Daniel > Daniel's Quotes

“Remember, if you don't get the question right, your answer doesn't matter.”
― William S Lind, On War

“The Coalition promised regime change but instead brought about state collapse,”
― Emma Sky, The Unraveling: High Hopes and Missed Opportunities in Iraq

“For the military, the greatest threat to the mission had become the US embassy.”
― Emma Sky, The Unraveling: High Hopes and Missed Opportunities in Iraq

“Bosnia is a country,” he said with a dry laugh, “where every boy grows up with the dream that someday he will own his own checkpoint.”
― Richard Holbrooke, To End a War: The Conflict in Yugoslavia--America's Inside Story--Negotiating with Milosevic

“For the German fighter pilot, there was no magic number of sorties or hours, the completion of which guaranteed a return home. He was already home, and in the skies over the Reich he faced an opponent who enjoyed overwhelming superiority. If he survived the first missions and his skills reached those of his opponents, he would fly until fatigue and strain led to a mistake that was more often than not fatal.”
― Williamson Murray, Strategy for Defeat: the Luftwaffe 1933 - 1945

“For Jefferson, there was one step crucial to creating a genuine natural aristocracy. The poor and rich had to have equal access to a good education.”
― Fareed Zakaria, In Defense of a Liberal Education

“the test scores used in admissions are a measure of what colleges take in, not what they produce. The fact that an Ivy League school has freshmen with high SAT scores tells us that it is a good magnet for talent but nothing else. What should matter is how students, including those with low SAT scores, improve over the course of their time in school.”
― Fareed Zakaria, In Defense of a Liberal Education

“There were no decisive moments or clear-cut victories. Rather, the American pressure put the German fighters in a meat grinder battle of attrition both in terms of pilots and of matériel. It was the cumulative effect of that intense pressure that in the final analysis enabled the Western Powers to gain air superiority over Europe; that achievement must be counted among the decisive victories of World War II.”
― Williamson Murray, Strategy for Defeat: the Luftwaffe 1933 - 1945

“intermixed with an exceedingly high level of competence on the tactical and operational side was a complete inability to see a relationship between means and ends on the level of grand strategy.”
― Williamson Murray, Strategy for Defeat: the Luftwaffe 1933 - 1945

“The process of planning is very valuable, for forcing you to think hard about what you are doing, but the actual plan that results from it is probably useless.”
― Venkatesh G. Rao, Tempo: Timing, Tactics and Strategy in Narrative-Driven Decision-Making

“for every complex question, there is an answer that is simple, elegant and wrong.”
― Venkatesh G. Rao, Tempo: Timing, Tactics and Strategy in Narrative-Driven Decision-Making

“The world is neither unipolar, multipolar, nor chaotic—it is all three at the same time.”
― Joseph S. Nye, Jr., The Future of Power

“A moral vision must be balanced by the realist dimension of prudence to have a reasonable prospect of success.”
― Joseph S. Nye Jr., Presidential Leadership and the Creation of the American Era

“I want you to carry this question home with you: gain such a victory, and what do you do with it?”
― Joseph S. Nye Jr., Presidential Leadership and the Creation of the American Era

“It costs nothing to learn from other people’s experience.”
― Williamson Murray, Successful Strategies: Triumphing in War and Peace from Antiquity to the Present

“no religion is inherently violent or peaceful; people are violent or peaceful.”
― Reza Aslan, Beyond Fundamentalism: Confronting Religious Extremism in the Age of Globalization

“once more, dully menacing, comes the noise of gunfire, and already from afar, like the bill of a woodpecker, sounds the knock-knocking of a machine gun. We grow calm and are almost glad to hear again the familiar, trusty noises of death.”
― Erich Maria Remarque, The Road Back

“the most progressive minister must shipwreck if he has a block of reactionary bureaucrats against him. And in Germany the bureaucrats all have their jobs still. —These pen-pushing Napoleons are invincible.”
― Erich Maria Remarque, The Road Back

“Children, that’s what a man needs—children, who know nothing about it.”
― Erich Maria Remarque, The Road Back

“Being forced to write clearly means, first, you have to think clearly.”
― Fareed Zakaria, In Defense of a Liberal Education

“That an ethnically divided posttotalitarian state should not make an easy transition to liberal democracy seems obvious to many people in hindsight.”
― Francis Fukuyama, Blindside: How to Anticipate Forcing Events and Wild Cards in Global Politics

“men had been everywhere and had seen everything, life’s greatest experience had ended with most of life still to be lived, to find common purpose in the quiet days of peace would be hard”
― Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man

“Loyalty is a noble quality, so long as it is not blind and does not exclude the higher loyalty to truth and decency.”
― B.H. Liddell Hart, Why Don't We Learn from History?

“We must face the fact that international relations are governed by interests and not by moral principles.”
― B.H. Liddell Hart, Why Don't We Learn from History?

“I do not believe I ever would have the courage to fight a duel. If any man should wrong me to the extent of my being willing to kill him, I would not be willing to give him the choice of weapons with which it should be done, and of the time, place and distance separating us, when I executed him.”
― Ulysses S. Grant, Personal Memoirs of U.S. Grant: All Volumes

“As time passes, people, even of the South, will begin to wonder how it was possible that their ancestors ever fought for or justified institutions which acknowledged the right of property in man.”
― Ulysses S. Grant, Personal Memoirs of U.S. Grant: All Volumes

“The natural disposition of most people is to clothe a commander of a large army whom they do not know, with almost superhuman abilities. A large part of the National army, for instance, and most of the press of the country, clothed General Lee with just such qualities, but I had known him personally, and knew that he was mortal; and it was just as well that I felt this.”
― Grant, Ulysses S. (Ulysses Simpson), Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant - Volume 1

“Single-minded, determined, and intelligent organizational talent probably can create an effective army from any group of men.”
― Trevor N. Dupuy, A Genius For War: The German Army and General Staff, 1807-1945

“when mediocrity follows talent, and the pattern remains the same, decay is inevitable.”
― Trevor N. Dupuy, A Genius For War: The German Army and General Staff, 1807-1945

“Whereas Napoleon I led and controlled throughout, Moltke brought his armies to their starting points and then abdicated his command and unleashed them.”
― Trevor N. Dupuy, A Genius For War: The German Army and General Staff, 1807-1945