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Kindle Notes & Highlights
War makes monsters of men. “Wrong,” says the Mayor. “It’s war that makes us men in the first place. Until there’s war, we are only children.”
What you do first anywhere is remembered for ever. It sets the whole future.”
Choices may be unbelievably hard but they’re never impossible.”
To say you have no choice is to release yourself from responsibility and that’s not how a person with integrity acts.”
It’s not how we fall. It’s how we get back up again.
“Leaders must sometimes make monstrous decisions,” she says, “and my monstrous decision was that if your life was likely to be lost on an errand you insisted on taking, then I would at least take the chance, however slim, to make your death worth it.”
“People say they want freedom, but what they really want is freedom from worry. If I take care of their problems, they don’t mind being told what to do.”
“Sometimes the people don’t know what’s best for them, Ivan,” she says. “Sometimes the people have to be convinced of things that are necessary. That’s what leadership is. Not shouting your head off in support of their every whim.”
What a sad thing men are. Can’t do nothing good without being so weak we have to mess it up. Can’t build something up without tearing it down.
“War makes monsters of men, you once said to me, Todd. Well, so does too much knowledge. Too much knowledge of your fellow man, too much knowledge of his weakness, his pathetic greed and vanity, and how laughably easy it is to control him.”
