"'What is war?' I asked.
'Oh, it's a messy, stupid business,' he said, 'Two sides wave flags and beat drums and shoot one another dead. It always begins this way, making speeches, talking about rights, and all that sort of thing.'
'But what is it for? What do they get out of it?'
'I don't know,' he said. 'To tell you the truth, I don't think they know themselves.'"
— Hugh Lofting (Doctor Dolittle and the Green Canary)