Ghost of the White Nights Quotes

“Someone in my country made a comment along the lines that solutions are always possible if you are willing to let someone else take the credit.”
― L.E. Modesitt Jr., Ghost of the White Nights

“nuclear-powered zombie-bomb?”
― L.E. Modesitt Jr., Ghost of the White Nights

“Colonel Sudwerth’s driver—the one who left me on my own—has been charged with murder by the Russians. The good colonel thinks I had something to do with it. He doesn’t seem to understand that he and the driver caused the problems, not me.” “Toujours, that is the way of those like him. They would blame everyone but themselves.”
― L.E. Modesitt Jr., Ghost of the White Nights

“In a democracy, one must not alarm the people unduly, because they immediately blame those who sound the alarms.”
― L.E. Modesitt Jr., Ghost of the White Nights

“the most important thing was to show strength of will, not when matters were going well, but when they were going badly.”
― L.E. Modesitt Jr., Ghost of the White Nights

“someone should teach those who will lead that excellence in the military cannot be based on technology alone, no matter how advanced and how fantastic. Nor can it be based merely on economics or body counts.”
― L.E. Modesitt Jr., Ghost of the White Nights

“Popularity is an element in any system, even the most autocratic and regimented, because it is so much easier to count heads or hands than to evaluate excellence.”
― L.E. Modesitt Jr., Ghost of the White Nights

“The great problem that the arts have always faced in countries where the populace has too great a say in their funding is that what is funded must reflect popular taste, and, as we in Russia know all too well, popular taste is seldom excellent. Here, we show them what is excellent, and they are grateful.”
― L.E. Modesitt Jr., Ghost of the White Nights

“There are always stories…and some are better not told in depth. Then, all the mystery and glamour vanishes.”
― L.E. Modesitt Jr., Ghost of the White Nights

“Like too many professional politicians, Clinton Mills had the kind of personality that focused on the person he addressed, so much that almost everyone felt special. As with the politicians, I just felt uneasy.”
― L.E. Modesitt Jr., Ghost of the White Nights

“You are always prompt, Minister Eschbach. You do not make time a game of position.” “Oh, but I do. My time is important. So is yours. When I waste neither, you find yourself indebted to me.”
― L.E. Modesitt Jr., Ghost of the White Nights

“I could certainly see the Austrians supporting any group that had a good chance of creating a civil war in Russia, but I could also see the Ohkrana and the tzar creating a plot where none existed to focus discontent away from St. Petersburg, and the Romanov autocracy.”
― L.E. Modesitt Jr., Ghost of the White Nights

“Music must lead people, don’t you think?” asked Thies. “If it follows whatever the popular taste happens to be, then what’s its value?”
― L.E. Modesitt Jr., Ghost of the White Nights

“The Russians’ great strength is that they will take any losses necessary to destroy an invader. That hasn’t changed since Napoleon.”
― L.E. Modesitt Jr., Ghost of the White Nights

“In everything, there is someone who would rather build a small empire and die with it than see his country prosper.”
― L.E. Modesitt Jr., Ghost of the White Nights

“Affordable,” I mused. “That’s an interesting concept. That depends on who pays, and what. It’s always better if people can trade benefits. That way, no one has to explain the budget, and each party can take credit for the increased revenues or production or whatever.”
― L.E. Modesitt Jr., Ghost of the White Nights

“If you’re not practical, I’ve found, it can be difficult to hold on to your ideals,”
― L.E. Modesitt Jr., Ghost of the White Nights

“The Russians have a saying. Offer a man a finger, and he will take your hand—if not your arm.”
― L.E. Modesitt Jr., Ghost of the White Nights

“I had the feeling that we’d be seated with the ambassador and his wife, and probably with Drummond Kent, and that we’d talk pleasantries, and that I’d learn very little new, no matter how hard I tried, because Hagel was a well-trained politician and could talk forever while only seeming to impart information and because he knew very little of what was going on and because Drummond Kent knew even less.”
― L.E. Modesitt Jr., Ghost of the White Nights

“An incompetent imbecile?” “Imbeciles, they have some brains! Le grand professeur…he has none.”
― L.E. Modesitt Jr., Ghost of the White Nights

“For weeks he knows I go…and today…today, he says he must hear Elfreda and Caron.”
― L.E. Modesitt Jr., Ghost of the White Nights

“Too often, especially in democratic societies, people mistook the mechanisms of power for power itself.”
― L.E. Modesitt Jr., Ghost of the White Nights

“Power there is. Politics are not power.”
― L.E. Modesitt Jr., Ghost of the White Nights

“Russia has no desire to turn Europe or anywhere else into black glass or a radioactive wasteland. We Russians have always loved the land. We would not do that.” I shook my head. With that strong a denial, the Russians were attempting something—and probably failing, given the observations in the newspaper.”
― L.E. Modesitt Jr., Ghost of the White Nights

“Nuclear weapons have no business in a civilized world.”
― L.E. Modesitt Jr., Ghost of the White Nights

“David and Waafl were cut from the same mold—ignore reality, follow tradition, mouth platitudes, and try to save money at the expense of both faculty and students. Oh…and increase administrative costs, staff, and perks, while economizing on everything else.”
― L.E. Modesitt Jr., Ghost of the White Nights

“In a technological society, the practice of completely private property cannot exist.”
― L.E. Modesitt Jr., Ghost of the White Nights

“His head bobbed almost the way the dean’s had. Was that something they taught administrators, assuming that administrators could learn anything?”
― L.E. Modesitt Jr., Ghost of the White Nights

“IN OUR WORLD there are ghosts and ghosts: those which are real, and those of our own pasts, which are equally real, if less tangible, but often more dangerous.”
― L.E. Modesitt Jr., Ghost of the White Nights