Andreas

“Another often-asked question when I speak in public: “Do you have some good advice you might share with us?” Yes, I do. It comes from my savvy mother-in-law, advice she gave me on my wedding day. “In every good marriage,” she counseled, “it helps sometimes to be a little deaf.” I have followed that advice assiduously, and not only at home through fifty-six years of a marital partnership nonpareil. I have employed it as well in every workplace, including the Supreme Court of the United States. When a thoughtless or unkind word is spoken, best tune out. Reacting in anger or annoyance will not advance one’s ability to persuade.”
― Ruth Bader Ginsburg, My Own Words

“Beware the irrational, however seductive. Shun the 'transcendent' and all who invite you to subordinate or annihilate yourself. Distrust compassion; prefer dignity for yourself and others. Don't be afraid to be thought arrogant or selfish. Picture all experts as if they were mammals. Never be a spectator of unfairness or stupidity. Seek out argument and disputation for their own sake; the grave will supply plenty of time for silence. Suspect your own motives, and all excuses. Do not live for others any more than you would expect others to live for you.”
― Christopher Hitchens, Letters to a Young Contrarian

“Whoever the author or authors, Putin’s thesis lifted almost verbatim more than sixteen pages of text and six charts from an American textbook written by two professors at the University of Pittsburgh, which was translated into Russian in 1982—almost certainly at the behest of or with the approval of the KGB, which under Andropov was eager to find a way out of the Soviet Union’s economic stagnation. The thesis’s bibliography includes the textbook—Strategic Planning and Policy, by William R. King and David I. Cleland—as one of forty-seven sources, including papers and lectures by Putin at the institute, but in the text itself the work is neither credited explicitly nor are the lengthy passages lifted from its Russian translation acknowledged.”
― Steven Lee Myers, The New Tsar: The Rise and Reign of Vladimir Putin

“On the choppers were twenty-three SEALs and a Pakistani-American who spoke the local language, Pashto. If crowds gathered at the Abbottabad compound, he would tell people there was a Pakistani military exercise going on and they should go home. Also on the flight to Abbottabad was a dog named Cairo, who would prevent “squirters” from sneaking out of the compound, sniff out any explosives, and hunt for possible safe rooms.”
― Peter L. Bergen, The Rise and Fall of Osama bin Laden: The Biography