Patrick Anderson

“Don't ask me who's the father of the H-bomb, because nobody is.... The whole thing was a matter of people putting ideas into a pot around a coffee cable. Somebody had an idea and that doesn't work, but they give me an idea, but that doesn't work, but you can give me an idea. Because they were beating one idea against another around a table, in front of a black board and so on. It wasn't anybody's real invention; it was just a lot of people working on it.... Eventually an idea appeared, which looked as if it might work, and for which the technology for the (primary) was reasonably available. Not completely, but could be gotten together pretty fast if you put some more work on that.... It's a very complicated technical question.”
― Richard Rhodes, Dark Sun: The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb

“Nuclear posture is the incorporation of some number and type of nuclear warheads and delivery vehicles state's overall military structure, the rules and procedures governing how those weapons are deployed, when and under what conditions they might be used, against what targets, and who has the authority to make those decisions. Nuclear posture is best thought of as the operational, rather than the declaratory, nuclear doctrine of a country; while the two can overlap, it is the operational doctrine that generates deterrent power against an opponent. To put it bluntly, states care more about what an adversary can credibly do with its nuclear weapons than what it says about them.”
― Vipin Narang, Nuclear Strategy in the Modern Era: Regional Powers and International Conflict

“I realised that the search for the Knowledge has encouraged us to think of the House as if it were a sort of riddle to be unravelled, a text to be interpreted, and that if ever we discover the Knowledge, then it will be as if the Value has been wrested from the House and all that remains will be mere scenery.”
― Susanna Clarke, Piranesi

“In my mind are all the tides, their seasons, their ebbs and their flows. In my mind are all the halls, the endless procession of them, the intricate pathways. When this world becomes too much for me, when I grow tired of the noise and the dirt and the people, I close my eyes and I name a particular vestibule to myself; then I name a hall.”
― Susanna Clarke, Piranesi