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A matter of scale

Published by marco on

Updated by marco on

“Kill one man, and you are a murderer.
Kill millions of men, and you are a conqueror.
Kill them all, and you are a god.”


I actually heard this quote initially as “Kill one man, and you’re a murderer; kill them all, and. you. are. a. god.”, delivered from the maw of “featuring ludacris”, Jay Balzarian’s dog on the TV Show Big Mouth. It was in S05E08, which was a Christmas show and the dog was playing a John Wick character and had just finished eliminating an entire Russian gang, triumphing at the end with the help of Santa Claus, who is martyred. The show was trying a bit too hard, but I liked the quote…and the dog delivered is stone-cold.

In looking for the quote, I also found that it’s in the song Captive Honour by Megadeth (AZLyrics). But the first time I heard something similar was on the Dress to Kill comedy album by Eddie Izzard, where he did the following bit,

“You know, we think if somebody kills someone, that’s murder, you go to prison.

“You kill 10 people, you go to Texas, they hit you with a brick, that’s what they do.

“20 people, you go to a hospital, they look through a small window at you forever.

“And over that, we can’t deal with it, you know? Someone’s killed 100,000 people, we’re almost going, “Well done! You killed 100,000 people? You must get up very early in the morning. I can’t even get down the gym!”