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War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse.

War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse.

Approximate author period: c. 1839 AD · industrial

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Attribution & collection notes
Author or tradition
John Stuart Mill
Attribution: attributed
Country attributed
Not established
A country attribution does not establish the earliest origin.
Historical period
Approximate author period: c. 1839 AD · industrial
Approximate author-period anchor from life dates 1806 to 1873; Wikidata Q50020, https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q50020 (accessed 2026-10-08). Not a quotation composition date.
An author lifetime, approximate period or collection date is not necessarily the date when these words were first written or spoken.
Recorded source
Contributor-provided quotation collection

Supplied reference C; CSV row 431638; supplied attribution, independently unverified

A collection's publication date can be later than the words it records.