Brandon Porter

“You may conquer an army with superior tactics and men, but you can conquer a nation only by conquering the hearts of the people.”
― Jack Weatherford, Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World

“The Mongol army had accomplished in a mere two years what the European Crusaders from the West and the Seljuk Turks from the East had failed to do in two centuries of sustained effort. They had conquered the heart of the Arab world. No other non-Muslim troops would conquer Baghdad or Iraq again until the arrival of the American and British forces in 2003.”
― Jack Weatherford, Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World

“Hamet, Seid, and Abdallah were stung by the irony that on the wild desert, where people had virtually nothing, they shared freely, but here, where resources were comparatively abundant, no one would offer them so much as a drink.”
― Dean King, Skeletons on the Zahara: A True Story of Survival

“If there is one lesson form the centuries-long story of the library, it is that libraries only last as long as people find them useful. In other words libraries need to adapt to survive as they have always adapted to survive.”
― ― Andrew Pettegree, The Library: A Fragile History