# Reading > Who Said That? >  Who said: "the 4th World War will be fought with sticks and

## GaiusMariusJifus

Who said: &quot;the 4th World War will be fought with sticks and spears&quot;?

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## Admin

Albert Einstein once said, &quot;I do not know with what kinds of weapons the Third World War will be fought, but the Fourth World War will be fought with sticks and stones.&quot;

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## latimeri

"I will have no man in my boat who is not afraid of a whale", said the chief mate of the whaler Peqoet, Mr. Starburk.

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## Tsuyoiko

I know of two similar quotes:

"If the Third World War is fought with nuclear weapons, the fourth will be fought with bows and arrows." 
- Lord Louis Mountbatten

"I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones."
- Albert Einstein

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## JuniperWoolf

Oooh, I like that.

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## Nikhar

I liked this quote immensely.

Didn't exactly get what it meant at my first attempt.....but now, well, it's a lovely quote.

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## twelfth night

Allegedly, it was said by Einstein. Probably he was wrong, if he had said it at all. Probably the IVWW is carried out by stock exchange quotes... 

I have to admit that his "everything should be as simple as it is but not simpler" touches something nice inside me.

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## blazeofglory

The truth is there will be no fourth world war for millenniums. We will revert to the stone age and how can there be the fourth world war. There will be small wars, tribal wars, communal wars or national wars but never the world war.

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## Gilliatt Gurgle

> The truth is there will be no fourth world war for millenniums. We will revert to the stone age and how can there be the fourth world war. There will be small wars, tribal wars, communal wars or national wars but never the world war.


Blazeofglory,
That's what they said following WW I.
"The war to end all wars"

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## Remarkable

> _"War is always the same. It is young men dying in the fullness of their promise. It is trying to kill a man that you do not even know well enough to hate. Therefore, to know war is to know that there is still madness in the world."_



I have no words for that. Just tears...

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## pagebypage

"The fact that slaughter is a horrifying spectacle must make us take war more seriously, but not provide an excuse for gradually blunting our swords in the name of humanity. Sooner or later someone will come along with a sharp sword and hack off our arms."--Carl von Clausewitz

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## Nick Capozzoli

> The truth is there will be no fourth world war for millenniums [sic]. We will revert to the stone age and how can there be the fourth world war. There will be small wars, tribal wars, communal wars or national wars but never the world war.


Exactly what I was going to say about this famous quotation but blaze beat me to it... Einstein's admonition is clear...global nuclear war would probably destroy global civilization and send us into the Stone Age. Of course if you think it through, blaze is right. In a Stone Age there can be no "world wars," only Stone Age wars... If you think it through even further, it's not clear that we would go into a Stone Age state. Culturaltechnological information would survive (if there are any human survivors), so we would not revert to the condition of humanity circa 30,000 BC, and certainly not to much earlier times when _Homo erectus_, a different species, populated the earth.

Besides, there would still be plenty of guns and ammo around for the survivors to kill each other with... :Smile: 

This might provide an occasion to discuss similar catchy quotes/slogans whose meaning is clear but which do not really stand up to close analysis. Such slogans are great for winning arguments and have been used in the past to galvanize people to support a social/political cause.

Take for example MG's "An eye for an eye will leave the world blind." The meaning is clear, and it's a powerful slogan, just like Einstein's. Even if MG said "leave the world half blind" (and I'm not sure he did or didn't say that), you are either blind or you are not. If everyone lost one eye, everyone would still not be blind. Those who had only one seeing eye to begin with might become blind, but others would see fine from their remaining eye.

The problem with such slogans is that they don't stand up to logical scrutiny and draw their power from a kind of rhetorical strategy that I consider somewhat intellectually dishonest.

This is not to say that all powerful slogans have to suffer from this intellectual weakness. There is no _a priori_ reason that they have to. It's just that it's difficult to create a slogan that is both emotionally compelling and logically impeccable. :Wink: 

Can you think of any slogans that satisfy both requirements? I can, but I want to see what you all can come up with.

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## Tom Barrister

I know this is an old thread.

The quote and its many variants have been attributed, at times, to Einstein, Omar Bradley, Mountbatten, an anonymous officer (via reporter Joe Laiten and Walter Winchell). References to it date back to 1946. Einstein was quoted in 1949, so it's likely that he was paraphrasing what he'd heard or read elsewhere. Winchell's source is the most likely origin.

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## New Secret

> Who said: "the 4th World War will be fought with sticks and spears"?





> Albert Einstein once said, "I do not know with what kinds of weapons the Third World War will be fought, but the Fourth World War will be fought with sticks and stones."





> I know of two similar quotes:
> 
> "If the Third World War is fought with nuclear weapons, the fourth will be fought with bows and arrows." 
> - Lord Louis Mountbatten
> 
> "I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones."
> - Albert Einstein


So, all these quotes are made in the belief that a third world war would be nuclear and devastating. I personally think that modern civilization is over the nuclear fallout fears. There are a few countries who are a danger if they acquire such weaponry, but as a whole the majority of freedom supporting countries, who are also the most powerful, aren't going to resort to all-out nuclear war. I personally think that when this technological transition reaches it's own peak, much like the world wide web bubble of the late 1990s, it will pop and level out. When that happens, and electronic wireless technologies reach their limits, then if another great war breaks out, I believe it will be fought with few soldiers and with destructive technology on city centers and supply centers. Such a war might be conducted with space weapons. Perhaps if a drone-war breaks out we could already have hotels on the moon and all airlines would offer round-the-world space flights. I think that because world war one was greatly encouraged with the new invention of flight and airplanes, and world war two was a race to develop technology in the upturn of the great depression, I think that a third great war would be similarly encouraged with the development of technologies. If we all had sticks and stones we wouldn't have the grandeur of modern civilization to support any sort of 4th post-nuclear world war.

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## New Secret

> Einstein's admonition is clear...global nuclear war would probably destroy global civilization and send us into the Stone Age. Of course if you think it through, blaze is right. In a Stone Age there can be no "world wars," only Stone Age wars... If you think it through even further, it's not clear that we would go into a Stone Age state. Culturaltechnological information would survive (if there are any human survivors), so we would not revert to the condition of humanity circa 30,000 BC, and certainly not to much earlier times


As I said in my previous reply, I agree with Nick Capozzoli that if you don't got the technology because everything was leveled then you can't really go to a world war because all you got is a canoo and loincloth.

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