight for France, but the American fights for mankind, for freedom; for the people, not the land.

The Frenchman may fight for France, but the American fights for mankind, for freedom; for the people, not the land.