evidence: And I'm not the only one in that case ! One person who asked was Mr Michael Takiff, who had come up with the quote, attributed to Plato, in a letter from a soldier in Vietnam to his father while preparing a book called "Brave Men, Gentle Heroes: American Fathers and Sons in World War II and Vietnam", to be published by HarperCollins in 2003. I was unable to help him, but I later learned, in further exchanges I had with him by mail, that, with the help of friends and colleagues, he had come up with the following about the quote: [...] Back to index of frequently asked questions about Plato (1) In a text called "A guide to studying history at Fort Huachuca, Only the dead are safe: war and history", available in PDF format on the site of the US Army Intelligence [...] Thayer, adds the following note with regard to the supposed Plato quotation: "I have been unable to find this in Plato; and apparently I'm not the only one. They are undoubtedly to be found in the 20c philosopher George Santayana's Soliloquies in England and Later Soliloquies (1922), and reappeared in The Life of Reason, a book published in 1953 shortly after the author's death during the Korean War at a time when they would have been very likely to catch Gen. MacArthur's eye. A brief thread on the Classics-L includes the opinion that these words are now widely seen as Plato's precisely because of Gen. MacArthur's misattribution in this speech." (<==)