The author describes megalomania as seen in Chairman Mao by saying that what he was familiar with, he was really familiar with. This zeal moved the megalomaniac with a complete lack of appreciation for what he DID NOT know.
Though Moltke was working with subordinates who were totally lacking in comprehension for whatever strategic plans he may have entertained and who on occasion abused the independence granted them, those plans were sufficiently flexible to accommodate...
It’s a cruel fact of war that it takes little more than applying pressure to one finger to end another person’s life. More than that, it’s a cruel fact of life that we are hardwired to follow the crowd in a moment of panic.
What he found impossible was to shut off his brain, to detach himself from the intriguing problems with which (he) was involved, or to leave alone the major problems of war and peace, race and poverty, man's inhumanity to man and the persistence of s...
We did an evil thing, father." "What do you think war is? We're men. Not boys swinging sticks at each other and pronouncing the evil wizard's defeat. We do what duty and honor demand, and often what we do is terrible.
That is what death is like. It doesn't matter what uniforms the soldiers are wearing. It doesn't matter how good the weapons are. I thought if everyone could see what I saw, we would never have war anymore.
He said we were all cooked but we were all right as long as we did not know it. We were all cooked. The thing was not to recognize it. The last country to realize they were cooked would win the war.
Commanders and historians are the people who discuss wars; I was in the infantry, and most of the time I did not know where I was or what I was doing except that I was obeying orders and trying not to be killed in any of the variety of horrible ways ...
Puss hopped down from the couch and rummaged in Mark’s closet until he found a black leather belt. This he looped along his shoulder, around his waist, and then clasped together. “I’m off to make war, so that you may have love.
Long hair will make thee look dreafully to thine enemies, and manly to thy friends: it is, in peace, an ornament; in war, a strong helmet; it... deadens the leaden thump of a bullet: in winter, it is a warm nightcap; in summer, a cooling fan of feath...
America is no longer a country that cares about experts. In fact, it hates experts. If you can't fit a story into the culture-war storyline in ten seconds or less, it dies.
Their talk was endless, compulsive, and indulgent, sometimes sounding like the remains of the English language after having been hashed over by nuclear war survivors for a few hundred years.
As many as six out of ten American adults have never read a book of any kind, and the bulletins from the nation’s educational frontiers read like the casualty reports from a lost war.
Time is more precious than gold, more precious than diamonds, more precious than oil or any valuable treasures. It is time that we do not have enough of; it is time that causes the war within our hearts, and so we must spend it wisely.
I asked this heroic pet lover how it felt to have died for a schnauzer named Teddy. Salvador Biagiani was philosophical. He said it sure beat dying for absolutely nothing in the Viet Nam War.
We're all bits that the war didn't take, Flinty thought, gazing at the stranger's back. But those left behind had a right to know more about the beast who'd chewed their lives and spat the remnants out.
But the truth is that I'm gloomy - gloomier than I ever was during the war. Everything is so broken, Sophie: the roads, the buildings, the people. Especially the people.
So this is how a war starts.... Not with two armies facing off, waiting for the signal to charge.... It begins much more quietly. In a room, on a field, in a remote tunnel when someone who has power decides the time has come.
Honor from death,” I snap, “is a myth. Invented by the war torn to make sense of the horrific. If we die, it will be so that others may live. Truly honorable death, the only honorable death, is one that enables life.
America's 1st Arab spring came in the guise of the Civil War...when our nation couldn't stomach the abomination of slavery anymore. One can't help keep wondering...when the next one will come.✌
my mind struggled top condense all that had led to me being here. My vocal cords fought to express the memories that leaked out; I felt the weight of it all pressing down on me.
