# Quote — David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas

> Another war is always coming, Robert. They are never properly extinguished. What sparks war? The will to power, the backbone of human nature. The threat of violence, the fear of violence, or actual violence, is the instrument of this dreadful will… The nation state is merely human nature inflated to monstrous proportions. QES, nations are entities whose laws are written by violence. Thus it ever was, so ever shall it be.

- Author: [David Mitchell](https://www.leafyquotes.com/david-mitchell.md)
- Book: [Cloud Atlas](https://www.leafyquotes.com/david-mitchell/cloud-atlas.md)
- Page: 444
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Cloud_Atlas_(novel)#Letters_from_Zedelghem_(Part_2)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/david-mitchell/cloud-atlas/another-war-is-always

## More from this book

> "And if you threaten my reputation, oh well, I'll have to ruin yours!"

p. 76 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/david-mitchell/cloud-atlas/and-if-you.md)

> I hear my father-in-law's response[...] "Naïve, dreaming Adam. He who would do battle with the many-headed hydra of human nature must pay a world of pain & his family must pay it along with him! & only as you gasp your dying breath shall you understand, your life amounted to no more than one drop in a limitless ocean!"
>
> Yet what is any ocean but a multitude of drops?

p. 508 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/david-mitchell/cloud-atlas/i-hear-my-father-in-laws.md)

> Books don't offer real escape but they can stop a mind scratching itself raw.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/david-mitchell/cloud-atlas/books-dont-offer.md)