Jonathan

“a prince, so long as he keeps his subjects united and loyal, ought not to mind the reproach of cruelty; because with a few examples he will be more merciful than those who, through too much mercy, allow disorders to arise, from which follow murders or robberies; for these are wont to injure the whole people, whilst those executions which originate with a prince offend the individual only.”
― Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince

“For it was axiomatic to a certain type of twentieth-century Social Democrat that a badly-equipped and therefore ineffective army was somehow less immoral than one that did its job well. It was further held that due to this deliberate oversight, an inevitably slavish dependence upon multilateral institutions would somehow take up the resultant political slack. The heavy cost of this point of view is seldom borne, either directly or immediately, by its proponents; one thinks like a sovereign nation-state, or one does not. When the wheels fall off the wagon of policy, the armed services often pay the price.”
― Robert Edwards, The Winter War: Russia's Invasion of Finland, 1939–40

“What if I am? It seems to me that most men are grey.” “If half of an onion is black with rot, it is a rotten onion.”
― George R.R. Martin, A Clash of Kings

“If the Germans come’, Marshal Smigly-Rydz9 had stated only a month before, in August 1939, ‘we lose our freedom. If the Russians come, we lose our souls.”
― Robert Edwards, The Winter War: Russia's Invasion of Finland, 1939–40