Hgreenstein > Hgreenstein's Quotes

“Foreknowledge cannot be gotten from ghosts and spirits, cannot be had by analogy, cannot be found out by calculation. It must be obtained from people, people who know the conditions of the enemy.”
― Sun Tzu, The Art of War

“O divine art of subtlety and secrecy! Through you we learn to be invisible, through you inaudible, and hence we can hold the enemy's fate in our hands.”
― Sun Tzu, The Art of War

“Even if you strive diligently on your chosen path day after day, if your heart is not in accord with it, then even if you think you are on a good path, from the point of view of the straight and true, this is not a genuine path. If you do not pursue a genuine path to its consummation, then a little bit of crookedness in the mind will later turn into a major warp. Reflect on this.”
― Musashi Miyomoto, A Book of Five Rings: The Classic Guide to Strategy

“Nothing but sunrise and sunsetting
Men fighting the things that are-
Birthgiving and bloodletting
And a drunk god snoring afar.”
― Dan Levin, From the Battlefield: Dispatches of a World War II Marine

“Maybe I trust you to be a man and handle the gray reality of truth better than all these kids who still think in black-and-white.”

Commander Zeke Waters from The Only Way Out Is In”
― Lyn Gala

“Chickenshit refers to behavior that makes military life worse than it need be: petty harassment of the weak by the strong; open scrimmage for power and authority and prestige; sadism thinly disguised as necessary discipline; a constant 'paying off of old scores'; and insistence on the letter rather than the spirit of ordinances.”
― Paul Fussell, Wartime: Understanding and Behavior in the Second World War

“Interestingly, when they are on our side, we usually refer to them as guerrillas or partisans or freedom fighters. When they, the men in the hills, oppose a government we support, we call them insurgents.”
― Dick Couch, Chosen Soldier: The Making of a Special Forces Warrior

“The more I thought about it, the angrier I got. Was war just a power game for an elite few? Did the loss of human lives really matter to them, or was it just a way to keep score? In reading their own staff-authored speeches over and over again, had they deluded themselves, believing that any action they took was in the cause of freedom and thereby righteous?”
― Richard Cezar, MP

“It's hard to win a war with a front at your back.”
― Gregory S. Close, In Siege of Daylight

“Certainly, I believed that our democratic system of government was the best thing going. I was a flag-waver from way back. I was proud of my country. It was the moral weakness of our leaders that concerned me. They were prone to the same frailties of arrogance, greed, and sanctimony as those of any other country. The primitive concept of 'might makes right' still reigned supreme. Hadn't thousands of years of history taught us anything?”
― Richard Cezar, MP

“As the demands of the positions differed, and as I grew in age and experience, I found that I had changed as a leader. I learned to ask myself two questions: First, what must the organization I command do and be? And second, how can I best command to achieve that?”
― Stanley McChrystal, My Share of the Task: A Memoir

“War makes persons special, peoples cheap.”
― Brian Spellman, Cartoonist's Book Camp

“Too large a proportion of recent "mathematical" economics are mere concoctions, as imprecise as the initial assumptions they rest on, which allow the author to lose sight of the complexities and interdependencies of the real world in a maze of pretentious and unhelpful symbols.”
― John Maynard Keynes

“Expect the best, prepare for the worst.”
― Muhammad Ali Jinnah

“You're thinking about something, and it makes you forget to talk.”
― Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland

“A wise man can say a foolish thing at any time, anywhere, and to anybody.”
― Michael Bassey Johnson

“Eloquence in public assemblies is not the surest road to fame and preferment, at least unless it be used with great caution, very rarely, and with great reserve.”
― John Adams

“Paradox is a characteristic of truth.”
― Wilhelm Dilthey

“If there were a science of human beings it would be anthropology that aims at understanding the totality of experience through structural context.”
― Wilhelm Dilthey