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“uncomfortable truth of libraries throughout the ages: no society has ever been satisfied with the collections inherited from previous generations. What we will frequently see in this book is not so much the apparently wanton destruction of beautiful artefacts so lamented by previous studies of library history, but neglect and redundancy, as books and collections that represented the values and interests of one generation fail to speak to the one that follows. The fate of many collections was to degrade in abandoned attics and ruined buildings, even if only as the prelude to renewal and rebirth in the most unexpected places.”
― The Library: A Fragile History
― The Library: A Fragile History
“In preparing the psychological attack on a city, Genghis Khan began with two examples of what awaited the people. He offered generous terms of surrender to the outlying communities, and the ones that accepted the terms and joined the Mongols received great leniency. In the words of the Persian chronicler, “whoever yields and submits to them is safe and free from the terror and disgrace of their severity.” Those that refused received exceptionally harsh treatment, as the Mongols herded the captives before them to be used as cannon fodder in the next attack.”
― Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World
― Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World
“If an undertaking was easy, someone else already would have done it. – If you follow in another’s footsteps, you miss the problems really worth solving. – Excellence is born of preparation, dedication, focus, and tenacity; compromise on any of these and you become average. – Every so often, life presents a great moment of decision, an intersection at which a man must decide to stop or go; a person lives”
― Pirate Hunters: Treasure, Obsession and the Search for a Legendary Pirate Ship
― Pirate Hunters: Treasure, Obsession and the Search for a Legendary Pirate Ship
“A thousand days of training to develop, ten thousand days of training to polish. You must examine all this well.”
― The Complete Book of Five Rings
― The Complete Book of Five Rings
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