Blade

“Lieutenant Moore and his two companions were trying to give chase. They found to their amazement that the Zeros were faster and more maneuverable, climbing at an astounding rate. They had been assured there was no such thing as a good Japanese fighter plane, although exact data on these Zeros had been sent to the War Department by the brilliant and unorthodox Colonel Claire Chennault in the fall of 1940. The chief of the Flying Tigers had also elaborated in detail on ways whereby the heavier P-40 should be able to shoot down the faster Zero, but this information, which could have saved the lives of bewildered American pilots dying that moment, had been filed away. Chennault was too much of a maverick to be taken seriously by his superiors.”
― John Willard Toland, The Rising Sun: The Decline and Fall of the Japanese Empire, 1936-1945

“By listing Disease X, an undetermined disease, the WHO is acknowledging that outbreaks do not always come from an identified source and that, as it admits, “a serious international epidemic could be caused by a pathogen currently unknown to cause human disease”.”
― Tom Standage, Uncommon Knowledge: the Economist Explains

“When Communist Party chiefs in Russia went fishing, scuba divers plunged underwater and put fish on the hooks. When they went hunting, specially bred elk, stag, and deer were made to saunter across the field in point-blank range. Everyone had a wonderful time. When the king of Afghanistan visited the Tajik resort of Tiger Gorge, he blew away the last Turan tiger in the country.”
― David Remnick, Lenin's Tomb: The Last Days of the Soviet Empire

“The Party justified its “dictatorship” through purity of faith. Their Scriptures were the teachings of Marxism-Leninism, regarded as a “scientific” truth. Since ideology was so important, every leader had to be—or seem to be—an expert on Marxism-Leninism, so that these ruffians spent their weary nights studying, to improve their esoteric credentials, dreary articles on dialectical materialism. It was so important that Molotov and Polina even discussed Marxism in their love letters: “Polichka my darling . . . reading Marxist classics is very necessary . . . You must read some more of Lenin’s works coming out soon and then a number of Stalin’s . . . I so want to see you.”
― Simon Sebag Montefiore, Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar