American Prometheus

by Kai Bird

To try to be happy is to try to build a machine with no other specification than that it shall run noiselessly.”

“Nobody could think straight in a place like that. Everybody who goes there will go crazy.”

“Once out of his presence the bright things that had been said were difficult to reconstruct or remember.

In battle, in forest, at the precipice in the mountains On the dark great sea, in the midst of javelins and arrows, In sleep, in confusion, in the depths of shame, The good deeds a man has done before defend him.

“We know this because in the last war, the two nations which we like to think are the most enlightened and humane in the world—Great Britain and the United States—used atomic weapons against an enemy which was essentially defeated.”

“when it’s once been given to a man to do something sensible, afterward life is a little strange.”