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He was one of the few politicians who genuinely strived to make people’s lives better rather than boost his own polling numbers.
Once you acquired a taste for secrets, nothing else could satisfy.
“Jorani’s going through a bit of a manga phase, but they’re good otherwise.”
They’d noticed when he joined her in the booth but had returned to intermittent napping immediately. It was hard to beat canine judgment for first impressions.
“It’s amazing how many words they use to say so few things.”
the Netherlands being one of the few nations to have survived the dissolution of the EU intact. The weird little country had always found a way to thrive on the edges of things, never big or powerful enough to have much gravity of its own.
Love was beauty and pain and profound confusion.
There were few currencies as valuable as lies of omission.
The shield that guards the innocent,
“That’s who we’re protecting. Real Americans. Not the bullshit artists in Congress whose only constituency is themselves.
“It’s not paranoia if it’s true.”
Espionage was mostly logistics.
Silicon Valley was the nation’s inventor, not its ruler.
“Great is the only work worth doing.”
Cutouts didn’t know the real reasons for anything.
There were moments when you regretted words even as you said them but couldn’t swallow them any more than you could turn back time.
Good training made everyone else’s reactions in crisis situations look like slow motion.
We’re past the buzzword cover-story phase. It’s time to get real.
Better to enjoy whatever time you’ve got left than turn yourself into a medical experiment.”
We play the greatest game there is.”
Rules don’t apply when he decides to squash his competition or open up new markets.
“It’s my job.” “So said the Nazi in charge of the gas chamber.”
Sometimes it’s the things we forget that refuse to stay hidden.”
Just as a seasoned public speaker knew the power of a pregnant pause, Diana respected the prime importance of brief moments of respite in the middle of an op.
Satisfied, she drew her silenced sidearm. Never hesitate. He who hesitates, dies.
“I’ve always found vanity to be the most unfortunate aspect of megalomaniacs,”
“They say it’s about the world, but it’s actually just about them. All those grand dreams are rooted in nothing more than personal insecurity.
You’re so obsessed with yourself that you thin...
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In the special kind of blindness brought on by apparent omniscience, they were hemorrhaging their best people.
the digital world was just as important as the physical one and ought to be a public jurisdiction, not a walled garden.
Lowell was an opportunist, not a patriot, and his professions of public-mindedness were an odious mix of selfish grandstanding and ironic condescension.
But his lack of ethics didn’t mean his argument was unfounded.
The private health insurance industry had fought tooth and nail against government encroachment, but the ultimate reform to a single-payer system had improved quality of care, reduced costs, and benefited millions of Americans.
Positive outcomes could outshine malign origins.
She had forgotten the inescapable core tenet of espionage. All trust ended in betrayal.
The prow cut through the still water of the lake, slicing apart the landscape reflected on its surface.
Patriots understood that the country was bigger than their personal ambitions.
“What’s money for if not to indulge passion?”
looking into eyes whose apparent innocence was the greatest lie ever told.
The only way to fight someone who knew your weaknesses was to feign indifference.
“The Romans, the Mongols, the British, they all knew what it meant to see inherited glory rust away to nothing.
The first planetary empire.”
“So many of the problems we face today only exist because we don’t have a global government. Human trafficking, environmental degradation, tax evasion, poverty, immigration, pandemics.
Knowing that you were being manipulated didn’t stop it from working.
Contentment was a condition with which Helen was constitutionally unfamiliar.
When her grandmother had passed away, Diana had been cast adrift.
She hadn’t acted out of dedication to high-minded principles but out of a concrete sense of fairness.
If we become what we once resisted, we lose everything.
We achieve so much more as a bastion than we ever could as an empire.”
One of the difficult lessons I’ve had to learn in my own journey is not only to assess risk but to gauge when risks are worth taking.
