“No matter how little every moment is, cherish every bit of it. For the smallest moments are the most memorable.”
“Yamamoto was considered, both in Japan and the United States, as intelligent, capable, aggressive, and dangerous. Motivated by his skill as a poker player and casino gambler, he was continually calculating odds on an endless variety of options. He played bridge and chess better than most good players. Like most powerful leaders he was articulate and persuasive, and once in a position of power he pushed his agenda relentlessly. Whether he would push his odds successfully in the Pacific remained to be seen.”
Source: Diplomats & Admirals: From Failed Negotiations and Tragic Misjudgments to Powerful Leaders and Heroic Deeds, the Untold Story of the Pacific War from Pearl Harbor to Midway
“I need just be a bayonet, a bayonet named Diving Punishment. I wish I'd been born a storm. Or a menace. Or a single grenade. No heart, no tears, just as a terrible gale'd have been good. If [by doing this] I become that, then so be it.”
“Back in Washington, alone in the late afternoon of December 7, a chastened Franklin Roosevelt considered the situation. He may have wondered how things had gone so terribly wrong. But what might have been was now hindsight—the United States was at war and was in it to win. He spoke quietly to his secretary, Grace Tully. “Sit down, Grace. I’m going before Congress tomorrow. I’d like to dictate my message. It will be short.””
Source: Diplomats & Admirals: From Failed Negotiations and Tragic Misjudgments to Powerful Leaders and Heroic Deeds, the Untold Story of the Pacific War from Pearl Harbor to Midway
“McGuire started to rub the soap across himself, amazed at the change in his own skin colour as the filth of years of poverty floated off him.”
Source: No Road to Khartoum
“My worry is that they will look down on our enemies. They have seen the Arabs in these mud towns and think the Dervishes are the same quality. That can’t be true. These are the people that wiped out Billy Hicks and his column. He had modern weapons and they had sticks and swords. That speaks to a rare sort of courage and determination.”
Source: No Road to Khartoum
“Sometimes it's hard to keep the facts straight after so long, to remember all that has happened (though the emotions remain like stains).”
Source: How High We Go in the Dark
“Facts didn't matter to people if they were smiling.”
Source: Monsters in My Mind
“In many advanced democracies there is now no common debate, let alone a common narrative. People have always had different opinions. Now they have different facts. At the same time, in an information sphere without authorities--political, cultural, moral--and no trusted sources, there is no easy way to distinguish between conspiracy theories and true stories. False, partisan, and often deliberately misleading narratives now spread in digital wildfires, cascades of falsehood that move too fast for fact checkers to keep up. And even if they could, it no longer matters: a part of the public will never read or see fact-checking websites, and if they do they won't believe them.”
Source: Twilight of Democracy: The Seductive Lure of Authoritarianism
“What must it be, to burst out of deep infant sleep into the shocking singular fact of existence.”
Source: Lessons