Quotessence
Home / Quotes / Quote by James Irwin

Quote by James Irwin

“Sometimes people do foolish and dangerous things for nearly no reason at all, other than the opportunity presents itself, and no small voice in their heads tells them not to do it.”

Quote by James Irwin

Book:Nina's Friends
Create image

Work

Nina's Friends

Browse quotes and source details for this work. more

Author

James Irwin
James Irwin

James Irwin was an American astronaut born on March 17, 1930, and passed away on August 8, 1991. He is renowned for his role in the Apollo 15 mission, the sixth manned mission to the Moon in human history. more

You May Also Like

“We must not repeat the same mistake. Putin will not last forever, and we have no way of knowing what the nature of his departure will be-voluntary, forced, or natural. But from our history we can imagine how great the temptation may be to overlook at first small, the more major, transgressions on the part of whomever we are backing. The new leader gives voice to our interests, you can imagine someone saying, our political outlook. In order, for example, not to let the populists come to power, he may tweak, tamper, and tinker a little. He may make use of the national television channel. But what of it? He'll be telling it how it is, he's our guy, after all, and he'll only get rid of people if they are really asking for it. That's why, as a reminder of mistakes in the past and a pointer for the future, I would very much like this sense of karmic retribution to be shared by as many people as possible. People who, like me back then, turned a blind eye to the lawlessness, the lies, and the hypocrisy and saw it all as a case of the ends justifying the means and as necessary backing for a particular team.”

PrinciplesDisciplineConsistencyPopulismPrincipled LeadershipPolitical Support
Book:Patriot: A Memoir
Create image

“In business, success is not about doing more—it’s about doing what works, again and again.”

FocusDisciplineSimplicityProductivitySystems ThinkingBusiness GrowthSuccess HabitsConservative PrinciplesEntrepreneur WisdomBusiness Efficiency
Book:Money's Dirty Little Secrets: How to Break the Rules, Get Filthy Rich, and Laugh All the Way to the Bank
Create image

“Jane didn't mean to be late, just as she didn't mean for her whole life to feel like an undisciplined failure. She had every intention of being on time and even planned carefully to do so. But something would always come up...Jane lived a priority-less life. Whatever was right in front of her became her new number-one priority. The speaker called her a wonderful woman you'd never want to hire...She is willing to do anything for anyone at any time...Her weakness is that by trying to meet the needs right in front of her, she's unable to keep the commitments she's already made.”

DisciplinePrioritiesLateness
Book:Crazy Busy: A (Mercifully) Short Book about a (Really) Big Problem
Create image

“I was not really sure what my father did in the army. His job seemed mainly to involve two activities: One was rushing to his station to signal an alert drill daily at 9:00 p.m...The other activity was catching runaway soldiers...I could not get the adults to explain why anyone wanted to run away. Where were they going? There were soldiers everywhere. They were used as a general workforce, sweeping the streets, driving cars, hauling stuff around. Others were always marching somewhere. Often they would waylay schoolkids near a store and ask them to go in to buy something. They were afraid to go in themselves because they might be spotted by a patrol on the lookout for soldiers absent from their unit without leave. The soldiers didn't look particularly happy, but neither did they seem so unhappy they might be thinking of running off into the forest. As I found out later, they were running away because of dedovshchina ("bullying"). Bullying of raw recruits by older soldiers reached such a level that in 1982 the minister of defense had to issue a secret order, "On Combating Nonregulation Relations," thereby recognizing it as a widespread practice. Hazing became a self-replicating system. You joined the army, got beaten up, your money was taken from you, and you were forced to scrub floors and do the laundry of the "older" soldiers, who joined the army just a year and a half before you. After all these humiliations, you just waited for your turn to beat up the rookies, because that was just the way it was, a necessary part of army life, something that transformed a civilian wimp into a real man. The system was often tacitly endorsed by officers, who saw it as a self-regulating system of training and discipline. For example, some rural idiot joins the army, fails to understand elementary commands, looks scruffy, and is generally hopeless. So then the staff sergeant punches him a couple of times in the middle of the chest ("in the soul"), which really huts (you cannot punch him in the face, because the marks would show), and he immediately comes to his senses and starts behaving like a seasoned soldier. Needless to say, such an idiotic practice did nothing to improve discipline, and fundamentally undermined respect for the army. Soldiers returning home after two years of national service luridly described the bullying to those yet to be conscripted. It closely resembled the revelations of people returning from prison. Mothers listened in horror and then had no wish to send their sons off to the army. Periodically, after yet another unfortunate young man, unable any longer to bear the hazing, committed suicide or shot his abusers, the army would launch another anti-bullying campaign, which never did any good. The practice is institutionalized and can only be combated by changing the institution, primarily by creating an army in which professional servicemen and servicewomen are paid a salary to defend the county. What is not needed is an army that depends on hapless youths taken from their families (for two years in the U.S.S.R., and nowadays for one) who are forced to spend their time in an institution that is a bizarre form of survival school. Curiously, the army takes a certain pride in this constant imbecility, as I began to notice as I grew older. It was regularly remarked that our soldiers and officers were so inured to carrying out ridiculous orders-for example, with my own eyes I saw soldiers painting grass green before inspection-that, under fire, they would perform miracles of discipline. Because they lived in such poverty and were so used to hardship, there could be no doubt that in the event of war the pampered Americans, with their luxurious barracks and individual apartments for officers, would be defeated.”

MilitaryDisciplineHazing
Book:Patriot: A Memoir
Create image