Quotessence
Home / Quotes / Quote by R. Alan Woods

Quote by R. Alan Woods

Work

The Journey Is the Destination: A Book of Quotes With Commentaries

Browse quotes and source details for this work. more

Author

R. Alan Woods

Browse famous quotes and profile details for R. Alan Woods. more

You May Also Like

“Mr. Roosevelt liked to be liked. He courted and wooed people. He had good taste, an affable disposition, and profound delight in people and human relationships. This was probably the single most revealing of all his characteristics; it was both a strength and a weakness, and is a clue to much. To want to be liked by everybody does not merely mean amiability; it connotes will to power, for the obvious reason that if the process is carried on long enough and enough people like the person, his power eventually becomes infinite and universal. Conversely, any man with great will to power and sense of historical mission, like Roosevelt, not only likes to be liked; he has to be liked, in order to feed his ego. But FDR went beyond this; he wanted to be liked not only by contemporaries on as broad a scale as possible, but by posterity. This, among others, is one reason for his collector's instinct. He collected himself—for history. He wanted to be spoken of well by succeeding generations, which means that he had the typical great man's wish for immortality, and hence—as we shall see in a subsequent chapter—he preserved everything about himself that might be of the slightest interest to historians. His passion for collecting and cataloguing is also a suggestive indication of his optimism. He was quite content to put absolutely everything on the record, without fear of what the world verdict of history would be.”

CharmPopularityChurchillFdrWinston ChurchillRooseveltHeartlessnessWill To Power
Book:Roosevelt In Retrospect: A Profile in History
Create image

“Returning to Washington,FDR declared that Yalta Conference had put and end to the kind of balance-of-power divisions that had long marred global politics. His assessment echoed Woodrow Wilson's idealistic and equally inaccurate claims at the end of World War I. In London, Churchill told his cabinet that "poor Chamberlain believed he could trust Hitler. He was wrong. But I don't think I'm wrong about Stalin." Soviet-British friendship, Churchill maintained, "would continue as long as Stalin was in charge.”

HitlerStalinChurchillFdrYalta
Book:Prague Winter: A Personal Story of Remembrance and War, 1937-1948
Create image

“Later that afternoon with the Germans already in Trafalgar Square and advancing down Whitehall to take their position in the rear, the enemy unit advancing across St. James 'Park made their final charge. Several of those in the Downing Street position were already dead... and at last the Bren ceased its chatter, its last magazine emptied. Churchill reluctantly abandoned the machine-gun, drew his pistol and with great satisfaction, for it was a notoriously inaccurate weapon, shot dead the first German to reach the foot of the steps. As two more rushed forward, covered by a third in the distance, Winston Churchill moved out of the shelter of the sandbags, as if personally to bar the way up Downing Street. A German NCO, running up to find the cause of the unexpected hold-up, recognised him and shouted to the soldiers not to shoot, but he was too late. A burst of bullets from a machine-carbine caught the Prime Minister in the chest. He died instantly, his back to Downing Street, his face toward the enemy, his pistol still in his hand.”

ChurchillAlternative HistoryOperation Sealion
Author:Norman Longmate
Create image

“It's a pushing age," Churchill wrote his mother as a young man, "and we must shove with the rest." It may well be that Winston Churchill was the greatest pusher in history. His life spanned the final calvary charge of the British Empire, which he witnesses as a young war correspondent in 1898, and ended well into the nuclear age, indeed the space age, both of which he helped usher in. His first trip to America was on a steamship (to be introduces on stage by Mark Twain, no less) and his final one was on a Boeing 707 that flew 500 miles per hour. In between he saw two world wars, the invention of the car, radio, and rock and roll, and countless trials and triumphs.”

Churchill
Book:Stillness Is the Key
Create image