Gulo

“It is rather amazing that the Finns appeared not to have realized that their refusal to participate in operations against the Soviet Union after they had secured the lost territories at East Karelia that the achievement of their own goals was totally dependent on Germany achieving its goal of destroying the Soviet Union. Germany’s failure to do so, either because of a military defeat or because of a negotiated settlement would jeopardize Finland’s position. If Germany lost the war, the very existence of Finland came into question. It therefore made virtually no difference what the Finnish war aims were as they were intrinsically linked to those of Germany. It is nevertheless extraordinary that the Germans did not press the Finns for more definite answers regarding their participation in achieving the two main German objectives: operations against Leningrad, and the cutting of the Murmansk railroad. The failure to do so became a major bone of contention and should have been anticipated. Carl von Clausewitz wrote: ‘no war is begun, or at least no war should begin, if people acted wisely without first finding the answer to the question: what is to be attained by and in war?”
― Henrik O. Lunde, Finland's War Of Choice: The Troubled German-Finnish Coalition in World War II

“The world is divided into people who do things and people who get the credit. Try, if you can, to belong to the former. There’s far less competition. (Dwight Morrow)”
― Ron Chernow, The House of Morgan: An American Banking Dynasty and the Rise of Modern Finance

“Every time I put another installment of Monzer’s story on the air, listeners asked how they could help. And I felt conflicted about it… Should Monzer, or Mohammed, have gotten cash from a concerned NPR listener just because I happened to tell their stories and not others? And if they shouldn’t have, then why exactly was I asking these guys to narrate their most traumatic experiences for the world to witness? Was this just vampirism, where people poured their pain into my microphone, and I walked away with a paycheck? It is a central tenet of journalism that one of the best ways to tell a bug story is by telling a small one. But I wondered whether zeroing in on an individual’s story actually was a way of clearing the path to real change. Perhaps I was just narrowing the aperture, cutting global upheaval into bite-sized morseld for our audience.”
― Ari Shapiro, The Best Strangers in the World: Stories from a Life Spent Listening―A Poignant Journey Through Journalism, Global Connections, and Human Resilience in Today's World

“Economic growth and development are possible only through the accumulation of capabilities over time, in areas ranging from skills and technologies to public institutions. Globalization on its own does not generate these capabilities; it simply allows nations to leverage better those that they already possess.”
― Dani Rodrik, The Globalization Paradox: Democracy and the Future of the World Economy