Adam B

“Overcome by remorse at the part he had played in the downfall of the Girondins, Desmoulins had burst into tears when they were executed. He had since infuriated Robespierre by declaring in an obvious reference to him, ‘Love of country cannot exist when there is neither pity nor love for one’s fellow countrymen but only a soul dried up and withered by self-adulation.”
― Christopher Hibbert, The French Revolution

“When Trump suggested something crazy, Mattis would compliment the president on his strong instincts.5 But then, ever so slightly, he would complicate the story, eventually convincing the president that he wanted to do the opposite of what he had just said. Mattis understood that between the president’s susceptibility to flattery and disinterest in details, there was ample room to maneuver. Francis was counting on Mattis to use these skills to full effect in case they needed to talk Trump out of doing something crazy, like starting a nuclear war.”
― Jeffrey Lewis, The 2020 Commission Report on the North Korean Nuclear Attacks Against The United States

“three thousand captives perished in an epidemic in the grossly overcrowded prisons and a further two thousand were towed out in barges into the middle of the Loire and drowned, some of them stripped naked and bound together in couples. The river became so choked with these barges that ships weighing anchor brought them up filled with the dead. Birds of prey hovered over the waters, gorging themselves with human flesh, and the fish became so contaminated that orders had to be given forbidding them to be caught.”
― Christopher Hibbert, The French Revolution

“It was nothing more than a Leninist idea that war is decided not by weapons but by the will of the soldiers and their leaders. “If war is a test of weapons, then you Americans would always win,” Choe explained. “But you lost in Vietnam and Afghanistan and Iraq. That’s because war is a test of will.”
― Jeffrey Lewis, The 2020 Commission Report on the North Korean Nuclear Attacks Against The United States