Dan > Dan's Quotes

“A process cannot be understood by stopping it. Understanding must move with the flow of the process, must join it and flow with it.”
― Frank Herbert, Dune

“Governments, if they endure, always tend increasingly toward aristocratic forms. No government in history has been known to evade this pattern. And as the aristocracy develops, government tends more and more to act exclusively in the interests of the ruling class - whether that class be hereditary royalty, oligarchs of financial empires, or entrenched bureaucracy.
- Politics as Repeat Phenomenon: Bene Gesserit Training Manual”
― Frank Herbert, Children of Dune

“A person needs new experiences. They jar something deep inside, allowing you to grow. Without them, it sleeps- seldom to awaken. The sleeper must awaken. ”
― Frank Herbert

“By the side of the river he trotted as one trots, when very small, by the side of a man who holds one spell-bound by exciting stories; and when tired at last, he sat on the bank, while the river still chattered on to him, a babbling procession of the best stories in the world, sent from the heart of the earth to be told at last to the insatiable sea.”
― Anonymous

“It is symptomatic of the Tyrol that the celebrated Copper Age human ‘Ötzi’ should have had his mummified corpse dug out of the ice there – both because of Ötzi’s air of rather priggish, rugged self-reliance (his furs, his bag of healing herbs) and because he had an arrow stuck in his back. ==========”
― Anonymous

“Socrates was a wise man. Surveying the goods on a market stall, the great one was said to have remarked, "What a lot of things a man doesn’t need!”
― Ruth Downie, Medicus

“Lord Salisbury’s basic educational philosophy was that higher authority could, at best, have only a marginal effect; real desire to learn had to come from within. “N. has been very hard put to it for something to do,” he wrote of a son who had been left alone with him for a few days at Hatfield. “Having tried all the weapons in the gun-cupboard in succession—some in the riding room and some, he tells me, in his own room—and having failed to blow his fingers off, he has been driven to reading Sydney Smith’s Essays and studying Hogarth’s pictures.” Lady Salisbury did not share her husband’s detached approach. “He may be able to govern the country,” she said, “but he is quite unfit to be left in charge of his children.”
― Robert K. Massie, Dreadnought: Britain, Germany, and the Coming of the Great War

“found out later that he lived alone, surrounded by books, both his own and other people’s, and that as well as being a hired hunter of books he was an expert on Napoleon’s battles. He could set out on a board, from memory, the exact positions of troops on the eve of Waterloo. A”
― Arturo Pérez-Reverte, The Club Dumas

“A century from now,” he murmured as he lifted a page and examined it against the light, closing one eye, “almost all the contents of today’s libraries will have disappeared. But these books, printed two hundred or even five hundred years ago, will remain intact. We have the books, and the world, that we deserve. . . . Isn’t that so, Pablo?” “Lousy books printed on lousy paper.”
― Arturo Pérez-Reverte, The Club Dumas

“Throughout the Pacific, one could find an illicit trade in “torpedo juice,” the high-proof fuel used in torpedoes. Beer was usually rationed at two cans a week. When a larger quantity of beer was obtained by backhanded means, it could be chilled by taking it to high altitude for thirty minutes. Pilots would provide that service in exchange for a share of the spoils.”
― Ian W. Toll, The Conquering Tide: War in the Pacific Islands, 1942–1944

“At dawn I had the assembly beaten; at broad daylight I had the drummers beat to arms, and started once more on our route, telling them that the Emperor was going to have all the deserters arrested. I marched until noon, and, as we emerged from a wood, I came upon a herd of cows grazing in a meadow. My soldiers immediately took their bowls, and went off to milk the cows, and we had to wait for them. When the evening came, they would camp before nightfall, and every time we came across any cows, we had to stop. It may be imagined that this was not much fun for me. At”
― Jean-Roch Coignet, Notebooks of Captain Coignet

“In Japan, no one could dictate effectively to either army or navy. To an extraordinary degree, the two services—each with its own air force—pursued independent war policies, though the soldiers wielded much greater clout. The foremost characteristic of the army general staff, and especially of its dominant operations department, the First Bureau, was absolute indifference to the diplomatic or economic consequences of any military action. Mamoru”
― Max Hastings, Retribution: The Battle for Japan, 1944-45

“Nothing in this world is difficult, but thinking makes it seem so. Where there is true will, there is always a way.”
― Wu Cheng'en, Monkey: A Journey to the West

“On his way home, Giberson met the Devil himself at a bridge. The Devil told him to play his violin, and while Giberson played the Devil danced. Then the Devil played the violin while Giberson danced. Giberson was the kind of dancer of whom people said things like “I seen him put a looking glass on the floor and dance on it—he was that light when he danced.” But the Devil danced even more lightly and beautifully than Giberson, and the Devil played the violin more sweetly. Giberson conceded defeat. The Devil then said that he was going to take Giberson to Hell unless he could play a tune that the Devil had never heard. Out of the air, by Giberson’s account, a tune came to him—a beautiful theme that neither Giberson nor the Devil had ever heard. The Devil let him go. That is what Giberson told people on the following day and for the rest of his life. The tune is known in the Pine Barrens as Sammy Giberson’s Air Tune. No one, of course, knows how it goes, but the Air Tune is there, everywhere, just beyond hearing. Giberson drank a lot, like many of the fiddlers of his time. Fred”
― John McPhee, The Pine Barrens

“A seagoing lieutenant in the United States Navy once asked me if merchant ships have radar. After learning that they do, he asked if the mates use grease pencils. He seemed surprised. Merchant mariners, for their part, tend to characterize Navy people as green and earnest. They joke about the redundant multitudes that inhabit a Navy-ship bridge. There is a story much told by Navy people and yachtsmen about a merchant ship steaming somewhere at nineteen knots with a dog on the bridge, alone on watch. Andy and I call a tale like that an asmut: an apocryphal story much told. One such yarn, which he told that morning, led up to a question that was supposedly put to a merchant skipper as he arrived in port: “Captain, have you seen any sailboats recently?” “No.” “Well, you should have. There’s a mast and rigging hanging from your anchor.” Without”
― John McPhee, Looking for a Ship

“The pogroms in Mainz, Worms, and Trier were an early expression of a new, more militant Christianity. The Civitas Dei—or God State—grew out of the wave of intense pietism that swept through Europe in the Central Middle Ages. The new state’s controlling metaphor was the body: just as its various limbs fit together into an organic whole, so, too, does—or should—Christian society. Inspired by this corporatist vision, the angry sword of orthodoxy struck out at dissident minorities, such as the Albigensian heretics of southern France and the Jews. Many aspects of modern anti-Semitism date from the period of the Civitas Dei. For”
― John Kelly, The Great Mortality: An Intimate History of the Black Death, the Most Devastating Plague of All Time

“From seaport to seaport, papers accumulate on the captain’s desk. “Paperwork has become the bane of this job,” he says. “If a ship doesn’t have a good copying machine, it isn’t seaworthy. The more ports, the more papers. South American paperwork is worse than the paperwork anywhere else in the world but the Arab countries and Indonesia.” Deliberately, he allows the pile on his desk to rise until a deep roll on a Pacific swell throws it to the deck and scatters it from bulkhead to bulkhead. This he interprets as a signal that the time has come to do paperwork. The paper carpet may be an inch deep, but he leaves it where it fell. Bending over, he picks up one sheet. He deals with it: makes an entry, writes a letter—does whatever it requires him to do. Then he bends over and picks up another sheet. This goes on for a few days until, literally, he has cleared his deck. The”
― John McPhee, Looking for a Ship

“There is no Weatherfax map on the Stella Lykes—only the barometer, the barographs, the teletypes from NOAA. The radar can see a storm, but that is like seeing a fist just before it hits you. When a storm is out there, somewhere, beyond the visible sky, the ship will let him know. “When you get close to a big storm, you can feel it. For some reason, the ship takes on almost a little uncertainty. She’s almost like a live thing—like they say animals can sense bad weather coming. Sometimes I almost believe a ship can. I know that doesn’t make sense, because she’s steel and wood and metal, but she picks up a little uncertainty, probably something that is being transmitted through the water. It’s hard to define. It’s just a tiny little different motion, a little hesitancy, a little tremble from time to time.” Off”
― John McPhee, Looking for a Ship

“By a route obscure and lonely, Haunted by ill angels only, Where an Eidolon, named Night, On a black throne reigns upright, I have reached these lands but newly From an ultimate dim Thule— From a wild weird clime that lieth, sublime, Out of Space—out of Time. Bottomless vales and boundless floods, And chasms, and caves, and Titan woods, With forms that no man can discover … For the spirit that walks in shadow ’Tis—oh, ’tis an Eldorado! But the traveller, travelling through it, May not—dare not openly view it; Never its mysteries are exposed To the weak human eyes unclosed; So wills its King, who hath forbid The uplifting of the fringed lid; And thus the sad Soul that here passes Beholds it but through darkened glasses.”
― Phil Patton, Dreamland: Travels Inside the Secret World of Roswell and Area 51

“At New London, parking was available for submariners at the head of the finger piers. Should a submarine be brought alongside at too high a speed, or if a backing bell failed to be answered, the heavy, protruding bow on occasion overrode the dock and damaged the car parked at the head of the pier. To emphasize the need for caution in avoiding a possible submarine-auto collision, the first parking space was reserved for the skipper of the submarine, thereby guaranteeing the enthusiastic co-operation of the CO in preventing possible damage to a U.S. naval vessel if only to avoid more serious damage to the family wheels. Insurance claims based on collisions between submarine and automobile in New London were unusual but far from unknown.”
― Paul R. Schratz, Submarine Commander: A Story of World War II and Korea

“Salmon's crew was extremely lucky to be alive. A very heavy depth charging had dished in the pressure hull, knocked one engine off the base plate, severely damaged all radio and radar equipment, and caused major structural damage throughout the ship. Exhausted and forced to the surface by three escort vessels, she took them on with the deck gun, picking her way in and out of rain squalls. At the peak of the gunfight, a box of galley stores was inadvertently passed topside as ammunition. Dick claimed that on a close pass by one of the escorts, the gun crew threw potatoes at the enemy, using oranges for tracers. I doubt this. We never had oranges that late in the patrol.”
― Paul R. Schratz, Submarine Commander: A Story of World War II and Korea

“He and Willoughby preferred that the Pentagon and the Truman administration be completely dependent upon them for any information about what was going on in their area of Asia—with no countervailing intelligence to limit his hand. Control intelligence, and you control decision-making.”
― David Halberstam, The Coldest Winter

“the long roll called William Wofford’s Georgia brigade to fall in for duty. Orders were issued to fill haversacks with snowballs and form line of battle, and behind its color guards the brigade marched two miles to the camp of Joseph Kershaw’s South Carolina brigade. “We were in line of battle on a hill and Kershaw’s formed and come out to fight us,” Georgian Jim Mobley wrote his brother. “The field officers was on their horses and when they come against us, they come with a hollar! and, Benjamin, Great God, I never saw snow balls fly so in my life.” The order to open fire was given at 100 feet. Charge and countercharge were spirited by the Rebel yell. Combat was hand-to-hand, prisoners were taken. “I tell you it beat anything . . . ,” Mobley exclaimed. “There was 4000 men engaged on both sides, and you know it was something!”
― Stephen W. Sears, Chancellorsville

“At one point they passed a newly abandoned Rebel encampment, and Captain Bowers was surprised to see that it looked just like one of their own. “In every respect it was as good a camp as any we have had. . . .” (Rummaging through this campsite, men of the 2nd Maine came upon a packet of photographs of Federal soldiers. Someone recognized a name on one of them as a man in their brigade, and before long Sergeant Walter Carter, 22nd Massachusetts, was handed the pictures he had lost on the Fredericksburg battlefield five months earlier. And scavengers in the 83rd Pennsylvania recovered some of the fancy French knapsacks they had lost at Gaines’s Mill the previous June.)”
― Stephen W. Sears, Chancellorsville

“Confederates in Jackson’s column reported seeing a Yankee balloon—it was the Eagle—and assumed that if they could see it, it could see them. Yet such were conditions aloft that not a single report reached General Hooker that day from the aeronautical corps that an enemy column was marching to the south and west of Chancellorsville.”
― Stephen W. Sears, Chancellorsville

“My friends,” he began with good cheer, “how do you like this way of coming back into the Union?” He went on to explain that he and his fellow soldiers had felt the need of a summer outing, “and thought we would take it at the North.” They might be conquerors, he said—“this part of Pennsylvania is ours today; we’ve got it, we hold it, we can destroy it, or do what we please with it”—but they were also Christian gentlemen and would act accordingly. “You are quite welcome to remain here and to make yourselves entirely at home—so long as you behave yourselves pleasantly and agreeably as you are doing now. Are we not a fine set of fellows?” With his honeyed words he had the crowd in the palm of his hand, only to be interrupted by a querulous, impatient Jubal Early. Old Jube forced his way through the onlookers to confront Extra Billy and snarled, “General Smith, what the devil are you about? Stopping the head of this column in this cursed town!” Not the least taken aback, Extra Billy replied, “Having a little fun, General, which is good for all of us, and at the same time teaching these people something that will be good for them and won’t do us any harm.”
― Stephen W. Sears, Gettysburg

“Although French soldiers have a reputation for dash and flamboyancy, in fact their army was heavily regulated, bureaucratic and relied on working practices and traditions dating well back into the 18th century and beyond .”
― Terry Crowdy, Napoleon's Infantry Handbook

“If you want to write, if you want to create, you must be the most sublime fool that God ever turned out and sent rambling. You must write every single day of your life. You must read dreadful dumb books and glorious books, and let them wrestle in beautiful fights inside your head, vulgar one moment, brilliant the next. You must lurk in libraries and climb the stacks like ladders to sniff books like perfumes and wear books like hats upon your crazy heads. I wish you a wrestling match with your Creative Muse that will last a lifetime. I wish craziness and foolishness and madness upon you. May you live with hysteria, and out of it make fine stories — science fiction or otherwise. Which finally means, may you be in love every day for the next 20,000 days. And out of that love, remake a world.”
― Ray Bradbury

“The world is indeed full of peril, and in it there are many dark places; but still there is much that is fair, and though in all lands love is now mingled with grief, it grows perhaps the greater.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

“Never trust a man who reads only one book.”
― Arturo Pérez-Reverte, Purity of Blood