Vladimir

“Others thought that GiveDirectly was aligned with the Illuminati. That they would blight the village with giant snakes. That they performed blood magic. (More benignly, they also heard the money might be coming from JaKogelo himself.)”
― Annie Lowrey, Give People Money: How a Universal Basic Income Would End Poverty, Revolutionize Work, and Remake the World

“If the Chiefs had successfully pressed with the president their position that the United States needed to act forcefully to defeat the North, they might have forced a difficult choice between war and withdrawal from South Vietnam. Through their own actions as well as through the manipulation of Taylor and McNamara, the Chiefs missed their opportunity to influence the formulation of a strategic concept for Vietnam, and thereafter always found themselves in the difficult position of questioning a policy that the president had already approved. The intellectual foundation for deepening American involvement in Vietnam had been laid without the participation of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. 5”
― H.R. McMaster, Dereliction of Duty: Lyndon Johnson, Robert McNamara, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Lies That Led to Vietnam

“Mendel hated motorists. Give a man a car of his own and he leaves humility and common sense behind him in the garage. He didn’t care who it was—he’d seen bishops in purple doing seventy in a built-up area, frightening pedestrians out of their wits.”
― John le Carré, Call for the Dead

“Capital, it must be remembered, maintains a war more than forced contributions. Farmers”
― Thucydides, The History of the Peloponnesian War