Gunpowder Quotes

• We owe to the Middle Ages the two worst inventions of humanity - romantic love and gunpowder.

  Andre Maurois

  Love, Happiness, Two

  "The Silence of Colonel Bramble". Book by Andre Maurois, 1918.

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• What gunpowder did for war the printing press has done for the mind.

  Wendell Phillips

  War, Book, Reading

  Wendell Phillips (1864). “Speeches, Lectures, and Letters”, p.40

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• And I find chopsticks frankly distressing. Am I alone in thinking it odd that a people ingenious enough to invent paper, gunpowder, kites and any number of other useful objects, and who have a noble history extending back 3,000 years haven't yet worked out that a pair of knitting needles is no way to capture food?

  Bill Bryson

  Food, Thinking, Knitting Needles

  Bill Bryson (2010). “Notes From A Small Island: Journey Through Britain”, p.145, Random House

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• The real use of gunpowder is to make all men tall.

  Thomas Carlyle

  Real, Men, Use

  34 Copy quote

• In recent times, European nations, with the use of gunpowder and other technical improvements in warfare, controlled practically the whole world. One, the British Empire, brought under one government a quarter of the earth and its inhabitants.

  John Boyd Orr

  Government, Warfare, Use

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• There are two things necessary to Salvation.... Money and gunpowder.

  George Bernard Shaw

  Two, Salvation, Two Things

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• The smell of gunpowder is sweeter to me than all the perfumes of Arabia.

  Pope Julius II

  Smell, Arabia, Perfume

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• Man is a military animal, glories in gunpowder, and loves parade.

  Philip James Bailey

  Memorial Day, Military, Animal

  Philip James Bailey (1857). “Festus: a poem”, p.213

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• I lost my hair mixing a substance called white gunpowder on the kitchen table.

  Mark Oliphant

  Hair, White, Kitchen

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• The three great elements of modern civilization, Gun powder, Printing, and the Protestant religion.

  Thomas Carlyle

  Gun, Civilization, Religion

  Critical and Miscellaneous Essays "The State of German Literature" (1838)

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• Genius, as an explosive power, beats gunpowder hollow.

  Thomas Huxley

  Power, Genius, Beats

  Leonard Huxley, Thomas Henry Huxley (2011). “Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley”, p.53, Cambridge University Press

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• The invention of gunpowder and the constant improvement of firearms are enough in themselves to show that the advance of civilization has done nothing practical to alter or deflect the impulse to destroy the enemy, which is central to the very idea of war.

  Carl von Clausewitz

  War, Civilization, Ideas

  Carl von Clausewitz (2008). “On War”, p.76, Princeton University Press

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• Printer's ink has been running a race against gunpowder these many, many years. Ink is handicapped, in a way, because you can blow up a man with gunpowder in half a second, while it may take twenty years to blow him up with a book. But the gunpowder destroys itself along with its victim, while a book can keep on exploding for centuries.

  Christopher Morley

  Running, Book, Science

  Christopher Morley (2013). “The Haunted Bookshop”, p.90, Melville House

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• What do nations care about the cost of war, if by spending a few hundred millions in steel and gunpowder they can gain a thousand millions in diamonds and cocoa?

  W. E. B. Du Bois

  War, Steel, Cost

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• GUNPOWDER, n. An agency employed by civilized nations for the settlement of disputes which might become troublesome if left unadjusted.

  Ambrose Bierce

  Agency, Civilized Nations, Might

  Ambrose Bierce (2001). “The Unabridged Devil's Dictionary”, p.102, University of Georgia Press

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• Histories of the world omitted China; if a Chinaman invented compass or movable type or gunpowder we promptly "forgot it" and named their European inventors. In short, we regarded China as a sort of different and quite inconsequential planet.

  W. E. B. Du Bois

  Different, World, Compass

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• If we contrast the rapid progress of this mischievous discovery [gunpowder] with the slow and laborious advances of reason, science, and the arts of peace, a philosopher, according to his temper, will laugh or weep at the folly of mankind.

  Edward Gibbon

  Art, Discovery, Laughing

  The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire ch. 65 (1776 - 1788)

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• War is a terrible trade. But when the cause is just, the smell of gunpowder is sweet.

  Myles Standish

  Sweet, Military, War

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• It is too often forgotten that when the Europeans gained enough maritime skills and gunpowder to conquer most of the world, they not only colonized the bulk of the world's people but they colonized the interpretation of history itself. Human history was rewritten to favor them at the expense of other people. The roots of modern racism can be traced to this conquest and colonization.

  John Henrik Clarke

  Skills, Roots, Racism

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• My nostrils dilate while savoring the acrid odor of gunpowder and blood… Crazy with fury I will stain my rifle red while slaughtering any surrendered enemy that falls in my hands! With the deaths of my enemies I prepare my being for the sacred fight and join the triumphant proletariat with a bestial howl!

  Che Guevara

  Crazy, Fall, Fighting

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• You can't stop things like Bitcoin. [...]. It's like trying to stop gunpowder.

  John McAfee

  Trying, Bitcoin

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• A whole bunch of big technological shocks occurred when Asian innovations - paper, gunpowder, the stirrup, the moldboard plow and so on - came to Europe via the Silk Road.

  Charles C. Mann

  Europe, Innovation, Paper

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• Ever since the invention of gunpowder.. I continually tremble lest men should, in the end, uncover some secret which would provide a short way of abolishing mankind, of annihilating peoples and nations in their entirety.

  Baron de Montesquieu

  Men, Secret, Way

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• The confidence and security of a people can be measured by their attitude toward laxatives. At the high noon of the British sun, soldiers in far-flung outposts of the Empire doctored themselves with "a spoonful o' gunpowder in a cuppa 'ot tea." Purveyors and users of harsh laxatives were not afraid of being thought mean and unfriendly just because their laxatives were. But in America, the need to be nice is so consuming that nobody would dare take a laxative that makes you run up the stairs two at a time, pushing others aside and yelling, "Get out of the way!

  Florence King

  Running, Attitude, Nice

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• Television was the most revolutionary event of the century. Its importance was in a class with the discovery of gunpowder and the invention of the printing press, which changed the human condition for centuries afterward.

  Russell Baker

  Discovery, Class, Television

  Russell Baker (1991). “There's a Country in My Cellar”, Avon Books

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