Barry Sierer > Barry's Quotes

“Charlie Polard was a former news anchor, now field reporter, whose star had been falling rapidly the past year. Consequently, his constant need to use Jack Daniels as his career coach had caused him to nearly miss several assignments.”
― Barry Sierer, New China

“You see things; you say, 'Why?' But I dream things that never were; and I say 'Why not?”
― George Bernard Shaw, Back to Methuselah

“All great truths begin as blasphemies.”
― George Bernard Shaw, Annajanska the Bolshevik Empress

“I've been homesick for countries I've never been, and longed to be where I couldn't be.”
― John Cheever

“Tolerance of intolerance is cowardice.”
― Ayaan Hirsi Ali

“You're gonna need a bigger boat.”
― Peter Benchley

“Show me a family of readers, and I will show you the people who move the world.”
― Napoleon Bonaparte

“You can’t crush ideas by suppressing them. You can only crush them by ignoring them. By refusing to think, refusing to change.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia

“Read. You can always talk with another reader.”
― Rorke Denver, Damn Few: Making the Modern SEAL Warrior

“Even the false accusations of a person of dubious morality can taint the reputation of an upright servant.”
― Hock G. Tjoa, The Ingenious Judge Dee

“We believe that a man does not have to be devoted to the winning side for his loyalty to be celebrated with reverence.”
― Hock G. Tjoa, The Ingenious Judge Dee

“human capacity for arrogance was only exceeded by its capacity for ignorance.”
― Ashok K. Banker, Ramayana: The Complete Edition

“Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is noise before defeat.”
― Sun Tsu

“Some books should be tasted,some devoured but only few should be chewed and digested thouroughly”
― Cornelia Funke, Inkheart

“Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.”
― Aldous Huxley, Complete Essays, Vol. II: 1926-1929

“John Steinbeck once said that socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.”
― Ronald Wright, A Short History of Progress

“Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.”
― Søren Kierkegaard

“You know you're in love when you can't fall asleep because reality is finally better than your dreams.”
― Dr. Seuss

“Nothing is sufficient for the person who finds sufficiency too little”
― Epicurus

“Verbosity is the enemy of eloquence.”
― Rebecca Douglass

“I’ve always loved Russian humor,” said Nate. “It’s a shame there’s so little of it.”
― Jason Matthews, Red Sparrow

“The most violent element in society is ignorance. ”
― Emma Goldman

“If you don't know history, then you don't know anything. You are a leaf that doesn't know it is part of a tree. ”
― Michael Crichton

“Swords can win territories but not hearts, forces can bend heads but not minds.”
― Mirza Tahir Ahmad

“Wide acceptance of an idea is not proof of its validity.”
― Dan Brown, The Lost Symbol

“The Americans are masters of gathering intelligence, but they don't know what to do with it.”
― Phạm Xuân Ẩn

“The emphasis on technology over an understanding of the realities of war and conflict reflect[s] the ahistoricism not only of too much of the U.S. military officer corps, but of the American educational system as well. Our mistakes in Iraq and Afghanistan were the result of a pervasive failure to understand the historical framework within which insurgencies take place, to appreciate the cultural and political factors of other nations and people, and to encourage the learning of foreign languages. In other words, in Afghanistan and Iraq we managed to repeat many of the mistakes we made in Vietnam, because America's political and military leaders managed to forget nearly every lesson of that conflict.”
― Peter R. Mansoor, Surge: My Journey with General David Petraeus and the Remaking of the Iraq War

“People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use.”
― Søren Kierkegaard

“When I was a boy the Dead Sea was only sick.”
― George Burns

“Quiet people have the loudest minds.”
― Stephen Hawking