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Quote by J.P. Oakes

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City of Iron and Dust

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J.P. Oakes

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“More than anything I hope that this book resonates with you. And I can only hope that you will take away a sound belief that if you’re searching for where you belong you always have a home within yourself. The past dozen years has taught me that being a vagabond is not defined by distance traveled, or the many places I’ve called home. It is about adopting a certain attitude towards life. Much like a painter might consider what to do with a blank canvas, or a gardener with a blank space in the backyard, a vagabond looks upon the world as a field of potential and possibility, where beauty can be not just found but created, and adventure awaits any and all who are willing to seek it out.”

BraveryPotentialPossibilitiesVagabondAventure
Book:Vagabond
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“Those who stayed on and endured our hardship and deprivation and the almost daily risk to our lives were of necessity physically hardy fellows, but they were also the most courageous men out there then and the most dedicated to the anti-slavery cause. Father would have said it was because they were dedicated to the anti-slavery cause. 'It's a mistake,' he told me, 'to that that bullies make the best fighters, or that violent, cruel men would be fitter to oppose the Southerners than our mild, abolitionist Christians. Give me men of good principles, God-fearing men, men who respect themselves and each other, and with a dozen of them I'll oppose any hundred of such men as these Border Ruffians!”

BeliefBraveryBullyingHardinessAntislaveryBleeding KansasBorder RuffiansChristian SoldiersHeartiness
Book:Cloudsplitter
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“I firmly believe that all the best things on earth have been created by brave nerds. (I have on the wall of my office a photograph of the 1927 Solvay Conference on Physics. My heroes are those brave nerds who brought about a revolution and enabled the progress of all humankind. I find them so inspiring that I have hung a copy of that photo in the rooms of both my children.) But these nerds in Yabloko were cowardly, scared to experiment. The world changed and they stood still. There was a time when Yabloko was a faction in the State Duma, and the party could not imagine it ever being different. When they failed to get over that 5 percent threshold, they complained about abuse of power and falsification of results. They were indignant and claimed that victory had been stolen from them and that in fact they had received many more votes. It was true that the election results even then were being flagrantly rigged, but Yabloko had also done nothing to fight for votes. Gradually the y resigned themselves to the idea that they could never win. They believed they were little people facing a huge, hostile country were nerds were unpopular. They became afraid of their voters, and their fear was masked by exaggerated elitism with intellectual overtones. Needless to say, no one cared for that, and they began to lose what little support they had left. This was absolutely contrary to my idea of how to do politics. I believed it was essential to find a common language with everyone. I feel at home with my former classmates, almost all of whom are now in the armed forces or police, as well as when I am being held in a detention center with drug addicts and hooligans of every variety. One such hapless guy in the next bunk has been telling me how he ruined his life, and that his HIV treatment is very expensive and doesn't work. We are discussing the ins and outs of methadone therapy. The Russian people are good; it's our leaders who are appalling. I had no doubt that 30 percent of the Russian population subscribed to democratic views, so we had every chance of becoming, over time, the political majority. That is why, when I realized Yabloko was deliberately alienating its supporters, I got tired of being in a political minority. I was ultimately expelled from the party. The pretext was my "nationalism.”

PoliticsAmbitionBraveryNationalismNerds
Book:Patriot: A Memoir
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“Whether my feelings were right or not, every day I felt relieved he was wounded. I was relieved he limped because he slept in my arms at night. I was relieved he had nothing more important to do than study or fish because I saw him every morning when I woke up. I couldn't tell him. I could never tell him, because the fact that he was not out there with all the other boys risking their lives for our country, for the world, was killing him. Every day it was killing him. But he was brave.”

BraveryInjuryReliefPeterWw2Wounded SoldierPiper
Book:Song of the Storm Petrel
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