Frederic C. Rich > Quotes

“They said what they would do, and we did not listen. Then they did what they said they would do.”
― Frederic C. Rich

“This was not the first time that the world didn’t listen. In college I read Hitler’s Mein Kampf. Fourteen years before the first shot was fired, Hitler announced his plan to destroy the parliamentary system in Germany, to attack France and Eastern Europe, and to eliminate the Jews. Why, I asked the professor, did neither ordinary Germans voting in the Reichstag elections in July 1932, nor foreign leaders reacting to the rise of Nazism, believe him? Why was anyone surprised when he simply did what he said he would do? She had no answer. The fall of my senior year at Princeton, nineteen deeply religious young men flew planes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. During the decade before 9/11, Osama Bin Laden had shouted out his warnings of mass murder using all the means of modern communication. And still we were surprised when he did what he said he would do. So I suppose what happened here is that they said what they would do, and we did not listen. Then they did what they said they would do.”
― Frederic C. Rich, Christian Nation

“Nothing seems more inevitable than the status quo, and yet nothing is more certain than that it will—eventually—end suddenly and that we will need to make our lives in a new, unfamiliar and unexpected landscape.”
― Frederic C. Rich, Christian Nation

“Revolutions are rarely if ever majoritarian but instead are usually propelled by a small group that is disciplined and fanatical to which a passive majority then acquiesces.”
― Frederic C. Rich, Christian Nation

“I found it difficult to accept that people could be so easily manipulated into supporting positions that contradicted both their self-proclaimed values and their own interests.”
― Frederic C. Rich, Christian Nation

“In time of war the law falls silent. —Marcus Tullius Cicero, 52 BC”
― Frederic C. Rich, Christian Nation

“She said that the Jordan cabinet marked the triumph of personality over character.”
― Frederic C. Rich, Christian Nation