Lost quote

November 13, 2010 6:44 PM

There's a quote about how years were a poor measure of the length of WWII, and for the life of me I can't find it again.

I thought it was Churchill, but I haven't been able to find it there either. I feel silly using a question for this, but your help is appreciated...

posted by you're a kitty! to Grab Bag (4 answers total)

Martin Luther King, Jr. said: "War is a poor chisel to carve out tomorrow," but that's not the same thing. It is the closest I came to your criteria in my searches though. Good luck.
posted by Hardcore Poser at 8:37 PM on November 13, 2010

Best answer: I have the quote, but I can't find my copy of Connie Willis All Clear, so I can't discover if it was Winston Churchill or not ... Anyway, here's the quote:

"When I look back over the wartime years, I cannot help feeling that time is an inadequate and even capricious measure of their duration; at one moment they seem so long, at another so short."
posted by Susurration at 9:03 PM on November 13, 2010 [2 favorites]

Response by poster: Thank you. It was in fact Churchill, and that's such a good book...
posted by you're a kitty! at 9:15 PM on November 13, 2010

I know the mystery's already been solved but someone posted this as their FB status update on Remembrance Day and I thought it would be appropriate to add it here as it's along the same idea:

"The first soldier to die in World War I was British. He was sent on a reconnaissance mission. He was 16. The last soldier to die in the war, right before armistice was a Canadian. He was 25. When all was said and done, both soldiers died 1.5 miles apart. Just looking at these two small points in time, without considering anything else, the tragedy of war seems evident."
posted by Jaybo at 9:43 PM on November 13, 2010 [6 favorites]