Jennifer

“Helping someone else is the best way to ensure your own survival. It takes you out of yourself. It helps you to rise above your fears. Now you’re a rescuer, not a victim. And seeing how your leadership and skill buoy others up gives you more focus and energy to persevere. The cycle reinforces itself: You buoy them up, and their response buoys you up. Many people who survive alone report that they were doing it for someone else (a wife, boyfriend, mother, son) back home.”
― Laurence Gonzales, Deep Survival: Who Lives, Who Dies, and Why

“The charge of the Light Brigade was forever memorialized as a moment of glorious sacrifice, as needless slaughters ordered by shortsighted generals so often are.”
― Julia Baird, Victoria the Queen: An Intimate Biography of the Woman Who Ruled an Empire

“An effective tsar could be harsh provided he was consistently harsh. Rulers are often killed not for brutality but for inconsistency.”
― Simon Sebag Montefiore, The Romanovs: 1613-1918

“It’s the nature of our society that I’m considered unworthy of huge financial reward for that risk. But what can be earned is a certain nobility—not in the sense of aristocratic status but in the sense of striving for quality and dignity of behavior and living.”
― Laurence Gonzales, Deep Survival: Who Lives, Who Dies, and Why