Bombing To Win Quotes

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Twenty-two hours and our war begins Our war of limbs and lips and hands... The best part of finally Not calling retreat? The showers above us Raining down on our feet While the bombs are exploding and the guns fire their rounds. Before the two of us collapse to the ground. Before the battle, before the war... You need to know I'd go fifty-nine more. Whatever it takes to let you win. I'd retreat all over and over again.
Colleen Hoover (Point of Retreat (Slammed, #2))
They want us to be afraid. They want us to be afraid of leaving our homes. They want us to barricade our doors and hide our children. Their aim is to make us fear life itself! They want us to hate. They want us to hate 'the other'. They want us to practice aggression and perfect antagonism. Their aim is to divide us all! They want us to be inhuman. They want us to throw out our kindness. They want us to bury our love and burn our hope. Their aim is to take all our light! They think their bricked walls will separate us. They think their damned bombs will defeat us. They are so ignorant they don’t understand that my soul and your soul are old friends. They are so ignorant they don’t understand that when they cut you I bleed. They are so ignorant they don’t understand that we will never be afraid, we will never hate and we will never be silent for life is ours!
Kamand Kojouri
So, Angel?" I said, looking over at her. She was gliding through the night, her eight-foot wings looking like a dove's. "Have you picked up anything from Anne, about anything? Anything off?" Not really." Angel thought. "From what I can tell, she does work for the FBI. She does care about us and wants us to be happy. She thinks the boys are slobs. I'm blind," Iggy said irritably. "How am I supposed to make everything all tidy?" Yeah, because you're so handicapped," I said sarcastically. "Like- you can't build bombs or cook or win at Monopoly. You can't tell us apart by the feel of our skin or feathers.
James Patterson (School's Out—Forever (Maximum Ride, #2))
Throw us in jail, and we will still love you. Bomb our homes and threaten our children, and, as difficult as it is, we will still love you. Send your hooded perpetrators of violence into our communities after midnight hours, and drag us out onto some wayside road, and beat us and leave us half-dead, and we will still love you. But be ye assured that we will wear you down by our capacity to suffer, and one day we will win our freedom.
Colson Whitehead (The Nickel Boys)
Next, the secretary advised me to take a seat while she notified the headmaster of my arrival. During those dreadful moments I did everything I could to remain calm. Nervously, I kept patting my foot to the floor and heard each and every tap. Suddenly, shouts of extreme havoc rung out just like the other times! “Oh God no! Jesus, please help me Lawd! I got you, Sir, I got you,” were screams filling the airwaves. The door opened and a battered female raced rightpast me with her hands covering her face. She kept mumbling phrases that shouldn’t be repeated by innocent lips. I couldn’t believe those disgusting words coming out of her baby-sized mouth. Then damn, another nightmare was possibly moments away. I needed an out and fast. Fearing for my life, I formulated my plan of action. Right before Principal Shellshock steadies his paddle, I was going to blow out all the gas I reserved in my little butt. I was never a fan of the fart game, but I was scheming like a veteran. That’s all I had, and it was my “A game.” My intentions were to rip a good hard one that opens my belt, ruffles my pants, and sends my new shoes flyingacross the room. Then all options would be left to the principal. He could chance tearing into me and losing a lung or take cover and let me go. Punishing me will become a hazard to his health. For the moment, I felt really good about that notion. I didn’t have much else to cling to, but I was dangerously packing breakfast from Aunt Kathy. Yes, I was sure my stink bomb defense would win that day. According to past reports, I would be the first and only kid at Mitchell Memorial to get on the scoreboard against the headmaster. Make that, Hal “1” and Principal Shell Shock “0.
Author Harold Phifer (My Bully, My Aunt, & Her Final Gift)
Let my silence grow with noise as pregnant mothers grow with life. Let my silence permeate these walls as sunlight permeates a home. Let the silence rise from unwatered graves and craters left by bombs. Let the silence rise from empty bellies and surge from broken hearts. The silence of the hidden and forgotten. The silence of the abused and tortured. The silence of the persecuted and imprisoned. The silence of the hanged and massacred. Loud as all the sounds can be, let my silence be loud so the hungry may eat my words and the poor may wear my words. Loud as all the sounds can be, let my silence be loud so I may resurrect the dead and give voice to the oppressed. My silence speaks.
Kamand Kojouri
If we can use an H-bomb--and as you said it's no checker game; it's real, it's war and nobody is fooling around--isn't it sort of ridiculous to go crawling around in the weeds, throwing knives and maybe getting yourself killed . . . and even losing the war . . . when you've got a real weapon you can use to win? What's the point in a whole lot of men risking their lives with obsolete weapons when one professor type can do so much more just by pushing a button?' Zim didn't answer at once, which wasn't like him at all. Then he said softly, 'Are you happy in the Infantry, Hendrick? You can resign, you know.' Hendrick muttered something; Zim said, 'Speak up!' I'm not itching to resign, sir. I'm going to sweat out my term.' I see. Well, the question you asked is one that a sergeant isn't really qualified to answer . . . and one that you shouldn't ask me. You're supposed to know the answer before you join up. Or you should. Did your school have a course in History and Moral Philosophy?' What? Sure--yes, sir.' Then you've heard the answer. But I'll give you my own--unofficial--views on it. If you wanted to teach a baby a lesson, would you cuts its head off?' Why . . . no, sir!' Of course not. You'd paddle it. There can be circumstances when it's just as foolish to hit an enemy with an H-Bomb as it would be to spank a baby with an ax. War is not violence and killing, pure and simple; war is controlled violence, for a purpose. The purpose of war is to support your government's decisions by force. The purpose is never to kill the enemy just to be killing him . . . but to make him do what you want him to do. Not killing . . . but controlled and purposeful violence. But it's not your business or mine to decide the purpose of the control. It's never a soldier's business to decide when or where or how--or why--he fights; that belongs to the statesmen and the generals. The statesmen decide why and how much; the generals take it from there and tell us where and when and how. We supply the violence; other people--"older and wiser heads," as they say--supply the control. Which is as it should be. That's the best answer I can give you. If it doesn't satisfy you, I'll get you a chit to go talk to the regimental commander. If he can't convince you--then go home and be a civilian! Because in that case you will certainly never make a soldier.
Robert A. Heinlein (Starship Troopers)
You don’t need a bomb to win this case. You’ve already got one—I’m the bomb.
Steve Cavanagh (The Defence (Eddie Flynn, #1))
The women will die just as much as the men will if we bomb ourselves back to the Stone Age. And then we'll be in the the Stone Age. Er. Yeah. And then there will be five thousand years of rebuilding, five thousand years where the only thing that matters is: can you hurt more, can you do more damage, can you instill fear? Yeah? And then the women will win.
Naomi Alderman (The Power)
Pearl Harbor Address to the Nation Delivered on December 8, 1941 Mr. Vice President, Mr. Speaker, Members of the Senate, and of the House of Representatives: Yesterday, December 7th, 1941 -- a date which will live in infamy -- the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan. The United States was at peace with that nation and, at the solicitation of Japan, was still in conversation with its government and its emperor looking toward the maintenance of peace in the Pacific. Indeed, one hour after Japanese air squadrons had commenced bombing in the American island of Oahu, the Japanese ambassador to the United States and his colleague delivered to our Secretary of State a formal reply to a recent American message. And while this reply stated that it seemed useless to continue the existing diplomatic negotiations, it contained no threat or hint of war or of armed attack. It will be recorded that the distance of Hawaii from Japan makes it obvious that the attack was deliberately planned many days or even weeks ago. During the intervening time, the Japanese government has deliberately sought to deceive the United States by false statements and expressions of hope for continued peace. The attack yesterday on the Hawaiian islands has caused severe damage to American naval and military forces. I regret to tell you that very many American lives have been lost. In addition, American ships have been reported torpedoed on the high seas between San Francisco and Honolulu. Yesterday, the Japanese government also launched an attack against Malaya. Last night, Japanese forces attacked Hong Kong. Last night, Japanese forces attacked Guam. Last night, Japanese forces attacked the Philippine Islands. Last night, the Japanese attacked Wake Island. And this morning, the Japanese attacked Midway Island. Japan has, therefore, undertaken a surprise offensive extending throughout the Pacific area. The facts of yesterday and today speak for themselves. The people of the United States have already formed their opinions and well understand the implications to the very life and safety of our nation. As commander in chief of the Army and Navy, I have directed that all measures be taken for our defense. But always will our whole nation remember the character of the onslaught against us. No matter how long it may take us to overcome this premeditated invasion, the American people in their righteous might will win through to absolute victory. I believe that I interpret the will of the Congress and of the people when I assert that we will not only defend ourselves to the uttermost, but will make it very certain that this form of treachery shall never again endanger us. Hostilities exist. There is no blinking at the fact that our people, our territory, and our interests are in grave danger. With confidence in our armed forces, with the unbounding determination of our people, we will gain the inevitable triumph -- so help us God. I ask that the Congress declare that since the unprovoked and dastardly attack by Japan on Sunday, December 7th, 1941, a state of war has existed between the United States and the Japanese empire.
Franklin D. Roosevelt
[A]lthough guns, tanks, and bombs win wars, they don't win peace. Peace takes research, planning reconstruction, the secrets to which can be found in books.
Mike Thomson (Syria's Secret Library: Reading and Redemption in a Town Under Siege)
After changing shape several times, the ball eventually turned into a huge face. It floated alongside the air-car. This time, time instead of sending him a mental message, the face spoke out aloud and the whole air-car vibrated with its intensity. “If you are foolish enough to renege on your contract, you will be severely punished. For your sake, I hope you wouldn’t do such a thing.” When Tarmy made no attempt to respond, the face turned and pressed itself against the millipede-free window. A moment later, Tarmy felt the fat slug entering his mind, the sign that the face was attempting to use its powers to obtain his response by other means. But as the slug dug deeper, Samantha’s cover stories began springing out of the corners of his mind. Instead of obtaining Tarmy’s agreement, all that the face saw was a burning army transporter surrounded by bodies. Undeterred, the face continued its assault. Samantha had anticipated that Tarmy might come up against an adept, so the mental images of death and destruction flowed unchecked. After failing to break Tarmy’s defences, the face removed the slug and tried reason. “You can’t win, Mr Tarleton, so why don’t you do yourself a favour and cooperate? It will be better for you in the long run. Now, where is the miniature pulse drive engine?” Tarmy realised why the millipedes hadn’t been allowed to attack. It was obvious that the Great Ones were hoping to retrieve the engine. When Tarmy didn’t respond, the face said, “I am prepared to overlook your desertion if you agree to tell us where the engine is and also honour your contract by showing us how to convert the engine into a bomb.
Andrew R. Williams (Samantha's Revenge (Arcadia's Children, #1))
Part of me feels like an ever-detonating bomb, but I’m a person, too, and just because controlling my anger is hard doesn’t mean I shouldn’t try. Just because apologizing is hard doesn’t mean I don’t need to.
Z.R. Ellor (May the Best Man Win)
In answer to modern requests for signs and wonders, Our Lord might say, 'You repeat Satan's temptation, whenever you admire the wonders of science, and forget that I am the Author of the Universe and its science. Your scientists are the proofreaders, but not the authors of the Book of Nature; they can see and examine My handiwork, but they cannot create one atom themselves. You would tempt Me to prove Myself omnipotent by meaningless tests...You tempt Me after you have willfully destroyed your own cities with bombs by shrieking out, "Why does God not stop this war?" You tempt Me, saying that I have no power, unless I show it at your beck and call. This, if you remember, is exactly how Satan tempted Me in the desert. I have never had many followers on the lofty heights of Divine truth, I know; for instance, I have hardly had the intelligentsia. I refuse to perform stunts to win them, for they would not really be won that way. It is only when I am seen on the Cross that I really draw men to Myself; it is by sacrifice, and not by marvels, that I must make My appeal. I must win followers not with test tubes, but with My blood; not with material power, but with love; not with celestial fireworks, but with the right use of reason and free will.
Fulton J. Sheen (Life of Christ)
Scientists say that if the bombs drop again, no one will win because no one will survive. All life on Earth will end.
Laurence Yep (Hiroshima)
A company author bombs from the sky like the Air Force. A self-published author wins the battle by foot.
Judah Lee Davis
Sixteen hours ago an American airplane dropped one bomb on Hiroshima, an important Japanese Army base. That bomb had more power than 20,000 tons of T.N.T.
Denise Kiernan (The Girls of Atomic City: The Untold Story of the Women Who Helped Win World War II)
My instinct, of course, is to imagine us as one of many planets racing its evolution against its sun--merely one in the galactic Darwinian pursuit. But maybe we're not. Maybe all this talk of the inevitability of aliens is garbage and we're miraculously, beautifully alone in our biological success. What if we're winning? What if we're actually the most evolved intelligence in all this big bang chaos? What if other planets have bacteria and single-celled genotypes but nothing more? The precedent is all the more pressing. Humans alone could be winning the race against our giant gas time bomb and running with the universal Olympic torch. What an honor. What a responsibility. What a gift we have been given to be born in an atmosphere with oxygen and carbon dioxide and millions of years and phenotypes cheering us on with recycles of energy. The thing is, I think we can make it. I think we can shove ourselves into spaceships before things get too cold. I only hope we don't fuck things up before that. Because millions of years is a long time and I don't want to let the universe down.
Marina Keegan (The Opposite of Loneliness: Essays and Stories)
The initial flattery and attention will get the narcissist off to a flying start, and when the love-bombing follows, the codependent will be blown away. Somebody loves him, at last. No wonder he will become hooked so quickly. Even when the nonsense starts- the silent treatment etc. - this is behaviour he recognises and is conditioned to. He just has to keep trying that little bit harder, in order to win back the narcissist´s approval.
A.B. Jamieson (Prepare to be tortured: - the price you will pay for dating a narcissist)
The MP’s hunted antelope with machine guns for fresh meat and for sport. Groves authorized only cold showers for his troops; their isolated duty would win them eventual award for the lowest VD rate in the entire U.S. Army.
Richard Rhodes (The Making of the Atomic Bomb: 25th Anniversary Edition)
Has Stalin understood correctly?’ asked Stalin. ‘You were on Franco’s side, you have fought against Comrade Mao, you have… saved the life of the pig in London and you have put the deadliest weapon in the world in the hands of the arch-capitalists in the USA. ‘I might have known,’ Stalin mumbled and in his anger forgot to talk in the third person. ‘And now you are here to sell yourself to Soviet socialism? One hundred thousand dollars, is that the price for your soul? Or has the price gone up during the course of the evening?’ Allan no longer wanted to help. Of course, Yury was still a good man and he was the one who actually needed the help. But you couldn’t get away from the fact that the results of Yury’s work would end up in the hands of Comrade Stalin, and he was not exactly Allan’s idea of a real comrade. On the contrary, he seemed unstable, and it would probably be best for all concerned if he didn’t get the bomb to play with. ‘Not exactly,’ said Allan. ‘This was never about money…’ He didn’t get any further before Stalin exploded again. ‘Who do you think you are, you damned rat? Do you think that you, a representative of fascism, of horrid American capitalism, of everything on this Earth that Stalin despises, that you, you, can come to the Kremlin, to the Kremlin, and bargain with Stalin, and bargain with Stalin?’ ‘Why do you say everything twice?’ Allan wondered, while Stalin went on: ‘The Soviet Union is prepared to go to war again, I’ll tell you that! There will be war, there will inevitably be war until American imperialism is wiped out.’ ‘Is that what you think?’ asked Allan. ‘To do battle and to win, we don’t need your damned atom bomb! What we need is socialist souls and hearts! He who knows he can never be defeated, can never be defeated!’ ‘Unless of course somebody drops an atom bomb on him,’ said Allan. ‘I shall destroy capitalism! Do you hear! I shall destroy every single capitalist! And I shall start with you, you dog, if you don’t help us with the bomb!’ Allan noted that he had managed to be both a rat and a dog in the course of a minute or so. And that Stalin was being rather inconsistent, because now he wanted to use Allan’s services after all. But Allan wasn’t going to sit there and listen to this abuse any longer. He had come to Moscow to help them out, not to be shouted at. Stalin would have to manage on his own. ‘I’ve been thinking,’ said Allan. ‘What,’ said Stalin angrily. ‘Why don’t you shave off that moustache?’ With that the dinner was over, because the interpreter fainted
Jonas Jonasson (Der Hundertjährige, der aus dem Fenster stieg und verschwand)
There was no winning in war. Not this war, anyway. There was just pain and death and destruction; good men coming home either broken beyond repair or in body bags, and bombs dropping on civilians, and a generation of children being orphaned. How could all this death and destruction be the way to stop communism? How could America be doing the right thing, dropping all these bombs—many on villages full of the old and the young—and using napalm to burn whatever was left?
Kristin Hannah (The Women)
The weapon devised as an instrument of major war would end major war. It was hardly a weapon at all, the memorandum Bohr was writing in sweltering Washington emphasized; it was “a far deeper interference with the natural course of events than anything ever before attempted” and it would “completely change all future conditions of warfare.” 2025 When nuclear weapons spread to other countries, as they certainly would, no one would be able any longer to win. A spasm of mutual destruction would be possible. But not war.
Richard Rhodes (The Making of the Atomic Bomb: 25th Anniversary Edition)
Sometimes it feels like I'm in a fight, and all I've got are my hands, and the other guy has a knife. But that guy with the knife, eventually he's going to face someone with a gun. And the one with the gun is going to go up against someone with a bomb. The truth is, Syd, there will always be somebody stronger than you. That's just the way life works.' He looked up at the shining skyscraper. 'It doesn't matter if you're a human versus a human or a human versus an EO or and EO versus an EO. You do what you can. You fight, and you win, until you don't.
Victoria Schwab
physicist James Franck, head of the physics department at Haber’s institute, who, like Haber and Hahn, would later win the Nobel Prize.342 So did a crowd of industrial chemists employed by I.G. Farben, a cartel of eight chemical companies assembled in wartime by the energetic Carl Duisberg of Bayer.
Richard Rhodes (The Making of the Atomic Bomb: 25th Anniversary Edition)
Wars are won by men like Bill Darby, storming up the beach with all guns blazing, and by men like Leverton, sipping his tea as the bombs fell. They are won by planners correctly calculating how many rations and contraceptives an invading force will need; by tacticians laying out grand strategy; by generals inspiring the men they command; by politicians galvanizing the will to fight; and by writers putting war into words. They are won by acts of strength, bravery, and guile. But they are also won by feats of imagination. Amateur, unpublished novelists, the framers of Operation Mincemeat, dreamed up the most unlikely concatenation of events, rendered them believable, and sent them off to war, changing reality through lateral thinking and proving that it is possible to win a battle fought in the mind, from behind a desk, and from beyond the grave. Operation Mincemeat was pure make-believe; and it made Hitler believe something that changed the course of history.
Ben Macintyre (Operation Mincemeat: How a Dead Man and a Bizarre Plan Fooled the Nazis and Assured an Allied Victory)
We shouldn’t be afraid of atomic bombs and missiles. No matter what kind of war breaks out—conventional or thermonuclear—we’ll win. As for China, if the imperialists unleash war on us, we may lose more than three hundred million people. So what? War is war. The years will pass, and we’ll get to work producing more babies than ever before.27
Henry Kissinger (On China)
Girls don’t learn the difference between personal victory and team victory or personal loss and team loss. Girls learned that if you don’t do it yourself, it doesn’t get done. Girls were never asked to fight the war in Vietnam or any other war. But if they had been, girls would have won. Girls would have felt guilty for not winning it sooner, and girls would have restored all of the roads, rebuilt all of the bombed homes, adopted all of the orphans, established daycare centers, domestic violence shelters and homeless shelters, and girls would have processed endlessly about what we could have done to have prevented the war and what we still can do to prevent it from ever happening again. Because girls believe, in the end, everything that happens is our own personal fault.
Cheryl Peck (Fat Girls and Lawn Chairs)
You know, you spend your childhood watching TV, assuming that at some point in the future everything you see there will one day happen to you: that you too will win a Formula One race, hop a train, foil a group of terrorists, tell someone 'Give me the gun', etc. Then you start secondary school, and suddenly everyone's asking you about your career plans and your long-term goals, and by goals they don't mean the kind you are planning to score in the FA Cup. Gradually the awful truth dawns on you: that Santa Claus was just the tip of the iceberg — that your future will not be the rollercoaster ride you'd imagined, that the world occupied by your parents, the world of washing the dishes, going to the dentist, weekend trips to the DIY superstore to buy floor-tiles, is actually largely what people mean when they speak of 'life'. Now, with every day that passes, another door seems to close, the one marked PROFESSIONAL STUNTMAN, or FIGHT EVIL ROBOT, until as the weeks go by and the doors — GET BITTEN BY SNAKE, SAVE WORLD FROM ASTEROID, DISMANTLE BOMB WITH SECONDS TO SPARE — keep closing, you begin to hear the sound as a good thing, and start closing some yourself, even ones that didn't necessarily need to be closed.
Paul Murray (Skippy Dies)
I have told how Skorzeny wrote in this respect: Hitler had confessed to him he would not use the atomic bomb to win the war. It is very possible the bomb the American used against Japan was the one the Germans did not use against them. By doing so Hitler would not have won the war, he would have lost it, since he would have Judaized his own world, using an extreme Jew method. He would have used the weapon of the enemy. He would have lost by winning. Instead he won by losing.
Miguel Serrano (Adolf Hitler: El Último Avatãra)
That bomb is made up of your success, your indifference, and your ability to be everything that your ex has consistently proven he isn’t—genuinely happy, emotionally intelligent, honest, unbothered, and consistent. Someone who loves their younger self unconditionally and will go to the ends of the earth to choose and protect that child. Someone whose boundaries preserve her peace and mental health. Someone who knows that her triggers are not her truth and, because of this, is no longer a slave to her ego.
Natasha Adamo (Win Your Breakup: How to Be The One That Got Away)
HE remembered looking "agape" in his encyclopedia volume after he read Dr. King's speech in the DEFENDER. The newspaper ran the address in full after the reverend's appearance at Cornell College. If Elwood had come across the word before, through all those years of skipping around the book, it hadn't stuck in his head. King described "agape" as a divine love operating in the heart of man. A selfless love, an incandescent love, the highest there is. He called upon his Negro audience to cultivate that pure love for their oppressors, that it might carry them to the other side of the struggle. Elwood tried to get his head around it, now that it was no longer the abstraction floating in his head last spring. It was real now. "Throw us in jail and we will still love you. Bomb our homes and threaten our children, and, as difficult as it is, we will still love you. Send your hooded perpetrators of violence into our communities after midnight hours, and drag us out onto some wayside road, and beat us and leave us half-dead, and we will still love you. But be ye assured that we will wear you down by our capacity to suffer, and one day we will win our freedom. The capacity to suffer. Elwood--all the Nickel boys--existed in the capacity. Breathed in it, ate in it, dreamed in it. That was their lives now. Otherwise they would have perished. The beatings, the rapes, the unrelenting winnowing of themselves. They endured. But to love those who destroyed them? To make that leap? "We will meet your physical force with soul force. Do to us what you will and we will still love you." Elwood shook his head. What a thing to ask. What an impossible thing.
Colson Whitehead (The Nickel Boys)
All the horrors of all the ages were brought together, and not only armies but whole populations were thrust into the midst of them. The mighty educated States involved conceived-not without reason-that their very existence was at stake. Neither peoples nor rulers drew the line at any deed which they thought could help them win. Germany, having let Hell loose, kept well in the van of terror; but she was followed step by step by the desperate and ultimately avenging nations she had assailed. Every outrage against humanity or international law was repaid by reprisals-often of a greater scale and of longer duration. No truce or parley mitigated the strife of the armies. The wounded died between the lines: the dead mouldered into the soil. Merchant ships and neutral ships and hospital ships were sunk on the seas and all on board left to their fate, or killed as they swam. Every effort was made to starve whole nations into submission without regard to age or sex. Cities and monuments were smashed by artillery. Bombs from the air were cast down indiscriminately. Poison gas in many forms stifled or seared the soldiers. Liquid fire was projected upon their bodies. Men fell from the air in flames, or were smothered often slowly in the dark recesses of the sea. The fighting strength of armies was limited only by the manhood of their countries. Europe and large parts of Asia and Africa became one vast battlefield on which after years of struggle not armies but nations broke and ran. When all was over, Torture and Cannibalism were the only expedients that the civilized, scientific, Christian States had been able to deny themselves: and they were of doubtful utility.
Winston S. Churchill (The World Crisis, 1911-1918)
Throw us in jail, and we will still love you. Bomb our homes and threaten our children, and, as difficult as it is, we will still love you. Send your hooded perpetrators of violence into our communities after midnight hours, and drag us out onto some wayside road, and beat us and leave us half-dead, and we will still love you. But be ye assured that we will wear you down by our capacity to suffer, and one day we will win our freedom. The capacity to suffer. Elwood—all the Nickel boys—existed in the capacity. Breathed in it, ate in it, dreamed in it. That was their lives now. Otherwise they would have perished. The beatings, the rapes, the unrelenting winnowing of themselves. They endured. But to love those who would have destroyed them? To make that leap? We will meet your physical force with soul force. Do to us what you will and we will still love you.
Colson Whitehead (The Nickel Boys)
As for the significance of my nihilism…in a word, it is the foundation of my thoughts. The goal of my activities is the destruction of all living things. I feel boundless anger against parental authority, which crushed me under the high-sounding name of parental love, and against state and social authority, which abused me in the name of universal love. Having observed the social reality that all living things on earth are incessantly engaged in a struggle for survival, that they kill each other to survive, I concluded that if there is an absolute, universal low on earth, it is the reality that the strong eat the weak. This, I believe, is the law and truth of the universe. Now that I have seen the truth about the struggle for survival and the fact that the strong win and the weak lose, I cannot join the ranks of the idealists and adopt an optimistic mode of thinking which dreams of the construction of a society that is without authority and control. As long as all living things do not disappear from the earth, the power relations based on this principle [of the strong crushing the weak] will persist. Because the wielders of power continue to defend their authority in the usual manner and oppress the weak—and because my past existence has been a story of oppression by all sources of authority—I decided to deny the rights of all authority, rebel against them, and stake not only my own life but that of all humanity in this endeavor. For this reason I planned eventually to throw a bomb and accept the termination of my life. I did not care whether this act would touch off a revolution or not. I am perfectly content to satisfy my own desires. I do not wish to help create a new society based on a new authority in a different form.
Mikiso Hane (Reflections on the Way to the Gallows: Rebel Women in Prewar Japan)
But as I reflected on what the president could have done or said differently, I also remembered what it felt like in the weeks following 9/11. When, for a few glorious weeks, we were all united as Americans. For a brief time, it didn’t seem to matter if you were black, white, or brown. We were all brothers and sisters because we were Americans. We shared certain values, a certain past, a certain goal. We haven’t really seen that since. Charlottesville, I knew, had the same potential to unite us. But Trump’s response derailed that opportunity. America didn’t need a stock statement. The country was pleading for a serious discussion about race, about our fundamental need to completely stamp out the Klan and neo-Nazis. I couldn’t help but think of the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing and the Charleston church shooting. Emmett Till and Jimmie Lee Jackson. Black Codes and the Southern Manifesto. Trump, I felt, had betrayed black America. And Jewish America. And American decency.
Gianno Caldwell (Taken for Granted: How Conservatism Can Win Back the Americans That Liberalism Failed)
Elwood tried to get his head around it, now that it was no longer the abstraction floating in his head last spring. It was real now. Throw us in jail, and we will still love you. Bomb our homes and threaten our children, and, as difficult as it is, we will still love you. Send your hooded perpetrators of violence into our communities after midnight hours, and drag us out onto some wayside road, and beat us and leave us half-dead, and we will still love you. But be ye assured that we will wear you down by our capacity to suffer, and one day we will win our freedom. The capacity to suffer. Elwood—all the Nickel boys—existed in the capacity. Breathed in it, ate in it, dreamed in it. That was their lives now. Otherwise they would have perished. The beatings, the rapes, the unrelenting winnowing of themselves. They endured. But to love those who would have destroyed them? To make that leap? We will meet your physical force with soul force. Do to us what you will and we will still love you.
Colson Whitehead (The Nickel Boys)
Okay, then. Let’s win you a wish.” He takes out his phone and pulls up Google Maps. “I looked up Gen’s address before I came over here. I think you’re right--we should take our time, assess the situation. Not go in half-cocked.” “Mm-hm.” I’m in a sort of dream state; it’s hard to concentrate. John Ambrose McClaren wants to make it unequivocally clear. I snap out of it when Kitty jostles her way back into the living room, balancing a glass of orange soda, the tub of red pepper hummus, and a bag of pita chips. She makes her way over to the couch and plonks down right between us. Holding out the bag, she asks, “Do you guys want some?” “Sure,” John says, taking a chip. “Hey, I hear you’re pretty good at schemes. Is that true?” Warily she says, “What makes you say that?” “You’re the one who sent out Lara Jean’s letters, aren’t you?” Kitty nods. “Then I’d say you’re pretty good at schemes.” “I mean, yeah. I guess.” “Awesome. We need your help.” Kitty’s ideas are a bit too extreme--like slashing Genevieve’s tires, or throwing a stink bomb in her house to smoke her out, but John writes down every one of Kitty’s suggestions, which does not go unnoticed by Kitty. Very little does.
Jenny Han (P.S. I Still Love You (To All the Boys I've Loved Before, #2))
As Allied forces moved into Hitler’s Fortress Europe, Roosevelt and his circle were confronted with new evidence of the Holocaust. In early 1942, he had been given information that Adolf Hitler was quietly fulfilling his threat to “annihilate the Jewish race.” Rabbi Stephen Wise asked the President that December 1942 to inform the world about “the most overwhelming disaster of Jewish history” and “try to stop it.” Although he was willing to warn the world about the impending catastrophe and insisted that there be war crimes commissions when the conflict was over, Roosevelt told Wise that punishment for such crimes would probably have to await the end of the fighting, so his own solution was to “win the war.” The problem with this approach was that by the time of an Allied victory, much of world Jewry might have been annihilated. By June 1944, the Germans had removed more than half of Hungary’s 750,000 Jews, and some Jewish leaders were asking the Allies to bomb railways from Hungary to the Auschwitz death camp in Poland. In response, Churchill told his Foreign Secretary, Anthony Eden, that the murder of the Jews was “probably the greatest and most horrible crime ever committed in the whole history of the world,” and ordered him to get “everything” he could out of the British Air Force. But the Prime Minister was told that American bombers were better positioned to do the job. At the Pentagon, Stimson consulted John McCloy, who later insisted, for decades, that he had “never talked” with Roosevelt about the option of bombing the railroad lines or death camps. But in 1986, McCloy changed his story during a taped conversation with Henry Morgenthau’s son, Henry III, who was researching a family history. The ninety-one-year-old McCloy insisted that he had indeed raised the idea with the President, and that Roosevelt became “irate” and “made it very clear” that bombing Auschwitz “wouldn’t have done any good.” By McCloy’s new account, Roosevelt “took it out of my hands” and warned that “if it’s successful, it’ll be more provocative” and “we’ll be accused of participating in this horrible business,” as well as “bombing innocent people.” McCloy went on, “I didn’t want to bomb Auschwitz,” adding that “it seemed to be a bunch of fanatic Jews who seemed to think that if you didn’t bomb, it was an indication of lack of venom against Hitler.” If McCloy’s memory was reliable, then, just as with the Japanese internment, Roosevelt had used the discreet younger man to discuss a decision for which he knew he might be criticized by history, and which might conceivably have become an issue in the 1944 campaign. This approach to the possible bombing of the camps would allow the President to explain, if it became necessary, that the issue had been resolved at a lower level by the military. In retrospect, the President should have considered the bombing proposal more seriously. Approving it might have required him to slightly revise his insistence that the Allies’ sole aim should be winning the war, as he did on at least a few other occasions. But such a decision might have saved lives and shown future generations that, like Churchill, he understood the importance of the Holocaust as a crime unparalleled in world history.*
Michael R. Beschloss (Presidents of War: The Epic Story, from 1807 to Modern Times)
Bannon thrived on the chaos he created and did everything he could to make it spread. When he finally made his way through the crowd to the back of the town house, he put on a headset to join the broadcast of the Breitbart radio show already in progress. It was his way of bringing tens of thousands of listeners into the inner sanctum of the “Breitbart Embassy,” as the town house was ironically known, and thereby conscripting them into a larger project. Bannon was inordinately proud of the movement he saw growing around him, boasting constantly of its egalitarian nature. What to an outsider could look like a cast of extras from the Island of Misfit Toys was, in Bannon’s eyes, a proudly populist and “unclubbable” plebiscite rising up in defiant protest against the “globalists” and “gatekeepers” who had taken control of both parties. Just how Phil Robertson of Duck Dynasty figured into a plan to overthrow the global power structure wasn’t clear, even to many of Bannon’s friends. But, then, Bannon derived a visceral thrill anytime he could deliver a fuck-you to the establishment. The thousands of frustrated listeners calling in to his radio show, and the millions more who flocked to Breitbart News, had left him no doubt that an army of the angry and dispossessed was eager to join him in lobbing a bomb at the country’s leaders. As guests left the party, a doorman handed out a gift that Bannon had chosen for the occasion: a silver hip flask with “Breitbart” imprinted above an image of a honey badger, the Breitbart mascot. — Bannon’s cult-leader magnetism was a powerful draw for oddballs and freaks, and the attraction ran both ways. As he moved further from the cosmopolitan orbits of Goldman Sachs and Hollywood, there was no longer any need for him to suppress his right-wing impulses. Giving full vent to his views on subjects like immigration and Islam isolated him among a radical fringe that most of political Washington regarded as teeming with racist conspiracy theorists. But far from being bothered, Bannon welcomed their disdain, taking it as proof of his authentic conviction. It fed his grandiose sense of purpose to imagine that he was amassing an army of ragged, pitchfork-wielding outsiders to storm the barricades and, in Andrew Breitbart’s favorite formulation, “take back the country.” If Bannon was bothered by the incendiary views held by some of those lining up with him, he didn’t show it. His habit always was to welcome all comers. To all outward appearances, Bannon, wild-eyed and scruffy, a Falstaff in flip-flops, was someone whom the political world could safely ignore. But his appearance, and the company he kept, masked an analytic capability that was undiminished and as applicable to politics as it had been to the finances of corrupt Hollywood movie studios. Somehow, Bannon, who would happily fall into league with the most agitated conservative zealot, was able to see clearly that conservatives had failed to stop Bill Clinton in the 1990s because they had indulged this very zealotry to a point where their credibility with the media and mainstream voters was shot. Trapped in their own bubble, speaking only to one another, they had believed that they were winning, when in reality they had already lost.
Joshua Green (Devil's Bargain: Steve Bannon, Donald Trump, and the Storming of the Presidency)
Let’s look at your average American Muslim, someone like Siraj Wahaj, the recipient of the American Muslim community’s highest honors. Mr. Wahaj had the privilege in June of 1991 of becoming the first Muslim to deliver a daily prayer before the U.S. House of Representatives. In his prayer he recited from the Koran and appealed to almighty God to guide America’s leaders ‘and grant them righteousness and wisdom.’ The same Wahaj spoke to a Muslim audience a year later in New Jersey. This time Wahaj was singing a different tune to a different audience, and his words were far from his moderate ones in front of the U.S. House of Representatives. ‘If only Muslims were more clever politically,’ he told his New Jersey listeners, ‘they could take over the United States and replace its constitutional government with a caliphate. If we were united and strong, we’d elect our own emir [leader] and give allegiance to him. . . . [T]ake my word, if 6-8 million Muslims unite in America, the country will come to us." If Wahaj is the example of the American Muslim community and the receiver of its highest honors, who needs enemies? If this is whom our government calls a ‘moderate’ and invites to deliver a prayer before the House of Representatives, we have ignorant elected officials sitting in our capital running our country. Do you feel safer now knowing that not all Muslims are plane-flying, bomb-wearing, or car-driving terrorists? Talking about overthrowing our government and replacing it with an Islamic caliphate is terrorism of a different kind, but it is still terrorism. This is the more dangerous kind, the kind that circles you slowly, so that by the time you realize you are about to be killed, it’s already too late to do anything about it. Where is the outrage? Have we lost our sense of patriotism and loyalty to America? Do you consider this ‘moderation’? A highly respected, award-winning Muslim from the Islamic American community calling to overthrow the United States government?
Brigitte Gabriel (Because They Hate)
Uncle Alfred was very respectful of Owen’s desire to go to Vietnam, but Aunt Martha—over our elegant dinner—questioned the war’s “morality.” “YES, I QUESTION THAT, TOO,” said Owen Meany. “BUT I FEEL ONE HAS TO SEE SOMETHING FIRSTHAND TO BE SURE. I’M CERTAINLY INCLINED TO AGREE WITH KENNEDY’S ASSESSMENT OF THE VIETNAMESE PROBLEM—WAY BACK IN NINETEEN SIXTY-THREE. YOU MAY RECALL THAT THE PRESIDENT SAID: ‘WE CAN HELP THEM, WE CAN GIVE THEM EQUIPMENT, WE CAN SEND OUR MEN OUT THERE AS ADVISERS, BUT THEY HAVE TO WIN IT, THE PEOPLE OF VIETNAM.’ I THINK THAT POINT IS STILL VALID—AND IT’S CLEAR TO ALL OF US THAT THE ‘PEOPLE OF VIETNAM’ ARE NOT WINNING THE WAR. WE APPEAR TO BE TRYING TO WIN IT FOR THEM. “BUT LET’S SUPPOSE, FOR A MOMENT, THAT WE BELIEVE IN THE STATED OBJECTIVES OF THE JOHNSON ADMINISTRATION’S VIETNAM POLICY—AND THAT WE SUPPORT THIS POLICY. WE AGREE TO RESIST COMMUNIST AGGRESSION IN SOUTH VIETNAM—WHETHER IT COMES FROM THE NORTH VIETNAMESE OR THE VIET CONG. WE SUPPORT THE IDEA OF SELF-DETERMINATION FOR SOUTH VIETNAM—AND WE WANT PEACE IN SOUTHEAST ASIA. IF THESE ARE OUR OBJECTIVES—IF WE AGREE THAT THIS IS WHAT WE WANT—WHY ARE WE ESCALATING THE WAR? “THERE DOESN’T APPEAR TO BE A GOVERNMENT IN SAIGON THAT CAN DO VERY WELL WITHOUT US. DO THE SOUTH VIETNAMESE PEOPLE EVEN LIKE THE MILITARY JUNTA OF MARSHAL KY? NATURALLY, HANOI AND THE VIET CONG WILL NOT NEGOTIATE FOR A PEACEFUL SETTLEMENT IF THEY THINK THEY CAN WIN THE WAR! THERE’S EVERY REASON FOR THE UNITED STATES TO KEEP ENOUGH OF OUR GROUND FORCES IN SOUTH VIETNAM TO PERSUADE HANOI AND THE VIET CONG THAT THEY COULD NEVER ACHIEVE A MILITARY VICTORY. BUT WHAT DOES IT ACCOMPLISH FOR US TO BOMB THE NORTH? “SUPPOSING THAT WE MEAN WHAT WE SAY—THAT WE WANT SOUTH VIETNAM TO BE FREE TO GOVERN ITSELF—WE SHOULD BE PROTECTING SOUTH VIETNAM FROM ATTACK. BUT IT APPEARS THAT WE ARE ATTACKING THE WHOLE COUNTRY—FROM THE AIR! IF WE BOMB THE WHOLE COUNTRY TO BITS—TO PROTECT IT FROM COMMUNISM—WHAT KIND OF PROTECTION IS THAT? “I THINK THAT’S THE PROBLEM,” said Owen Meany, “BUT I’D LIKE TO SEE THE SITUATION FOR MYSELF.
John Irving (A Prayer for Owen Meany)
The Robot With Human Hair Pt2" Said it's the coming of man And I forget when you went away Like a kick to the face Not winning the race (Lion, I've seen you from afar) I've seen her in the car Knowing that you deserve such more Deserved to know you're free Leave, I'm the director Agree to the role of the pilot inspector Breathe, pilot inspector Feed off the role of the radar detector Leave, I'm the director Agree to the role of the pilot inspector Breathe, pilot inspector Feed off the role of the radar detector Well, then, you said you could do this on your own I'm sorry baby, I can't aid you (And then you say, hands down, right now, I'll let this go) You... Well, now it's up to god to save you Save you from all of those bruised, bruised and battered wounds (Wave right with a gun in his hand wave right) Can you taste this blood Dripping sweeter than...? And over your eyes And I, and I fall to both knees Not to beg for your forgiveness But to hate the word And you speak Take a right off these cliffs The ground is staring at your wounded weapons Wounded weapons (And I can't believe that you're right) You can bank the night on this its round And glaring at your well I get hyphy Tell 'em I get hyphy And this is where it ends Well, then, you said you could do this on your own I'm sorry baby, I can't aid you (And then you say, hands down, right now, I'll let this go) You... Well, now it's up to god to save you Save you, save you Save you, save you I can't believe these long words Come from many national absurd This is a line cut across Hope, defeat, the line, the loss I can never be this lone wolf You can never see me across this earth This will be a light that I run from You thought you were so strong You pleaded to never be wrong (Brace yourself, fasten belts) Well, now that you go (Close the hatch, flip the latch) I sit here and wonder (They're not dead, speed ahead) Times have changed It's like we've been trashing silos (Well, now that you go) In the time bomb aisle (I sit here and wonder) Maybe they'll dodge the spill Oil kills, sure it will And I can't breathe the air (Hide your daughter 'cause I'm coming over) To reach for this light (You know I'm not lying about) (Trashing silos in the time bomb aisle) And you can't breathe the air (About trashing silos in the time bomb aisle) Not leaving her to reach The line, the work, the rope, the love And I have seen such worse for you It's a no, I'm not coming back It's a no, I'm not coming back It's a no, I'm not coming back And now you see the sky has turned black Why do think everyone has turned back? It's cause he's gone And now you see the sky has turned black Why do think everyone has turned back? It's cause he's gone And now you see the sky has turned black Why do think everyone has turned back? It's cause he's gone
Dance Gavin Dance
If we do not stop these mar-makers not,...it will soon be too late. We are the only nation that can halt this crusade. It might be too late in America, but it isn't too late here. Without British support the whole scheme would collapse. For that reason the future of all nations depends upon the policy which is decided in this House. More than that, the final position of Britain in the world is being decided. If we support these anti-Communist crusades through the world as we have supported it in Greece, then our good name and existence will be threatened by the hatred of all free-thinking men. We cannot suppress all desire in Europe and Asia for social change by branding it communism from Russia and persecuting its supporters. Social change doesn't have to come from Russia, whatever the Foreign Office or the Americans say. It is a product of the miserable conditions under which the majority of the earth's population exist. There are fighters for social change in every land, here as well as anywhere.... We Socialists are among them. That is the reason for our predominance in the House to-day. The very men that we try to suppress in other countries are asking for far less liberty than we enjoy here, far less social change than we Socialists hope to initiate in Great Britain. Are we going to betray these men by labelling them Communists and crushing them wherever we find them until we have launched ourselves at Russia herself in a war that will wipe this island off the face of the earth? The American imperialists say that this is the American Century. ARe we to sacrifice ourselves for that great ideal, or are we to stand beside the people of Europe and Asia and other lands who seek independence, economic stability, self-determination, and the right to conduct their own affairs? Are we going to partake in an anti-Red campaign when we ourselves are Reds? ...... Some among us might think that there is political expediency in following this anti-Russian crusade without really getting enmeshed in it, creating a Third Force in Europe of their friends, a balancing force for power politics. In that you have the real policy of our Government to-day. But how can we avoid final involvement? Our American vanguard will stop at nothing. They hold their atom bomb aloft with nervous fingers. It has become their talisman and their faith. It is their new weapon of anti-Communism, a more efficient Belsen and Maidenek. Its first usage was morally anti-Russian. It was used to end Japan quickly so that Russia would play no part in the final settlement with that country. No doubt they would have used it on Russia already if they could be certain that Russian did not have an equal or better atomic weapon. That terrible uncertainty goads them into fiercer political and economic activity against the world's grim defenders of great liberties. In that you have the heart of this American imperial desperation. They cannot defeat the people of Europe and Asia with the atomic bomb alone. They cannot win unless we lend them our name and our support and our political cunning. To-day they have British support, in policy as well as in international councils where the decisions of peace and security are being made. With our support America is undermining every international conference with its anti-Russian politics.
James Aldridge (The Diplomat)
The liberal Left will the ends but not the means, and that’s simply pathetic. The Left will win when it is extremely illiberal, when it no longer takes any shit, and doesn’t spend all of its time bending over backwards so as not to offend anyone. The only people who change the world are extremists and radicals, not liberals and “multiculturalists” who always want to be liked. The people who make a difference are those who know they are going to be actively disliked.
Joe Dixon (The Liberty Wars: The Trump Time Bomb)
Moderate Republicans like Rockefeller supported the national consensus toward advancing civil rights by promoting national legislation to protect the vote, employment, housing and other elements of the American promise denied to blacks. They sought to contain Communism, not eradicate it, and they had faith that the government could be a force for good if it were circumscribed and run efficiently. They believed in experts and belittled the Goldwater approach, which held that complex problems could be solved merely by the application of common sense. It was not a plus to the Rockefeller camp that Goldwater had publicly admitted, “You know, I haven’t got a really first-class brain.”174 Politically, moderates believed that these positions would also preserve the Republican Party in a changing America. Conservatives wanted to restrict government from meddling in private enterprise and the free exercise of liberty. They thought bipartisanship and compromise were leading to collectivism and fiscal irresponsibility. On national security, Goldwater and his allies felt Eisenhower had been barely fighting the communists, and that the Soviets were gobbling up territory across the globe. At one point, Goldwater appeared to muse about dropping a low-yield nuclear bomb on the Chinese supply lines in Vietnam, though it may have been more a press misunderstanding than his actual view.175 Conservatives believed that by promoting these ideas, they were not just saving a party, they were rescuing the American experiment. Politically, they saw in Goldwater a chance to break the stranglehold of the Eastern moneyed interests. If a candidate could raise money and build an organization without being beholden to the Eastern power brokers, then such a candidate could finally represent the interests of authentic Americans, the silent majority that made the country an exceptional one. Goldwater looked like the leader of a party that was moving west. His head seemed fashioned from sandstone. An Air Force pilot, his skin was taut, as though he’d always left the window open on his plane. He would not be mistaken for an East Coast banker. The likely nominee disagreed most violently with moderates over the issue of federal protections for the rights of black Americans. In June, a month before the convention, the Senate had voted on the Civil Rights Act. Twenty-seven of thirty-three Republicans voted for the legislation. Goldwater was one of the six who did not, arguing that the law was unconstitutional. “The structure of the federal system, with its fifty separate state units, has long permitted this nation to nourish local differences, even local cultures,” said Goldwater. Though Goldwater had voted for previous civil rights legislation and had founded the Arizona Air National Guard as a racially integrated unit, moderates rejected his reasoning. They said it was a disguise to cover his political appeal to anxious white voters whom he needed to win the primaries. He was courting not just Southern whites but whites in the North and the Midwest who were worried about the speed of change in America and competition from newly empowered blacks.
John Dickerson (Whistlestop: My Favorite Stories from Presidential Campaign History)
My father never expected me to be perfect. “If you win all your games, you are in the wrong league.” His personal goal was eighty-five percent.
Harry H. Crosby (A Wing and a Prayer: The "Bloody 100th" Bomb Group of the US Eighth Air Force in Action Over Europe in World War II)
I had thought, for a little while, when the bombs fell, that maybe we might come out on top. That this nightmare life of hunger and fear that we’ve been living might be over. That I might win this game I’ve been playing against hate.
Sharon Cameron (The Light in Hidden Places)
Its next product was a different style of blue-blocker glasses, and it bombed. What happened? Well, James had bought into the belief that he was selling glasses, not helping people with sleep problems. He had focused on the product, not the person. He needed to discover that he was a sleep company, not a glasses company. Once that was solved, it was easy to come up with three to five new products that the company could sell. That changes everything. It’s tempting to fall into the trap that your business sells products, because that’s where the money comes from. But products are bought by people, and you must know who they are if you want to hit a million dollars.
Ryan Daniel Moran (12 Months to $1 Million: How to Pick a Winning Product, Build a Real Business, and Become a Seven-Figure Entrepreneur)
When you start out working with or for these people, they seem like the dream boss, coworker, or partner. You feel incredibly lucky to be working with them. They compliment you and make you feel valued and needed. They are often described as charismatic people, the boss or employee everyone likes. CN bosses are easy to work with, and many victims feel relieved to have a boss like them after experiencing difficult employers in the past. However, they are often chameleons who mirror the people they are around, so everyone feels like they are seen by them and understood. They win people’s trust quickly. They are charming, but not in a creepy-player kind of way. They seem like the real deal. Easygoing, smart, not a big ego, endearing—these are words I have heard to describe this type of person. As in romantic relationships, a CN boss will take you through the three stages. They will love bomb you in the beginning. It will feel easy, exciting, fun. They might make grandiose promises of your future with the company, your financial success, and your involvement in projects you love. You will feel excited and so lucky to have gotten this opportunity, telling your friends and family all the glowing stories of this new boss. Sometimes this person becomes a trusted friend.
Debbie Mirza (The Covert Passive Aggressive Narcissist: Recognizing the Traits and Finding Healing After Hidden Emotional and Psychological Abuse)
There was no winning in war. Not this war, anyway. There was just pain and death and destruction; good men coming home either broken beyond repair or in body bags, and bombs dropping on civilians, and a generation of children being orphaned.
Kristin Hannah (The Women)
The Narc abandons you. Then they hoover. Your relationship has plateaued, so don’t expect the initial love bombing phase to return in all its glory. Rather, there will be many cheap replicas of it that follow. The Narc goes through some of the motions, but you are no longer worth the same amount of effort to them. They are an expert on reading you at this point. They know exactly how much work, attention, and affection they need to expend in order to get you to stay, and they will not give you an ounce more than is absolutely necessary.
Marie Sarantakis (How to Divorce a Narcissist and Win)
It’s being made out that the whole point of the war was to topple the Taliban regime and liberate Afghan women from their burqas. We’re being asked to believe that the US marines are actually on a feminist mission. (If so, will their next stop be America’s military ally Saudi Arabia?) Think of it this way: in India there are some pretty reprehensible social practices, against ‘Untouchables’, against Christians and Muslims, against women. Pakistan and Bangladesh have even worse ways of dealing with minority communities and women. Should they be bombed? Should Delhi, Islamabad, and Dhaka be destroyed? Is it possible to bomb bigotry out of India? Can we bomb our way to a feminist paradise? Is that how women won the vote in the United States? Or how slavery was abolished? Can we win redress for the genocide of the millions of Native Americans, upon whose corpses the United States was founded, by bombing Santa Fe?
Arundhati Roy (My Seditious Heart: Collected Non-Fiction)
We will meet the forces of hate with the power of love. . . . We must say to our white brothers all over the South, We will match your capacity to inflict suffering with our capacity to endure suffering. . . . Bomb our homes and we will still love you. . . . We will so appeal to your heart and conscience that we will win you in the process.
Marshall Frady (Martin Luther King, Jr.: A Life (Penguin Lives Biographies))
I was asked to do a lot of things by the Weather Underground leadership over the years and, toward the end, asked to do many things I didn’t even believe at the time were right, but I did them anyway. I let my friends talk me into doing them. Those acts mainly amounted to lying to people, rather than potentially injuring them. When I finally quit it was not just because I realized that the vision was unconnected to reality. Even then, as ever, I was acting more from emotion than ideology. Mostly I was angry at having been manipulated, and humiliated for allowing myself to be manipulated, and mortified at then manipulating others in turn. But no one ever asked me to carry out a bombing. Grown-up me wants to think that even if they had, as late in the process, say, as the moment when dressed in the bland costume of an office worker I had been handed the attaché case containing the ticking device, I would have hesitated, considered the implications, and declined to go through with it. But I was still a child during those years, who needed to tag along after the big boys, take their dare, win their approval. Yes, almost certainly, I would have done it.
Jonathan Lerner (Swords in the Hands of Children: Reflections of an American Revolutionary)
Teasdale doesn't have money for an attorney," he said. "Especially one from Boston. Who are you, really?" Sidney lifted her chin. "An attorney from Boston." "You don't sound like it." She lifted an eyebrow. "Like an attorney?" He scoffed. "No, you have that droning drivel down. You don't sound Boston." She shrugged. "I didn't start out there." "You sound like Sawyer," he said with a nod toward wherever Sawyer had headed. She refused to turn around to find out. "Well, I'm sure there are more than just two of us from---" "You know him," Crane said, narrowing his eyes. Sidney's tongue faltered, and she cleared her throat. "You're from the same place, aren't you?" he asked. "The same little hick town." "Because we both have an accent?" she asked, laughing, hoping it would cover up her lie. "Because of how I just saw him look at you," Crane said, studying Sidney with a grin. "Like a lovesick schoolboy. Holy shit, you're her>." Sidney's breath felt trapped in her chest, unable to move in or out, just held captive there. Sawyer had a her? And she was it? "I---I'm who?" "The girl he came to town all messed up over," Crane said, crossing his own arms. "A hundred years ago. Well, well, well." All messed up over. After punching out his own father. Defending her. Damn it if all her carefully constructed and ancient defenses weren't crumbling around her regarding him. The boy who shattered her already shaky confidence. The reason she bitterly swore off love and dove into work, into making herself a hard and formidable beast. A beast without people skills but still. And now... "We were friends in high school, yes," Sidney managed to push out, her voice sounding decidedly wobbly. "That has no bearing on Mr. Teasdale's case." "Which came to you how, again?" Crane asked. Sidney smiled. "I'll ask the questions." Crane winked, and she so much wanted to slug him. "Nice deflection. What firm are you with?" "Finley and Blossom." "Blossom?" he asked. And it wasn't about the name. It was recognition. Shit. "Yes, sir." "His damn niece," Crane said, slapping a big hand against the ladder. "I forgot she was a lawyer. Damn it. She sent you." Oh, seven kinds of hell, now this wall was disintegrating, too. She needed a suit of armor. "Everything okay?" said a voice from directly behind her. A voice that sent shock waves to all her nether regions, especially coupled with thee hand that rested on the back of her neck. Crap, she needed more than armor. Sidney needed a force field. "I work for her," Sidney said, ignoring Sawyer's question and fighting the urge to settle back against him. "And you need to bring back the win," Crane said, chuckling. God help her if she was ever up against this asshole in court.
Sharla Lovelace (The Cottage on Pumpkin and Vine)
There never was a war of the free world against fascism, there was only war between two versions of fascism - because the so-called free world has tortured and massacred more lives than the third reich could only dream of. There never was a world war between good and evil, there was only war between two evils. There never was a world war against tyranny, there was only war between an established tyrant regime and a rising one. The real first world war has just begun - the war between good and evil - the war between emancipation and occupation - between inclusion and exclusion - between expansion and contraction - between reason and rigidity - between humanity and inhumanity. I call it, World War Human. And unlike previous times, we won't win this war by old-fashioned bullets and bombs, or by deceit and diplomacy. The World War Human can only be won by education, and education alone - by an ardent, absolute, unambiguous, unbending, undoctrinated, unphobic, unwhitewashed, decolonized, nonpartisan, gender neutral, valiant, self-correcting and conscientious execution of education.
Abhijit Naskar (World War Human: 100 New Earthling Sonnets)
The real first world war has just begun - the war between good and evil - the war between emancipation and occupation - between inclusion and exclusion - between expansion and contraction - between reason and rigidity - between humanity and inhumanity. I call it, World War Human. And unlike previous times, we won't win this war by old-fashioned bullets and bombs, or by deceit and diplomacy. The World War Human can only be won by education, and education alone - by an ardent, absolute, unambiguous, unbending, undoctrinated, unphobic, unwhitewashed, decolonized, nonpartisan, gender neutral, valiant, self-correcting and conscientious execution of education.
Abhijit Naskar (World War Human: 100 New Earthling Sonnets)
It’s remarkable how normal moments live on in the middle of chaos and tragedy. People still play chess and drink tea in the middle of war. New inside jokes are born at funerals. Stranded in Nexpa, I saw the locals laughing over beers. Making jokes about the military, about the cartels, about resorting to powdered milk the last time this happened. Human beings have little capacity for sustained horror. I think our minds need to play to survive. Permanently serious people always look so tired, maybe because they are fighting an emotional battle that eats the body alive. To laugh and play while the bombs drop is one way to survive a war, even to win it.
Jedidiah Jenkins (To Shake the Sleeping Self: A Journey from Oregon to Patagonia, and a Quest for a Life with No Regret)
Special Agent John Lang was a former marine and Georgia state trooper before he joined the Georgia Bureau of Investigation and became a top criminal profiler. At six foot four, he's imposing, with thick hair, chiseled features, and a swagger like a winning football coach. He's a commanding good ol' boy, a Georgia native who cracks f-bombs like peanut shells and makes no apologies for taking up space in the world.
Deb Miller Landau (A Devil Went Down to Georgia: Race, Power, Privilege, and the Murder of Lita McClinton)
Many reports have gone into the social impact of such terror. But a central question is still hotly debated: Why? Why do cartel soldiers hack off heads, ambush policemen, and set off car bombs? And why do they throw grenades into crowds of revelers or massacre innocent teenagers at parties? What do they stand to gain by such bloodshed? Whom are they fighting? What do they want? This puzzle goes to the heart of the debate about what El Narco has become. For the gangsters’ motivations in many ways define what they are. If they deliberately kill civilians to make a point, that would make them, by many definitions, terrorists. If they are trying to win the monopoly of violence in a certain territory, that would make them warlords. And if they are fighting a full-on war against the government, many would argue it would make them insurgents. It’s a touchy issue. Words such as terrorists and insurgents set off alarm bells, scare away investment dollars, and wake up American spooks at night. The language influences how you deal with the Mexican Drug War, and how many drones and Black Hawk helicopters you fly in.
Ioan Grillo (El Narco: Inside Mexico's Criminal Insurgency)
The award-winning American TV series Breaking Bad has a scene in its second season set in the murder capital of Ciudad Juárez. In this episode, American and Mexican agents are lured to a patch of desert just south of the border looking for an informant. They discover the informant’s head has been cut off and stuck on the body of a giant turtle. But as they approach, the severed cranium, turned into an IED, explodes, killing agents. The episode was released in 2009. I thought it was unrealistic, a bit fantastic. Until July 15, 2010. In the real Ciudad Juárez on that day, gangsters kidnapped a man, dressed him in a police uniform, shot him, and dumped him bleeding on a downtown street. A cameraman filmed what happened after federal police and paramedics got close. The video shows medics bent over the dumped man, checking for vital signs. Suddenly a bang rings out, and the image shakes vigorously as the cameraman runs for his life. Gangsters had used a cell phone to detonate twenty-two pounds of explosives packed into a nearby car. A minute later, the camera turns back around to reveal the burning car pouring smoke over screaming victims. A medic lies on the ground, covered in blood but still moving, a stunned look on his face. Panicked officers are scared to go near him. The medic dies minutes later along with a federal agent and a civilian. I’m not suggesting that Breaking Bad inspired the murders. TV shows don’t kill people. Car bombs kill people. The point of the story is that the Mexican Drug War is saturated with stranger-than-fiction violence. Mexican writer Alejandro Almazán suffered from a similar dilemma. As he was writing his novel Among Dogs, he envisioned a scene in which thugs decapitate a man and stick a hound’s head on his corpse. It seemed pretty out there. But then in real life some gangsters did exactly that, only with a pig’s head. It is just hard to compete with the sanguine criminal imagination. Cartel thugs have put a severed head in a cooler and delivered it to a newspaper; they have dressed up a murdered policeman in a comedy sombrero and carved a smile on his cheeks; and they have even sewn a human face onto a soccer ball.
Ioan Grillo (El Narco: Inside Mexico's Criminal Insurgency)
the division. Hundreds and hundreds plunged into the fighting with their major at the head. All around James and his men, the new Lewis machine guns ratter-tattered incessantly. Cannon boomed. Tanks rolled. The air was thick with smoke from the smoke bombs thrown by the Royal Engineers into no-man’s land to screen the soldiers now entering the area. The smell of cordite, blood and human waste floated around them. But all were unaware, determined as they were to win. Defeat was not a word in their vocabulary. Many of the men were killed instantly. Two hours into the battle, James was hit in both legs by machine-gun fire. He fell, still clutching his baton. He felt the bullets hit him and the pain was intense, unbearable. He wanted to touch his legs but couldn’t sit up. He groaned, and at that moment he knew he was going to die. What a way to go, he thought … on a foreign field because of a useless war. He closed his eyes as a wave of agony gripped him. Half an hour later, it was Lieutenant Stead who found him and pulled him as far away from the fighting as he could. James was unconscious, his skin clammy. The lieutenant felt for a pulse and was relieved that the major had one, weak as it was. A few seconds later, Captain Allan Lister was on the scene to assist him, along with two stretcher-bearers and a stretcher. Together, dodging through the crowds of fighting soldiers, they carried James to the Casualty Clearing Station, a large medical tent. A team of army doctors took over at once. They could give no reassurance to the lieutenant and the captain that their major would live, despite their efforts.
Barbara Taylor Bradford (The Wonder of It All (The House of Falconer #3))
It’s being made out that the whole point of the war was to topple the Taliban regime and liberate Afghan women from their burqas, we are being asked to believe that the U.S. marines are actually on a feminist mission . (If so, will their next stop be America’s military ally Saudi Arabia?) Think of it this way: in India there are some pretty reprehensible social practices against “untouchables”, against Christians and Muslims, against women. Pakistan and Bangladesh have even worse ways of dealing with minority communities and women. Should they be bombed? Should Delhi, Islamabad and Dhaka be destroyed? Is it possible to bomb bigotry out of India? Can we bomb our way to a feminist paradise? Is that how women won the vote in the U.S? Or how slavery was abolished? Can we win redress for the genocide of the millions of Native Americans upon whose corpses the United States was founded by bombing Santa Fe?
Arundhati Roy
The first stacked dolls better known as Russian Nesting Dolls, matryoshka dolls or Babushka Dolls, were first made in 1890 by Vasily Zvyozdochkin. Much of the artistry is in the painting of the usual 5 dolls, although the world record is 51 dolls. Each doll, which when opened reveals a smaller doll of the same type inside ending with the smallest innermost doll, which is considered the baby doll and is carved from a single piece of wood. Frequently these dolls are of a woman, dressed in a full length traditional Russian peasant dress called a sarafan. When I served with the Military Intelligence Corps of the U.S.Army, the concept of onion skins was a similar metaphor used to denote that we were always encouraged to look beyond the obvious. That it was essential to delve deeper into a subject, so as to arrive at the essence of the situation or matter. This is the same principle I employed in writing my award winning book, The Exciting Story of Cuba. Although it can be considered a history book, it is actually a book comprised of many stories or vignettes that when woven together give the reader a view into the inner workings of the Island Nation, just 90 miles south of Key West. The early 1950’s are an example of this. At that time President Batista was hailed a champion of business interests and considered this a direct endorsement of his régime. Sugar prices remained high during this period and Cuba enjoyed some of its best years agriculturally. For those at the top of the ladder, the Cuban economy flourished! However, it was during this same period that the people lower on the economic ladder struggled. A populist movement was started, resulting in a number of rebel bands to challenge the entrenched regime, including the followers of autocrats such as Fidel and Raul Castro. Castro’s M 26 7 militia had a reputation of indiscriminately placing bombs, one of which blew a young woman to pieces in the once-grand theater, “Teatro America.” A farmer, who failed to cooperate with Batista’s army, was locked into his home with his wife and his daughter, which was then set on fire killing them all. What had been a corrupt but peaceful government, quickly turned into a war zone. Despite of Batista’s constitutional abuses and his alliance with the Mafia, the years under his régime were still the most prosperous ones in Cuba’s history. Of course most of the money went to those at the top of the economic ladder and on the lower end of the scale a house maid was lucky to make $25 to $30 a month.
Hank Bracker
A Rationale for Violence At first, I thought I was merely witnessing the shocked aftermath of a shocking election. The Left did not expect Trump to win. As late as October 20, 2016, the American Prospect published an article, “Trump No Longer Really Running for President,” the theme of which was that Trump’s “real political goal is to make it impossible for Hillary Clinton to govern.” The election result was, in the words of columnist David Brooks, “the greatest shock of our lifetimes.”25 Trump won against virtually insurmountable odds, which included the mainstream media openly campaigning for Hillary and a civil war within the GOP with the entire intellectual wing of the conservative movement refusing to support him. Initially I interpreted the Left’s violent upheaval as a stunned, heat-of-the-moment response to the biggest come-from-behind victory in U.S. political history. Then I saw two things that made me realize I was wrong. First, the violence did not go away. There were the violent “Not My President’s Day” rallies across the country in February; the violent March 4 disruptions of Trump rallies in California, Minnesota, Tennessee, and Florida; the April anti-Trump tax rallies, supposedly aimed at forcing Trump to release his tax returns; the July impeachment rallies, seeking to build momentum for Trump’s removal from office; and the multiple eruptions at Berkeley.26 In Portland, leftists threw rocks, lead balls, soda cans, glass bottles, and incendiary devices until police dispersed them with the announcement, “May Day is now considered a riot.” Earlier, at the Minnesota State Capitol, leftists threw smoke bombs into the pro-Trump crowd while others set off fireworks in the building, sending people scrambling in fear of a bomb attack. Among those arrested was Linwood Kaine, the son of Hillary’s vice presidential candidate Tim Kaine.27 More of this, undoubtedly, is in store from the Left over the next four years. What this showed is that the Left was engaging in premeditated violence, violence not as outbreak of passion but violence as a political strategy.
Dinesh D'Souza (The Big Lie: Exposing the Nazi Roots of the American Left)
The Director’s Chair is with Francis Ford Coppola (The Godfather, Apocalypse Now, etc.), and Robert refers later to this quote from Francis: “Failure is not necessarily durable. Remember that the things that they fire you for when you are young are the same things that they give lifetime achievement awards for when you’re old.” ROBERT: “Even if I didn’t sell Mariachi, I would have learned so much by doing that project. That was the idea—I’m there to learn. I’m not there to win; I’m there to learn, because then I’ll win, eventually. . . . “You’ve got to be able to look at your failures and know that there’s a key to success in every failure. If you look through the ashes long enough, you’ll find something. I’ll give you one. Quentin [Tarantino] asked me, ‘Do you want to do one of these short films called Four Rooms [where each director can create the film of their choosing, but it has to be limited to a single hotel room, and include New Year’s Eve and a bellhop]?’ and my hand went up right away, instinctively. . . . “The movie bombed. In the ashes of that failure, I can find at least two keys of success. On the set when I was doing it, I had cast Antonio Banderas as the dad and had this cool little Mexican as his son. They looked really close together. Then I found the best actress I could find, this little half-Asian girl. She was amazing. I needed an Asian mom. I really wanted them to look like a family. It’s New Year’s Eve, because [it] was dictated by the script, so they’re all dressed in tuxedos. I was looking at Antonio and his Asian wife and thinking, ‘Wow, they look like this really cool, international spy couple. What if they were spies, and these two little kids, who can barely tie their shoes, didn’t know they were spies?’ I thought of that on the set of Four Rooms. There are four of those [Spy Kids movies] now and a TV series coming. “So that’s one. The other one was, after [Four Rooms] failed, I thought, ‘I still love short films.’ Anthologies never work. We shouldn’t have had four stories; it should have been three stories because that’s probably three acts, and it should just be the same director instead of different directors because we didn’t know what each person was doing. I’m going to try it again. Why on earth would I try it again, if I knew they didn’t work? Because you figured something out when you’re doing it the first time, and [the second attempt] was Sin City.” TIM: “Amazing.
Timothy Ferriss (Tools of Titans: The Tactics, Routines, and Habits of Billionaires, Icons, and World-Class Performers)
Trump’s unexpected win created a persuasion bomb that no one knew how to defuse. The anti-Trumpers were locked into their Hitler movie, and confirmation bias would keep them there. It was a terrible situation for a country. And it was an enormous challenge for Trump, the Master Persuader.
Scott Adams (Win Bigly: Persuasion in a World Where Facts Don't Matter)
You don’t look a man in the eye when you kill him. Not unless you have to, anyway. You stab him in the back. Or you shoot him from a hundred yards away. Hell, you bomb his house from another country if you can. You do whatever you have to, to get the job done. We didn’t train you to fight fair. We trained you to win.
Andrew Warren (Fire and Forget (Thomas Caine #3))
Captain Hank Bracker, author of the multi-award winning book, “The Exciting Story of Cuba” presents “Suppressed I Rise.” This is the true story of Adeline Perry’s struggle to protect and raise her two daughters in foreign, war-torn, Nazi Germany. With her husband stationed in Paris, she is left to fend for herself in a hostile environment that she hardly understands but bravely faces. It recounts the harrowing story of the devastating daily bombings of Mannheim and her experiences confined in a crowded air-raid shelter with a dying woman and four children. Being abused by ruthless Nazis, she fled. This graphic book takes you from the Alsace region on the French border through Germany to Überlingen on the Bodensee near the Swiss frontier. It is a “riveting read” for anyone interested in a personal account of World War II, as seen from the perspective of a refugee caught inside the Third Reich.
Hank Bracker (Suppressed I Rise)
Until the truth about the apartment bombings is known, the true nature of Russia’s postcommunist history cannot be established. At the same time, failing to react to the evidence that the bombings were a government-planned mass crime leaves such provocation as a standing temptation for government leaders. If those responsible are not identified and punished, it will be assumed by those fighting for power in Russia that provocations are a legitimate way to win elections.
David Satter (The Less You Know, the Better You Sleep: Russia's Road to Terror and Dictatorship under Yeltsin and Putin)
Reports of coalition bombs on civilian targets such as flour-mills wins more converts. “Many people now view the coalition as waging war on Islam, not extremism,” says Usama Shehadeh, a Quietist preacher in Amman who fears he is losing his flock.
Anonymous
Melba comes over and takes our baskets away, interrupting the conversation. Once she’s gone, my eyes drop to the table. Holy crap. The only things left are two placemats, mine and Dev’s. His looks brand new, but mine, on the other hand, is covered in a sample of every bit of food that passed through my lips. Fish? Yes. Fish coating? Yes. Hushpuppy guts? Yes. Coleslaw? Of course. It’s like a Chicken Licken bomb went off at our table, but only left shrapnel in front of me. How embarrassing! Now he knows I eat like a total warthog! Dev doesn’t say a word. Instead, he lifts his placemat up, reaches over and slides my placemat to his side of the table, and then places his down in front of me. Now he’s the warthog, and I’m the princess who wouldn’t dare drop a speck of hushpuppy anywhere but on her napkin. I know it’s crazy, but tears well up in my eyes. This has to be the single most chivalrous, charming thing a man has ever done for me. Forget opening doors and throwing jackets over puddles. When a man covers for me, taking the heat for my horrible table manners, he wins my loyalty for life. When Melba returns with sweet tea refills, she looks down at the table and smiles. She doesn’t need to say anything; she just looks at me and winks. My heart feels like it’s filling up so full with happiness that it’s going to explode. “You
Elle Casey (Wrong Place, Right Time (The Bourbon Street Boys, #2))
These people, this ISIL, we should fight them, yes. We can bomb them, yes. But that’s not a strategy for victory. This is a guerra fría. Victory lies in replacing their social order, which is why they are afraid, and they should be. And our secret weapon? It is not drones. Quite the opposite. It is women. We should free them, educate them, give them power—put a Juliet in every village. They will change the world. This is why Boko Haram is so afraid of the girls and abducts them, why the Taliban will not educate them, why ISIL murders those in Western clothes and who think freely. Women. They are how the West will win. They are how love will prevail.
Derek B. Miller (The Girl in Green)
Human beings have little capacity for sustained horror. I think our minds need to play to survive. Permanently serious people always look so tired, maybe because they are fighting an emotional battle that eats the body alive. To laugh and play while the bombs drop is one way to survive a war, even to win it.
Jedidiah Jenkins (To Shake the Sleeping Self: A Journey from Oregon to Patagonia, and a Quest for a Life with No Regret)
The biggest danger during the Phoney War was not bombs but the un- intended consequences of the blackout, particularly during the long win- ter nights, when it became dark well before the time that many people had begun to return home from work. Streetlights were extinguished and cars were only allowed to use their sidelights, a recipe for motor accidents. Even though there were many fewer cars being driven, the number of road deaths increased by about a third from a year earlier, to four thousand. December 1940 was particularly dangerous in London, where pedestrian deaths in- creased eightfold compared with earlier years. There were more and more children back in London, even though many schools remained closed; by late spring 1940, virtually all of those who had evacuated in September had returned. People who still brought their gas masks with them to work could become objects of scorn and ridicule when spotted on the streets by bored, less than well-behaved children (Price 2000, 17; Ziegler 1995, 56–68, 102).
Bruce Caldwell (Hayek: A Life, 1899–1950)
The scientists and technicians working on America’s secret atom bomb project at Los Alamos during the 1940s called them the ‘Martians’. The joke was that with their strange accents and exceptional intellects, the Hungarians among them were from some other planet. The Martians themselves differed on why one small country should churn out so many brilliant mathematicians and scientists. But there was one fact upon which they were all agreed. If they came from Mars, then one of their number came from another galaxy altogether. When the Nobel Prize-winning physicist and Martian Eugene Wigner was asked to give his thoughts on the ‘Hungarian phenomenon’, he replied there was no such thing. There was only one phenomenon that required any explanation. There was only one Johnny von Neumann.
Ananyo Bhattacharya (The Man from the Future: The Visionary Ideas of John von Neumann)
American scientists blew up a hydrogen bomb that was a hundred times as powerful as the one used in Hiroshima right outside the atmosphere in the summer of 1962, just to find out what would happen.
Scott Matthews (1100 Crazy Fun & Random Facts You Won’t Believe - The Knowledge Encyclopedia To Win Trivia)
Bullets and bombs might win battles, but it’s logistics that wins wars.
Peter Cawdron (Generation of Vipers (Seeds, #2))
Just think about the incredible transformation that took place in Steve’s life and career after Pixar. In 1983, Apple launched their computer Lisa, the last project Jobs worked on before he was let go. Jobs released Lisa with a nine-page ad in the New York Times spelling out the computer’s technical features. It was nine pages of geek talk nobody outside NASA was interested in. The computer bombed. When Jobs returned to the company after running Pixar, Apple became customer-centric, compelling, and clear in their communication. The first campaign he released went from nine pages in the New York Times to just two words on billboards all over America: Think Different. When Apple began filtering their communication to make it simple and relevant, they actually stopped featuring computers in most of their advertising. Instead, they understood their customers were all living, breathing heroes, and they tapped into their stories. They did this by (1) identifying what their customers wanted (to be seen and heard), (2) defining their customers’ challenge (that people didn’t recognize their hidden genius), and (3) offering their customers a tool they could use to express themselves (computers and smartphones). Each of these realizations are pillars in ancient storytelling and critical for connecting with customers. I’ll teach you about these three pillars and more in the coming chapters, but for now just realize the time Apple spent clarifying the role they play in their customers’ story is one of the primary factors responsible for their growth. Notice, though, the story of Apple isn’t about Apple; it’s about you. You’re the hero in the story, and they play a role more like Q in the James Bond movies. They are the guy you go see when you need a tool to help you win the day.
Donald Miller (Building a StoryBrand: Clarify Your Message So Customers Will Listen)
A story doesn’t really pick up until the hero needs to disarm a bomb, win someone’s heart, defeat a villain, or fight for their emotional or physical survival.
Donald Miller (Building a StoryBrand: Clarify Your Message So Customers Will Listen)
Few thought violent resistance was sensible; there was a broad nationwide fear of young men living in the woods, with neither jobs nor families, clamoring for guns and revenge. What reasonable person would support lawless adolescents with bombs?
Sarah Rose (D-Day Girls: The Spies Who Armed the Resistance, Sabotaged the Nazis, and Helped Win World War II)
Despite the bombing raids occurring all around them, the beliefs and opinions of the Japanese people were largely shaped by the Japanese propaganda machine. What the news media could and could not say was dictated by the government, and Mom said that appeared to be perfectly acceptable to the people. People in Japan, they’re not inquisitive at all. What the parliament said, what the government said, they’d obey whatever they say. Even I didn’t know that America was winning—certainly didn’t—everything was hidden away from the people.
Anthony Drago (Surviving Hiroshima: A Young Woman's Story)
Jack Kidd, John Bennett, and Tom Jeffrey showed us how to win a war. Bucky Cleven and Bucky Egan gave the 100th its personality. Bob Rosenthal helped us want to win the war.
Harry H. Crosby (A Wing and a Prayer: The "Bloody 100th" Bomb Group of the US Eighth Air Force in Action Over Europe in World War II)
We are all protagonists in our own lives, but the systems we live under don’t care. A bomb doesn’t ask who is good or bad—it only profits those in power. Capitalism, patriarchy, racism—they don’t die easily. But awareness is the first step. Becoming anti-sexist, anti-racist, and fighting back is how we refuse to let them win.
Jacob Wren (Dry Your Tears to Perfect Your Aim)
He promptly commanded Sidqi Mahmud to provide air cover for the conquest of Israel’s coast (Operation Leopard) and to deploy Egypt’s newest Sukhoi jets, if necessary with their Russian instructors. ‘Amer then called Damascus and Baghdad and requested that they execute Operation Rashid—the bombing of Israeli airfields—at once. The Iraqis consented, but then complained of “technical delays.” The Syrians claimed that their planes were presently engaged in a training exercise. Such disappointments did little to dampen the mood in Egypt’s Supreme Headquarters which seemed to the Soviet attaché S. Tarasenko, “tranquil, almost indifferent, the officers merely listening to the radio and drinking coffee.” Throughout the capital, however, the citizenry was celebrating. “The streets were overflowing with demonstrators,” remembered Eric Rouleau, Middle East correspondent for Le Monde. “Anti-aircraft guns were firing. Hundreds of thousands of people were chanting, ‘Down with Israel! We will win the war!’” But Rouleau, together with other foreign journalists, was not allowed near the front. All international phone lines were cut. The sole source of information was the government’s communiqué: “With an aerial strike against Cairo and across the UAR, Israel began its attack today at 9:00. Our planes scrambled and held off the attack.
Michael B. Oren (Six Days of War: June 1967 and the Making of the Modern Middle East)
I could not let power win. . . Other remarkable things had to happen now, a whole string of remarkable things, one after another until the war was won. I was small, and I'd only done one small thing, really: but still it was a mighty thing. Mightier than what power was doing, with its bombs and guns. It was something great. It was enough.
Sonya Hartnett
you need a bomb in the final race, so no matter what, you want a bomb in the last leg.
Peter T. Fornatale (The Winning Contest Player)
Britain and Germany thought they were winning World War II by trying to bomb the other into submission. In reality, they were destroying themselves as global powers, and (ironically, similar to one of the firestorms their city bombings caused), creating a vacuum on the world stage that the United States and the Soviet Union rushed to fill as superpowers in the post-war years.
Stewart Stafford
In June 1944, Germany unleashed upon London its V-1 “buzz bombs”—the first rocket-powered missiles, instantly recognizable by the terrifying insect-like buzzing sound that victims would hear as they approached. Developed at great expense and heralded by Hitler as a wonder weapon that could not be touched by enemy aircraft and would decimate the Allies, it was Germany’s last-hope attack by air. Radar-sighting on guns allowed the missiles to be tracked and quickly shot down.
Safi Bahcall (Loonshots: How to Nurture the Crazy Ideas That Win Wars, Cure Diseases, and Transform Industries)
And sure enough, Trump’s win set off a cluster bomb of cognitive dissonance the likes of which history rarely sees. To untrained observers—voters and pundits alike—the public reaction looked like a combination of anger, disappointment, fear, and shock. But to trained persuaders, it was a front-row seat to a show of cognitive dissonance so pure and so deep that it was, frankly, beautiful.
Scott Adams (Win Bigly: Persuasion in a World Where Facts Don't Matter)
It was all becoming normal. He could see it in the way the clerk served up the terrible, terrible coffee. He could hear it in the conversations at nearby tables. It showed on the screens and in the gaits of people walking by. Panic and alarm were exhausted too. It was already shifting into its new routine. Checkpoints, yes. Armed security, yes. All the theater of dominance and control and nothing to undercut that narrative. Just to look at it, you wouldn't guess there'd been a bombing. Saba hadn't known it was coming either, and they'd only heard about it through him. A small explosion, but the unofficial reports said at least one Laconian had been killed. The official reports, apparently, were that it hadn't happened at all. That was a change. The assassination attempt had been used to justify the crackdown. Now the crackdown was just another day, and highlighting the attacks on the structures of power wasn't useful. Nothing had to be justified anymore. Governor Singh in his offices was trying to project a sense of normalcy and inevitability. And as far as Holden could tell, it was working. "Kind of quiet," he said, meaning, 'They think they're winning.' Naomi tugged her hair down over her eyes. "Right?" she said. It meant, 'I think they're winning too.
James S.A. Corey (Persepolis Rising (The Expanse, #7))
In ten days,” I said, “the United States will have elected its first woman president. The question at that moment will be whether the hate and division that surfaced during the 2016 campaign will be remembered as a last gasp of a defeated populace, clinging desperately to the old order they once ruled as it was swept away, or the beginning of a recalcitrant movement against American democratic pluralism.” Most members of the audience applauded with the same smug certainty that I was showing. One man, though, with a strong Central European accent, stooped over a cane, spoke to me afterward. “I have seen movements like this before,” he told me.”They are not so easily dismissed.” Like so many other members of the Washington cognoscenti, I had been dead wrong. I could justify it. Oh, Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by nearly 3 million; her 2 percent win was the largest of any losing presidential candidate since the disputed election of 1876. Had it not been for the Russians, or James Comey, or Anthony Weiner, or Jill Stein, surely she would have won Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania, which she lost collectively by a smaller number than a capacity crowd at Lambeau Field. Perhaps all true, but I was wrong nonetheless. And since that miscalculation, the troubles have grown for Jews, leaping from the abstraction of the Internet to the reality of toppled headstones at Jewish cemeteries in St. Louis and Philadelphia, swastikas as graffiti, and bomb threats against synagogues and Jewish community centers, daycare facilities, and schools.
Jonathan Weisman ((((Semitism))): Being Jewish in America in the Age of Trump)
We cannot win the war on terror with guns and bombs because everyone we kill is replaced by dozens more who seek revenge. The only answer is total, radical commitment to Jesus Christ.
Brother Andrew (Secret Believers: What Happens When Muslims Believe in Christ)
No one can win the world peace through the bombs and guns since that lead towards failure, with shame, and sorry.
Ehsan Sehgal
3. In the 1990s the U.S. Air Force did research on creating a gay bomb, a non lethal bomb that contained intense pheromones that would make the enemy's forces attracted to each other.
Scott Matthews (Interesting, Fun and Crazy Facts of America - The Knowledge Encyclopedia To Win Trivia)
Twenty-two hours and our war begins. Our war of limbs and lips and hands… The point of retreat Is no longer a factor When both sides of the line Agree to surrender. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve lost… Or is it how many times you’ve won? This game we’ve been playing for fifty-nine weeks I’d say the score is none to none. Twenty-two hours and our war begins Our war of limbs and lips and hands… The best part of finally Not calling retreat? The showers above us Raining down on our feet Before the bombs explode and the guns fire their rounds. Before the two of us collapse to the ground. Before the battle, before the war… You need to know I’d go fifty-nine more. Whatever it takes to let you win. I’d retreat all over and all over and over again.
Colleen Hoover (Point of Retreat (Slammed, #2))
The bomb dropped, and in its wake were harsh breaths and soft sobs. I didn’t want anyone’s pity. I wanted—needed—to get my mind fixed so I could win my wife back.
Eva Winners (Scandalous Kingpin (Kingpins of the Syndicate #3))
Pearl Harbor was bombed, the Navy used the British “WEFT” system, recognizing not the entire body of a plane, but parts of planes’ “wing, engine, fuselage, and tail,” or slang for “wrong every f___ing time.
Anne R. Keene (The Cloudbuster Nine: The Untold Story of Ted Williams and the Baseball Team That Helped Win World War II)
They bombed civilians, Father. Thousands of them, and for what? To save face in a war we’ll never win and now don’t even plan to win. Because human beings are only pieces on their geopolitical chessboard.
Richard North Patterson (The Final Judgment)
She took her mother to mean: look at those men landing on the moon, look at what's possible given desire and belief and opportunity, and you have all of those if you want them, if they can do it you can do it, and by it I mean anything. Anything. Don't squander a life so miraculously given, since I, your mother, could just as easily have been with my mother that day at the market if any number of tiny things had been different, and I would have been among the youngest of the victims of the atomic bomb and circumstance could have killed me and you would never have been born. But you were born, and here we are, and here are these men on the moon, so you see, you are on the winning side, you are winning, and perhaps you can live a life that honours and furthers that?
Samantha Harvey (Orbital)
I understand your pain. The most horrible pain is to think that your pain counts for nothing. You either wrestle that lie to the ground, or it wins and you run from it. Real men don’t run, Woolley. Oh, I’ll grant you, they should run from dumb kids fantasizing with machine guns and helicopters. And we should probably run from a virus or a bomb or a maniac. But we can’t ever run from the wrestling match that is within. If we do, we end up hating ourselves and hating everyone else forever.
Michael D. O'Brien (Plague Journal (Children of the Last Days))
Toby cackled. “The PG puppet just F-bombed you.
Josh Winning (The Shadow Glass)
Principles are the first thing dictators attack. Various “Putins” around the world are undermining principles in their societies through propaganda and repression so that people cannot stand up for what they believe in. And then, when the dictatorship gains strength and resources, it tries to export its lack of principles, creating gray zones devoid of values. Europe has had to face this many times. Now we are experiencing another defining moment. Russia is trying to convince nations that it is easy to compromise principles—that they can ignore international law and turn a blind eye to injustice if it will supposedly bring stability. This is Moscow's main message - Putin invites everyone to forget about their principles, to show no resolve, to give up Ukrainian land and people, and then, he says, Russian bombing will stop. But throughout history, every time such agreements have been made, the threat has returned even stronger. Today, we have a chance to win in Eastern Europe so that we don't have to fight on the northern or other eastern fronts—in the Baltic states and Poland, or in the south—in the Balkans, where it is easy to ignite a conflict, or in African countries, whose problems are much closer to European societies than it may seem. We have to stand up for international law and the values on which our societies are built. We must be decisive. People matter. The law matters. State borders and the right of every nation to determine its own future matters. And while we know that Putin is threatening leaders and countries who can help us force Russia to peace, we must not give in. I thank you for every package of defense assistance to Ukraine. Every weapon you have provided helps to defend normal life—the kind of life you live here in Iceland or in any of your other countries, a life that no longer exists in Russia, where basic human rights have been taken away. We are now in the third year of a full-scale war, and our soldiers on the front lines need fresh strength. That is why we are working to equip our brigades. This is an urgent need. We are already cooperating with others—France has helped to equip one brigade, and we have an agreement on another. We invite you to join us in creating brigades, Scandinavian brigades, and demonstrate your continued commitment to the defense of Europe. I am grateful to Denmark and other partners who invest in arms production in Ukraine. Artillery, shells, drones—everything that allows Ukraine to defend itself despite any logistical delays on the part of partners or changing political moods in world capitals. We see that Putin is increasing weapons production, and rogue regimes like Pyongyang are helping him with this. Next year, Putin intends to catch up with the EU in munitions production. We can only prevent this now (...). - Translated from Ukrainian
Volodymyr Zelensky
When you feel your calm turn to chaos… When anger makes you want to jump out of your skin… When the clock is ticking down, and you feel the tension build inside you, like a bomb ready to explode… When you are surrounded by noise, clawing for your attention… Press Pause. Use your breathing to slow down. It may be a single deep breath or ten deep breaths. When you feel your emotions start to ease up, listen inside yourself. But beware: the loudest voice inside your head often isn’t the most helpful one. You need to go deeper than the Little Man to find your true wisdom. Pressing pause helps you find that whisper of conviction within you, saying, ‘You got this. You have so much more in the tank than you realize. You can do hard things.
Joshua Medcalf (Win In The Dark)
In a day when Sputniks and Explorers dash through outer space and guided ballistic missiles are carving highways of death through the stratosphere, nobody can win a war. Today the choice is no longer between violence and nonviolence. It is either nonviolence or nonexistence.
Martin Luther King Jr. (Stride Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story)
YOU CAN WIN WARS ANY NUMBER OF WAYS. YOU CAN CARPET BOMB
Karen Traviss (Halo: The Thursday War: Book Two of the Kilo-Five Trilogy)