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The professional dedicates himself to mastering technique not because he believes technique is a substitute for inspiration but because he wants to be in possession of the full arsenal of skills when inspiration does come.
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Steven Pressfield (The War of Art: Winning the Inner Creative Battle)
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Image-making as global policy—not world conquest, but victory in the battle “to win the people’s minds”—is indeed something new in the huge arsenal of human follies recorded in history.
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Hannah Arendt (Crises of the Republic: Lying in Politics, Civil Disobedience, On Violence, and Thoughts on Politics and Revolution)
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If I could just keep my legs shut I might yet win this battle. It seemed an insurmountable task, given the array of his arsenal. The size of his artillery. One hand dived down further, stroking between my legs, while the other held the back of my head. I was helpless, the battle lost. God, I sucked.
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Kylie Scott (Deep (Stage Dive, #4))
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Image-making as global policy—not world conquest, but victory in the battle “to win the people’s minds”—is indeed something new in the huge arsenal of human
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Hannah Arendt (Crises of the Republic: Lying in Politics, Civil Disobedience, On Violence, and Thoughts on Politics and Revolution)
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The North Korean capital, Pyongyang, is a city consecrated to the worship of a father-son dynasty. (I came to think of them, with their nuclear-family implications, as 'Fat Man and Little Boy.') And a river runs through it. And on this river, the Taedong River, is moored the only American naval vessel in captivity. It was in January 1968 that the U.S.S. Pueblo strayed into North Korean waters, and was boarded and captured. One sailor was killed; the rest were held for nearly a year before being released. I looked over the spy ship, its radio antennae and surveillance equipment still intact, and found photographs of the captain and crew with their hands on their heads in gestures of abject surrender. Copies of their groveling 'confessions,' written in tremulous script, were also on show. So was a humiliating document from the United States government, admitting wrongdoing in the penetration of North Korean waters and petitioning the 'D.P.R.K.' (Democratic People's Republic of Korea) for 'lenience.' Kim Il Sung ('Fat Man') was eventually lenient about the men, but not about the ship. Madeleine Albright didn't ask to see the vessel on her visit last October, during which she described the gruesome, depopulated vistas of Pyongyang as 'beautiful.' As I got back onto the wharf, I noticed a refreshment cart, staffed by two women under a frayed umbrella. It didn't look like much—one of its three wheels was missing and a piece of brick was propping it up—but it was the only such cart I'd see. What toothsome local snacks might the ladies be offering? The choices turned out to be slices of dry bread and cups of warm water.
Nor did Madeleine Albright visit the absurdly misnamed 'Demilitarized Zone,' one of the most heavily militarized strips of land on earth. Across the waist of the Korean peninsula lies a wasteland, roughly following the 38th parallel, and packed with a titanic concentration of potential violence. It is four kilometers wide (I have now looked apprehensively at it from both sides) and very near to the capital cities of both North and South. On the day I spent on the northern side, I met a group of aging Chinese veterans, all from Szechuan, touring the old battlefields and reliving a war they helped North Korea nearly win (China sacrificed perhaps a million soldiers in that campaign, including Mao Anying, son of Mao himself). Across the frontier are 37,000 United States soldiers. Their arsenal, which has included undeclared nuclear weapons, is the reason given by Washington for its refusal to sign the land-mines treaty. In August 1976, U.S. officers entered the neutral zone to trim a tree that was obscuring the view of an observation post. A posse of North Koreans came after them, and one, seizing the ax with which the trimming was to be done, hacked two U.S. servicemen to death with it. I visited the ax also; it's proudly displayed in a glass case on the North Korean side.
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Christopher Hitchens (Love, Poverty, and War: Journeys and Essays)
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Maybe you have been wondering about how to win the battle of life. Dress in the armour of war; be well grounded in the requisite knowledge to win your battle. Refine your skills, talents and tactics and forge ahead with determination. Prepare in advance and enter the war with the right strategy. Work with your warriors as a team. Avoid unnecessary mistakes and learn from your errors. Use the right weapons in your arsenal at the right time. Attack your struggles and protect your dreams. Know that timing is everything. Never give up until you destroy all your roadblocks. Capitalise on your strength and with victory in focus you will become a winner.
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Sesan Kareem
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When you operate from the assumption that more or better analysis will create consistency, you will be driven to gather as many market variables as possible into your arsenal of trading tools. But what happens then? You are still disappointed and betrayed by the markets, time and again, because of something you didn’t see or give enough consideration to. It will feel like you can’t trust the markets; but the reality is, you can’t trust yourself.
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Mark Douglas (Trading in the Zone: Master the Market with Confidence, Discipline, and a Winning Attitude)
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Obama himself, underestimating Trump and thus underestimating the power of whiteness, believed the Republican nominee too objectionable to actually win. In this Obama was, tragically, wrong. And so the most powerful country in the world has handed over all of its affairs—the prosperity of an entire economy, the security of some 300 million citizens, the purity of its water, the viability of its air, the safety of its food, the future of its vast system of education, the soundness of its national highways, airways, and railways, the apocalyptic potential of its nuclear arsenal—to a carnival barker who introduced the phrase “grab ’em by the pussy” into the national lexicon. It is as if the white tribe united in demonstration to say, “If a black man can be president, then any white man—no matter how fallen—can be president.” And in that perverse way the democratic dreams of Jefferson and Jackson were fulfilled.
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Ta-Nehisi Coates (We Were Eight Years in Power: An American Tragedy)
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The predominant cancer metaphor is war. We fight cancer, usually valiantly. We attack tumors and try to annihilate them and bring out our arsenals to do that, and so on. It's us against cancer. This metaphor has come in for its share of criticism within the ethical, psychological and even oncological disciplines. A main concern is that when someone dies of cancer, the message that remains is that that person just hasn't fought hard enough, was not a brave enough soldier against the ultimate foe, did not really want to win.
The cancer-is-war metaphor does not seem to allow space for the idea that in actual war, some soldiers die heroically for the larger good, no matter which side wins. War is death. In the cancer war, if you die, you've lost and cancer has won. The dead are responsible not just for getting cancer, but also for failing to defeat it.
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Alanna Mitchell (Malignant Metaphor: Confronting Cancer Myths)
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Strictly by accident, Scott stumbled upon the most advanced weapon in the ultrarunner’s arsenal: instead of cringing from fatigue, you embrace it. You refuse to let it go. You get to know it so well, you’re not afraid of it anymore. Lisa Smith-Batchen, the amazingly sunny and pixie-tailed ultrarunner from Idaho who trained through blizzards to win a six-day race in the Sahara, talks about exhaustion as if it’s a playful pet. “I love the Beast,” she says. “I actually look forward to the Beast showing up, because every time he does, I handle him better. I get him more under control.” Once the Beast arrives, Lisa knows what she has to deal with and can get down to work. And isn’t that the reason she’s running through the desert in the first place—to put her training to work? To have a friendly little tussle with the Beast and show it who’s boss? You can’t hate the Beast and expect to beat it; the only way to truly conquer something, as every great philosopher and geneticist will tell you, is to love it.
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Christopher McDougall (Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen)
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Arsenal hasn’t been a great soccer club lately, but it has been a good business. This is what a soccer club run as a business looks like: high ticket prices, little desire to win trophies, and respectable profits. If FFP takes force, and other big clubs end up being run like Arsenal rather than like Abramovich’s Chelsea, then we predict: • A fall in players’ wages • A fall in transfer fees, which would mean less money trickling down from big clubs to the rest • A rise in club profits, which would mean more money being taken out of the game by people like the Glazers
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Simon Kuper (Soccernomics: Why England Loses, Why Germany and Brazil Win, and Why the U.S., Japan, Australia, Turkey--and Even Iraq--Are Destined to Become the Kings of the World's Most Popular Sport)
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I’m talking about winning at any cost. Doing whatever is necessary to get the victory, and as a woman, you need to use every weapon in your arsenal. It’s how I succeeded, and it’s how you will succeed, too.
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Sawyer Bennett (Friction (Legal Affairs, #6))
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We’ll identify and select strategic target accounts that give us the best chance of winning. Then we’ll invest heavily in building the arsenal of sales weapons needed to successfully carry out the attack against our chosen targets. The three weapons most worthy of attention—the sales story, proactive telephone call, and the face-to-face sales call—are
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Mike Weinberg (New Sales. Simplified.: The Essential Handbook for Prospecting and New Business Development)
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Okay, judged on raw brain power, humans do no better than our hairier cousins. So, then, what are we using our great big brains for? Maybe we’re more cunning. That’s the crux of the ‘Machiavellian intelligence’ hypothesis, named after the Italian Renaissance philosopher Niccolò Machiavelli, author of The Prince (1513). In this handbook for rulers, Machiavelli counsels weaving a web of lies and deception to stay in power. According to adherents of this hypothesis, that’s precisely what we’ve been doing for millions of years: devising ever more inventive ways to swindle one another. And because telling lies takes more cognitive energy than being truthful, our brains grew like the nuclear arsenals of Russia and the US during the Cold War. The result of this mental arms race is the sapien superbrain. If this hypothesis were true, you’d expect humans to beat other primates handily in games that hinge on conning your opponent. But no such luck. Numerous studies show that chimps outscore us on these tests and that humans are lousy liars.9 Not only that, we’re predisposed to trust others, which explains how con artists can fool their marks.10 This brings me to another odd quirk of Homo sapiens. Machiavelli, in his classic book, advises never revealing your emotions. Work on your poker face, he urges; shame serves no purpose. The object is to win, by fair means or foul. But if only the shameless win, why are humans one of the only species in the whole animal kingdom to blush?
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Rutger Bregman (Humankind: A Hopeful History)
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The truth is, in failing miserably, I had the opportunity to learn something valuable that most writers never get the chance to discover: the three secrets of writing success! You see, all successful writers, whether they know it or not, have mastered three essential things, which no one really knows or talks about freely. I stumbled upon them after over eight years in entertainment working with the best screenwriters, storytellers, New York Times bestselling authors, award-winning industry veterans, including authors, producers, writers, and professionals, who mentored me, influenced me, and gave me insight into their processes and thinking. I began to understand that there are three crucial things every writer must have in their arsenal in order to win at writing and reach the highest heights of success.
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Ashley Mansour (The Writers Success Code: 7-Day Action Guide)
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Yes.” “Then it is to be treated as an object of the Dread Trove. A new Trove.” “You can’t be serious.” Amren’s brows flattened. “The Dread Trove was forged by the Cauldron. Nesta possesses the Cauldron’s powers. So anything she crafts and imbues with her power becomes a new Trove. At this point, I wouldn’t so much as eat a piece of bread if she’d toasted it.” They all stared at the three blades atop the desk. Azriel said, “People will kill for this power. Either kill her to stop it, or kill us to capture her.” “Nesta forged a new Trove,” Cassian said, reining in his rage at the truth of Azriel’s words. “She could create anything.” He nodded to Rhys. “She could fill our arsenals with weapons that would win us any war.” Briallyn, Koschei, and Beron wouldn’t stand a chance. “Which is why Nesta must not learn about it,” Amren said. Cassian demanded, “What?” Amren’s gray eyes held steady. “She cannot know.
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Sarah J. Maas (A Court of Silver Flames (A Court of Thorns and Roses, #4))
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Arteta was devastated when Arsenal failed to win the title. After that painful defeat at Nottingham Forest on the penultimate weekend of the season, he tried to watch Manchester City against Chelsea the following day, but he struggled. He just couldn’t sit through it all. He did tell me, however, that he made himself watch Ilkay Gündogan lift the trophy at the end of the game. Not because he wanted to see his former side celebrating yet another title success, but because he wanted to use it as added motivation to push himself even harder to bring those sorts of scenes to the Emirates.
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Charles Watts (Revolution: The Rise of Arteta’s Arsenal)
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When you operate from the assumption that more or better analysis will create consistency, you will be driven to gather as many market variables as possible into your arsenal of trading tools. But what happens then? You are still disappointed and betrayed by the markets, time and again, because of something you didn’t see or give enough consideration to.
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Mark Douglas (Trading in the Zone: Master the Market with Confidence, Discipline, and a Winning Attitude)
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By now I felt guilty about what I had got my father into. He had developed no real affection for the club, and would rather, I think, have taken me to any other First Division ground. I was acutely aware of this, and so a new source of discomfort emerged: as Arsenal huffed and puffed their way towards 1-0 wins and nil-nil draws I wriggled with embarrassment, waiting for Dad to articulate his dissatisfaction.
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Nick Hornby
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In political contests in most parts of America, the candidate who captures this refusal of deference is, more often than not, the candidate who wins. This is a crude and sweeping simplification, but nevertheless it is usually true. Understood the way I have defined it, populist protest against the economic elite is what made the Democrats the majority party for so many decades. Another reason we know that anti-elitism works is because we have seen it working against us for fifty years. The Republican Party owes its successful hold on power to adopting—you might say “stealing”—the anti-elitist themes I have described. From the days of Nixon to those of Trump, the conservative revolution happened not because Americans love polluters and disease but because Republicans sold themselves as a party of protest against the elite. Most of the time it was the cultural elite that was the target: the prideful people who make movies and write newspapers; who love blasphemy but hate the flag. The point is so easy and so obvious that it’s hard to understand why it’s been so difficult for Democratic politicians to get it: Populism is the supreme rhetorical weapon in the arsenal of American politics. On the other hand, the impulse to identify your goals with the elite—with any elite, even a moral one—is a kind of political death wish. In a democracy, a faction that chooses to go about its business by admiring its own moral goodness and scolding average voters as insensitive clods is a faction that is not interested in winning.
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Thomas Frank (The People, No: The War on Populism and the Fight for Democracy)
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Once I happened to drop,
almost absently, the question: "Arsenal-Real Madrid, semifinals. Arsenal playing at
home. Who wins?," and in a moment I realized that with what seemed a casual jumble of
words I had hit on an infinite reserve of new combinations among the signs which
compact, opaque, uniform reality would use to disguise its monotony, and I realized that
perhaps the race toward the future, the race I had been the first to foresee and desire,
tended only -- through time and space -- toward a crumbling into alternatives like this,
until it would dissolve in a geometry of invisible triangles and ricochets like the course of
a football among the white lines of a field as I tried to imagine them, drawn at the bottom
of the luminous vortex of the planetary system, deciphering the numbers marked on the
chests and backs of the players at night, unrecognizable in the distance.
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Italo Calvino (Cosmicomics)
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That summer, two of Wenger’s French boys went off to join their national team at the 1998 World Cup in their home country. Les Bleus marauded their way to the final, where they overpowered Brazil, 3–0. The final goal was swept in by Petit and assisted by Vieira. In London the next morning, the front page of the Mirror carried a photo of those two players locked in a hug beside a headline that showed just how much their stodgy old London club—and English soccer—were changing. ARSENAL WIN THE WORLD CUP, it read.
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Joshua Robinson (The Club: How the English Premier League Became the Wildest, Richest, Most Disruptive Force in Sports)
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Of course, winning wars is not as easy as the myths would have us believe; besides that, we seem to be in an age of asymmetrical warfare where conventional victory and surrender do not apply. It’s hard to imagine how something as vague as the “war on terror” can be won in any way that resembles winning WWII. When the nation-states of Germany and Japan surrendered, America celebrated V-E and V-J Day. But it’s hard to imagine a V-T Day. And even if you are able to arrange a “good old-fashioned war” between two nation-states wearing uniforms and all, in an age where both sides are likely to have nuclear arsenals, it’s hard to imagine anyone “winning.” If we are committed to generating social unity through the civic religion of war sacrifice, we may very well be on the road to global annihilation.
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Brian Zahnd (Postcards from Babylon: The Church In American Exile)
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If there was anything a player should do, it was play to the fullest of their ability, and most importantly, play to win, employing everything in their arsenal.
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Suyi Davies Okungbowa (Son of the Storm (The Nameless Republic, #1))
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Your company's success is not a pre-requisite for your personal success... Most of my own advancement has come in the time of corporate failure and not success. And this principle is a key weapon in the arsenal of the incompetent executive who rises through the ranks while you tread waters.
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Brendan Reid (Stealing the Corner Office: The Winning Career Strategies They'll Never Teach You in Business School)