Austin

“The Mother of God. Good-looking. Well-dressed. A good person. Knows how to make the absolute best of a situation. And never uppity about any of it.”
― Kathleen Zamboni McCormick, Dodging Satan: My Irish/Italian, Sometimes Awesome, But Mostly Creepy, Childhood

“Man cannot survive except through his mind. He comes on earth unarmed. His brain is his only weapon. Animals obtain food by force. man had no claws, no fangs, no horns, no great strength of muscle. He must plant his food or hunt it. To plant, he needs a process of thought. To hunt, he needs weapons,and to make weapons - a process of thought. From this simplest necessity to the highest religious abstraction, from the wheel to the skyscraper, everything we are and we have comes from a single attribute of man -the function of his reasoning mind.”
― Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead

“يمكن لطفل أن يتابع الكتاب المقدس قبل أن يتابع إقيلدس, ليس لأن الكتاب المقدس أبسط (يمكن قول العكس) بل لأنه مطروح بأسلوب رمزي و قصصي”
― Oliver Sacks, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and Other Clinical Tales

“Nagumo was suddenly on his own. At this crucial time, the cost of his failure to learn the complicated factors that played into carrier operations suddenly exploded. Now, when every minute counted, it was too late to learn the complexities involved in loading different munitions on different types of planes on the hangar deck, too late to learn how the planes were organized and spotted on the flight decks, too late to learn the flight capabilities of his different types of planes, and far too late to know how to integrate all those factors into a fast-moving and efficient operation with the planes and ordnance available at that moment. Commander Genda, his brilliant operations officer, couldn’t make the decisions for him now. It was all up to Nagumo. At 0730 on June 4, 1942, years of shipbuilding, training, and strategic planning had all come to this moment. Teams of highly trained pilots, flight deck personnel, mechanics, and hundreds of other sailors were ready and awaiting his command. The entire course of the battle, of the Combined Fleet, and even perhaps of Japan were going to bear the results of his decisions, then and there.”
― Dale A. Jenkins, Diplomats & Admirals: From Failed Negotiations and Tragic Misjudgments to Powerful Leaders and Heroic Deeds, the Untold Story of the Pacific War from Pearl Harbor to Midway