More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
She was a poor person, I was her poor child, and no one asks poor people if they want war.
It is always better to admire the best among our foes rather than the worst among our friends. Wouldn’t you agree, Commandant?
So it was that we soaped ourselves in sadness and we rinsed ourselves with hope, and for all that we believed almost every rumor we heard, almost all of us refused to believe that our nation was dead.
As Hegel said, tragedy was not the conflict between right and wrong but right and right, a dilemma none of us who wanted to participate in history could escape.
After all, nothing was more American than wielding a gun and committing oneself to die for freedom and independence, unless it was wielding that gun to take away someone else’s freedom and independence.
What am I dying for? he cried back. I’m dying because this world I’m living in isn’t worth dying for! If something is worth dying for, then you’ve got a reason to live.
Americans on the average do not trust intellectuals, but they are cowed by power and stunned by celebrity.
To live was to be haunted by the inevitability of one’s own decay, and to be dead was to be haunted by the memory of living.
What do those who struggle against power do when they seize power? What does the revolutionary do when the revolution triumphs? Why do those who call for independence and freedom take away the independence and freedom of others?
