Kevin Peraino > Quotes

“His father, Acheson later recalled, believed that a great deal in life “could not be affected or mitigated, and, hence, must be borne. Borne without complaint, because complaints were a bore and nuisance to others and undermined the serenity essential to endurance.”
― Kevin Peraino, A Force So Swift: Mao, Truman, and the Birth of Modern China, 1949

“But Acheson said nothing about Taiwan—or even Korea. “We can help,” he concluded, “only where we are wanted and only where the conditions of help are really sensible and possible.”
― Kevin Peraino, A Force So Swift: Mao, Truman, and the Birth of Modern China, 1949

“He explained by quoting a favorite classical Greek definition of happiness: “the exercise of vital powers along lines of excellence, in a life affording them scope.” Public service, he wrote, provided an antidote to the “flatness of life.”
― Kevin Peraino, A Force So Swift: Mao, Truman, and the Birth of Modern China, 1949

“A bad temper in a man is preferable to a man without a temper,” Madame Chiang had once explained to her sisters.”
― Kevin Peraino, A Force So Swift: Mao, Truman, and the Birth of Modern China, 1949