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Thomas E. Ricks Books

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“It is a cliché, and a bad one, that generals try to “fight the last war” – that is, do what worked the last time out. That does not give them enough credit. Rather they tend to fight the war they would like to fight or the one they expected to fight. But neither of those responses is usually sufficient. The foremost task of a general is to understand the nature of the war he or she faces – which often turns out to be a third way, neither the one preferred nor the one expected.”

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Book:First Principles: What America's Founders Learned from the Greeks and Romans and How That Shaped Our Country
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“As an inhabitant of a Mississippi River town happily shouts out in the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, “You pays your money and you makes your choice!” That may be the most American sentence ever written.”

American HistoryAmericansU S HistoryClassicism
Book:First Principles: What America's Founders Learned from the Greeks and Romans and How That Shaped Our Country
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“We should drop the bizarre American fiction that corporations are people, enjoying all the rights of citizens, including unfettered campaign donations as a form of free speech. Indeed, corporations possess greater rights than do people, as they cannot be jailed or executed, while citizens can and do suffer those fates. As the legal historian Zephyr Teachout has observed, the founders would have considered corporate campaign spending the essence of political corruption.”

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Book:First Principles: What America's Founders Learned from the Greeks and Romans and How That Shaped Our Country
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