Jonas Benincase > Jonas's Quotes

“Ethical leaders never ask for loyalty. Those leading through fear—like a Cosa Nostra boss—require personal loyalty. Ethical leaders care deeply about those they lead, and offer them honesty and decency, commitment and their own sacrifice. They have a confidence that breeds humility. Ethical leaders know their own talent but fear their own limitations—to understand and reason, to see the world as it is and not as they wish it to be. They speak the truth and know that making wise decisions requires people to tell them the truth. And to get that truth, they create an environment of high standards and deep consideration—“love” is not too strong a word—that builds lasting bonds and makes extraordinary achievement possible. It would never occur to an ethical leader to ask for loyalty.”
― James Comey, A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies, and Leadership

“Mrs. Gunness, the paper declared, was “now thought to be still alive.”[”
― Harold Schechter, Hell's Princess: The Mystery of Belle Gunness, Butcher of Men

“In my case, intelligence was a disease that had led to a psychotic episode.”
― Tanya Thompson, Assuming Names: a con artist's masquerade

“There are two ways to dehumanize; the first is to strip people of all virtue; the second is to cleanse them of all sin.”
― Matthew Desmond, Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City

“I'd been beguiled by the new technology -- a toddler crawling toward a gun.”
― Jon Ronson, So You've Been Publicly Shamed

“Too few people asked, “What is true?” Too few people actually considered the possibilities and asked what might be going on, even if they believed I was out to lunch. Instead, folks rushed to their team, their side. Very few voices in the public square took the time to ask, “So what is this guy worried about and what is he saying, exactly?”
― James Comey, A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies, and Leadership

“The truth was a punch to the gut, and while you were falling, a knee to the face, then you could lie on the floor and bleed for a spell. Ed”
― Tanya Thompson, Assuming Names: a con artist's masquerade

“The friendly relations Belle enjoyed with her neighbors when she first came to La Porte were not fated to last. “No one was a friend of hers,” Louisa Diessl”
― Harold Schechter, Hell's Princess: The Mystery of Belle Gunness, Butcher of Men

“Hunters will tell you that a moose is a wily and ferocious forest creature. Nonsense. A moose is a cow drawn by a three-year-old.”
― Bill Bryson, A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail

“But I wasn’t out here to keep myself from having to say I am not afraid. I’d come, I realized, to stare that fear down, to stare everything down, really—all that I’d done to myself and all that had been done to me. I couldn’t do that while tagging along with someone else.”
― Cheryl Strayed, Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail

“It makes perfect sense that if human beings are raised in warm, loving households; if they are brought up to believe that the world is a secure and decent place, then they will grow up with a healthy relationship toward themselves and other people. - able to give love freely and receive it in return. Conversely, if a person is severely mistreated from his earliest years, subjected to constant psychological and physical abuse, he or she will grow up with a malignant view of life. To such a person, the world is a hateful place where all human relationships are based, not on love and respect, but on power, suffering, and humiliation.”
― Harold Schechter, The Serial Killer Files: The Who, What, Where, How, and Why of the World's Most Terrifying Murderers

“She grasped the crook and flail with cool hands and sank gracefully to her knees. The High Priest of Amun placed a piece of flatbread imprinted with an ankh, the symbol of everlasting life, upon her tongue. It was gritty, the dough having been sprinkled with sand blessed by all the High Priests before it was baked that morning.”
― Stephanie Thornton, Daughter of the Gods: A Novel of Ancient Egypt

“Jobs. Musk is a sci-fi version of P. T. Barnum who has gotten extraordinarily rich by preying on people’s fear and self-hatred. Buy a Tesla. Forget about the mess you’ve made of the planet for a while.”
― Ashlee Vance, Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future

“Human beings have neither kindness, nor faith, nor charity beyond what serves to increase the pleasure of the moment.”
― Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway

“He was leading a double life as an undercover CIA agent by then, having volunteered his services to the agency a few years earlier after coming across one of its ads in the classified pages of the Washington Post.”
― John Carreyrou, Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup

“That was how you survived. See the world as it is. Not as you think it is. Not as you want it to be, or think it should be. Not even as it was yesterday. See it exactly as it is, right now.”
― Barry Kirwan, When the children come

“The mountains she’d viewed in childhood as nurturing have now taken on a menacing quality. Their stippled surfaces—the dark of trees rising from a background of white—give the impression of something more mythic than geological. Leviathans hibernating in the open, ready to stir at any moment and swallow her whole.”
― Hank Quense, The King Who Disappeared

“When a human lighthouse sees you in the midst of your storm, it points you toward safety and protection. In doing so, it also sends you and uncompromising message of belief: Yes, the situation is difficult, but you are not alone. I’m standing right here with you, and I know the way home.”
― Steve Pemberton, The Lighthouse Effect: How Ordinary People Can Have an Extraordinary Impact in the World

“As an emotional caretaker of her family, Jackie Kennedy was extraordinary. She defied the instructions of White House social advisers to make time for raising her children in as normal a way as possible. “If you bungle raising your children, I don’t think whatever else you do matters very much.” – Jackie Kennedy”
― Anne Michaud, Why They Stay: Sex Scandals, Deals, and Hidden Agendas of Nine Political Wives

“A volte, quando avete capito che il vostro treno non si sta veramente muovendo, potete passare un altro mezzo minuto sospesi tra due regni della coscienza: quello che sa che non vi state muovendo e quello che invece ne ha la sensazione. Potete svolazzare avanti e indietro tra queste percezioni e provare una specie di vertigine mentale. E se è così, siete nel territorio della pazzia: un luogo dove le false impressioni hanno tutte le caratteristiche della realtà.”
― Susanna Kaysen, Girl, Interrupted

“It turns out that one can perpetrate all manner of heinous villainy under a cloak of courtesy and good cheer. . .a man will forfeit all sensible self-interest if he finds you affable enough to share your company over a flagon of ale.”
― Christopher Moore, Fool

“It's useless to lecture a human.”
― Rick Riordan, The Lightning Thief

“He smiled. “You are always just Eadlyn. And you are always the queen. You are everything to everyone. And infinitely more to me.” - Erik”
― Kiera Cass, The Crown

“Flora reached out and grabbed hold of William Spiver's hand, and he held on to her. It was as if he were drowning and she were standing on solid ground. According to TERRIBLE THINGS! drowning people were desperate, out of their minds with fear. In their panic they could pull you, the rescuer, under, if you weren't careful. So Flora held on tightly to William Spiver. And he held on tightly back.”
― Kate DiCamillo, Flora & Ulysses: The Illuminated Adventures

“I feel like I owe him something, and I hate owing people. Maybe if I had thanked him at some point, I'd be feeling less conflicted now. I thought about it a couple of times, but the opportunity never seemed to present itself. And now it never will. Because we're going to be thrown into an arena to fight to the death. Exactly how am I supposed to work in a thank-you in there? Somehow it just won't seem sincere if I'm trying to slit his throat.”
― Suzanne Collins, The Hunger Games

“He didn’t give a damn for the defeatist Kennedy, or indeed for that stuffed-shirt Chamberlain, whom Hitler had comprehensively hoodwinked. Nothing should stand in the way of a murder investigation, however lowly the victim. No doubt Joan’s fate would seem unimportant in the greater scheme of things whenever the Luftwaffe got round to bombing London, but that was nothing to him. It was his job to seek out the truth behind her death, regardless.”
― Mark Ellis, Princes Gate

“What’s plan B?” "I don’t know sir I’m still working on plan A.”
― Robert Agnello, The Glimmers Save Christmas

“This faulty light fitting at the front door with the dangerously flickering bulb looks rather festive. Who says I don't do Christmas?”
― R.D. Ronald

“Finally, the fox gently pulled both ear loops outward at the same time to make a pretty bow on top of the bunny’s head. The tips of her ears, hung just at her cheek bones.”
― Sybrina Durant, Cleo Can Tie A Bow: A Rabbit and Fox Story

“You shall address me as ‘My Dearest’,’ he repeated in a mocking voice, trying to copy her tone. ‘You will forget all about this conversation when you leave this room.’ It was interesting that tone; it had a sort of hypnotising ring to it.”
― Max Nowaz, The Three Witches and the Master