War and Peace 2012

they're all too glib unfortunately to really get a handle on the politics driving the war. hopefully he goes into it more later on.

Um... Let's just say that he talks about... what drives wars... a lot...

i'm sure - not too worried. presumably part of what drives wars are glib aristocrats.

"With the enemy's approach to Moscow the Moscovites' view of their situatoin did not grow more serious but on the contrary became even more frivolous, as alawys happens with people who see a great danger approaching. At the approach of danger there are always two voices that speak with equal power in the human soul: one very reasonably tells a man to consider the nature of the danger and the means of escaping it; the other, still more reasonably, says that it is too depressing and painful to think of the danger since it is not in man's power to foresee everything and avert the general course of events, and it is therefore better to disregard what is painful till it comes, and to think about what is pleasant. In solitude a man generally listens to the first voice, but in society to the second. So it was now with the inhabitants of Moscow. It was long since people had been as gay in Moscow as that year."

a memorable quote from the novel