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Quote by Ernst Jünger

“Throughout the war, it was always my endeavour to view my opponent without animus, and to form an opinion of him as a man on the basis of the courage he showed. I would always try and seek him out in combat and kill him, and I expected nothing else from him. But never did I entertain mean thoughts of him. When prisoners fell into my hands, later on, I felt responsible for their safety, and would always do everything in my power for them.”

Quote by Ernst Jünger

Book:Storm of Steel
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Storm of Steel

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Ernst Jünger

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Book:Storm of Steel
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“...I remembered how Philby's enemy, [T.E.] Lawrence, refused his country's decorations, and later even a commission in the R.A.F., and enlisted as a simple airman. In 1940 this seemed irresponsible and hysterical to me. But by 1945 I had seen a score or more British and Americans on the verge of treason through similar bitterness. . . . By 1945 I grew to understand the Philby-Lawrence reaction and to consider such men, and their honour, as casualties of war -- for war cares no more for honour, or for decency and honesty, than it does for life.”

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“The acceptance of the truth now appears to be increasingly based on the acceptability of the appearance and Mandarin reputation of the person proclaiming it. We’re increasingly in the grip of the logical fallacy of the appeal to authority. When people appeal to authority, they are claiming that something must be true because it is said or believed by someone who is said to be an “authority” on the subject. Anyone with an “out there” image is deemed automatically not to be an authority because the Mandarins have brainwashed everyone to believe that authorities must look as bland as possible, just like them.”

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“The Han language resembles no other on this earth. While I had no trouble learning to speak Mongol, and to write with its alphabet, I never learned more than a rudimentary comprehension of Han. The Mongol speech is gruff and harsh, like its speakers, but it at least employs sounds not too different from those heard in our Western languages. The Han, by contrast, is a speech of staccato syllables, and they are sung rather than spoken. Evidently the Han throat is incapable of forming more than a very few of the sounds that other people make. The sound of r, for one, is quite beyond them. My name in their speech was always Mah-ko. And, having so very few noises to work with, the Han must sound them on different tones—high, mid, low, rising, falling—to make a sufficient variety for compiling a vocabulary. It is like this: suppose our Ambrosian plainsong Gloria in excelsis had that meaning of “glory in the highest” only when sung to its traditional up and down neumes, and, if the syllables were sung in different ups and downs, were to change its meaning utterly—to “darkness in the lowest” or “dishonor to the basest” or even “fish for the frying.”

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