2034 Quotes

“Because no battle is ever won. . . . They are not even fought. The field only reveals to man his own folly and despair, and victory is an illusion of philosophers and fools.” —William Faulkner”
― Elliot Ackerman, 2034: A Novel of the Next World War

“All the armies of Europe, Asia, and Africa combined, Lincoln had said, with all the treasure of the earth (our own excepted) in their military chest, with a Buonaparte for a commander, could not by force take a drink from the Ohio or make a track on the Blue Ridge in a trial of a thousand years. . . . If destruction be our lot we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen we must live through all time or die by suicide.”
― Elliot Ackerman, 2034: A Novel of the Next World War

“He imagined himself at the lectern discussing the ancient Greeks to his American students: “The First Persian War, in which Miltiades defeats Darius at Marathon in 490 BC, leads to the Second Persian War, in which the Athenian navy commanded by Themistocles destroys the Persian navy under Xerxes at Salamis in 480 BC. Ten years of war gives the Greeks fifty years of peace, a golden age. The Athenians secure peace on the Hellespont through the Delian League, a mutual-security pact in which the other Greek city-states pay Athens a tribute to protect them against future Persian aggression. Sound familiar?” Lin Bao would then imagine himself looking out at his class, at their blank expressions, in which the past held no relevance, in which there was only the future and that future would always be American. Then, in his imagined class, Lin Bao would tell his students of their past but also of their future. He would explain how America’s golden age was born out of the First and Second World Wars, just as Greece had found its greatest era of prosperity in the aftermath of the two Persian Wars. Like the Athenians with the Delian League, Lin Bao would explain how the Americans consolidated power with mutual-security pacts such as NATO, in which they would make the largest contributions in exchange for military primacy over the western world—much as the Athenians had gained military primacy of the then-known world through the Delian League. Lin Bao would always wait for the question he knew was coming, in which one of his students would ask why it all ended. What external threat overwhelmed the Delian League? What invader accomplished what the Persian fleet could not at Salamis? And Lin Bao would tell his students that no invader had come, no foreign horde had sabotaged the golden age forged by Miltiades, Themistocles, and Greece’s other forefathers. “Then how?” they would ask. “If the Persians couldn’t do it, who did?” And so, he would say, “The end came—as it always does—from within.”
― Elliot Ackerman, 2034: A Novel of the Next World War

“He was struck by how much it differed from his mother’s descriptions, and from the photos he’d seen growing up. Gone were the dust-choked streets. Gone were the ramshackle shanties overflowing into those same streets. And gone, too, were what his uncle once called “the inconvenient and combustible masses prone to rebellion.”
― Elliot Ackerman, 2034: A Novel of the Next World War

“But our strength is what it has always been—our judicious patience. The Americans are incapable of behaving patiently. They change their government and their policies as often as the seasons. Their dysfunctional civil discourse is unable to deliver an international strategy that endures for more than a handful of years. They’re governed by their emotions, by their blithe morality and belief in their precious indispensability. This is a fine disposition for a nation known for making movies, but not for a nation to survive as we have through the millennia. . . . And where will America be after today? I believe in a thousand years it won’t even be remembered as a country. It will simply be remembered as a moment. A fleeting moment.”
― Elliot Ackerman, 2034: A Novel of the Next World War

“The America that we believe ourselves to be is no longer the America that we are. . .”
― Elliot Ackerman, 2034: A Novel of the Next World War

“We are from nowhere and have nothing. We have come here to be from somewhere and to have something. That is what makes us American.”
― Elliot Ackerman, 2034: A Novel of the Next World War

“The America that we believe ourselves to be is no longer the America that we are. .”
― Elliot Ackerman, 2034: A Novel of the Next World War

“These were words spoken by a young Abraham Lincoln two decades before the calamity that became the American Civil War. All the armies of Europe, Asia, and Africa combined, Lincoln had said, with all the treasure of the earth (our own excepted) in their military chest, with a Buonaparte for a commander, could not by force take a drink from the Ohio or make a track on the Blue Ridge in a trial of a thousand years. . . . If destruction be our lot we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen we must live through all time or die by suicide. A nation of freemen.”
― Elliot Ackerman, 2034: A Novel of the Next World War

“Endemic dysfunction in America’s political life hardly mattered because America’s position in the world was inviolate. But a few of his students, their faces clear in his imagination, would return his stare as if his understanding had become their”
― Elliot Ackerman, 2034: A Novel of the Next World War

“His country was the one that intervened—whether in the First World War, or the Second, in Korea or Vietnam, in the Balkans and later in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria. American intervention, if only occasionally successful, was always decisive among nations. But no longer. His”
― Elliot Ackerman, 2034: A Novel of the Next World War

“Lin Bao felt consumed by the minutiae of his command, and convinced that he might never again enjoy a full night’s rest.”
― Elliot Ackerman, 2034: A Novel of the Next World War

“Kolchak was shaking his head. “No, no, no,” he said. “There are no wealthy Russians.” He stubbed his cigarette out in the ashtray. “There are only poor Russians with money.”
― Elliot Ackerman, 2034: A Novel of the Next World War

“precious indispensability. This is a fine disposition for a nation known for making movies, but not for a nation to survive as we have through the millennia. . . . And where will America be after today? I believe in a thousand years it won’t even be remembered as a country. It will simply be remembered as a moment. A fleeting moment.” Minister Chiang”
― Elliot Ackerman, 2034: A Novel of the Next World War

“Those qualities Lin Bao had always admired in the Americans—their moral certitude, their single-minded determination, their blithe optimism—undermined them at this moment as they struggled to find a solution to a problem they didn’t understand. Our strengths become our weaknesses, thought Lin Bao. Always. The”
― Elliot Ackerman, 2034: A Novel of the Next World War

“He was insubordinate. But his insubordination didn’t manifest itself in a refusal to follow orders, or disrespect for his superiors. He was, instead, insubordinate in the broadest sense. He was insubordinate to the time in which he lived. He refused to give up the old ways. Or, put differently, he refused to stop believing in them. Where did Wedge think all this would lead? wondered Hunt. Did he imagine that a bygone order would one day reassert itself? That he could somehow fly through the fabric of time to arrive in a different, better, and older world? Perhaps his insubordination was a form of denial, a rejection not only of the present but of all that was to come.”
― Elliot Ackerman, 2034: A Novel of the Next World War

“Knock, knock, knock . . . knock . . . knock . . . knock . . . knock, knock, knock .”
― Elliot Ackerman, 2034: A Novel of the Next World War

“Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty.’ This”
― Elliot Ackerman, 2034: A Novel of the Next World War

“pulling a strip of meat off a thigh bone”
― Elliot Ackerman, 2034: A Novel of the Next World War

“And so, he would say, “The end came—as it always does—from within.”
― Elliot Ackerman, 2034: A Novel of the Next World War

“Endemic dysfunction in America’s political life hardly mattered because America’s position in the world was inviolate.”
― Elliot Ackerman, 2034: A Novel of the Next World War

“Look over the ages,” he would assert, “from Britain, to Rome, to Greece: the empire always rots from within.”
― Elliot Ackerman, 2034: A Novel of the Next World War

“The end came—as it always does—from within.”
― Elliot Ackerman, 2034: A Novel of the Next World War

“From Air Force One her communications proved limited, she could reach the four-star commanding general at Strategic Command and had spoken to the VP, but these carve-outs in their communications hierarchy were clearly designed by whoever instigated the attack as a way to avoid an inadvertent nuclear escalation. Beijing (or whoever did this) surely knew that if she had no communications with her nuclear capability, protocols were in place for an automatic preemptive strike.”
― Elliot Ackerman, 2034: A Novel of the Next World War

“from which he would take only the occasional break to pour over the newspapers for the latest developments”
― Elliot Ackerman, 2034: A Novel of the Next World War

“28°22’41”N 124°58’13”E”
― Elliot Ackerman, 2034: A Novel of the Next World War

“The America that we believe ourselves to be is no longer the America that we are. . . .”
― Elliot Ackerman, 2034: A Novel of the Next World War

“in his mind bigotry was a safe harbor for weaklings.”
― Elliot Ackerman, 2034: A Novel of the Next World War

“When empires overreach, that’s when they crumble.”
― Elliot Ackerman, 2034: A Novel of the Next World War

“America’s hubris has finally gotten the better of its greatness.”
― Elliot Ackerman, 2034: A Novel of the Next World War