The living universe cannot help becoming an organization of armed rivalry.

And there cannot fail to result from it the everlasting succession of evils, without any hope of abiding spoils, for there is no instance of conquerors who have long enjoyed immunity, and history reveals a sort of balance of injustices and of the fatal alternation of predominance.

In all quarters the hope of victory brings in the hope of war.

It is conflict clinging to conflict, and the recurrent murdering of murders.
The kings! We always find the kings again when we examine popular unhappiness right to the end! This hypertrophy of the national unities is the doing of their leaders.

It is the masters, the ruling aristocracies--emblazoned or capitalist--who have created and maintained for centuries all the pompous and sacred raiment, sanctimonious or fanatical, in which national separation is clothed, along with the fable of national interests--those enemies of the multitudes.