“
Clap her in chains," says Randalin.
Never have I so wished there was a way for me to show I was telling the truth. But there isn't. No oath of mine carries any weight.
I feel a guard's hand close on my arm. Then Cardan's voice comes.
"Do not touch her."
A terrible silence follows. I wait for him to pronounce judgement on me. Whatever he commands will be done. His power is absolute. I don't even have the strength to fight back.
"Whatever can you mean?" Randalin says. "She's-"
"She is my wife," Cardan says, his voice carrying over the crowd.
"The rightful High Queen of Elfhame. And most definitely not in exile.
”
”
Holly Black (The Queen of Nothing (The Folk of the Air, #3))
“
Then it hits me....
And it hits me with the force of a blow. I am maybe fifteen years old. I am a girl. I am also acting lieutenant in the Royal Navy, and, by the Naval Rules and Regulations as regards the chain of command, I am in command of His Majesty's Ship Wolverine.
”
”
L.A. Meyer (Under the Jolly Roger: Being an Account of the Further Nautical Adventures of Jacky Faber (Bloody Jack, #3))
“
Free love? As if love is anything but free! Man has bought brains, but all the millions in the world have failed to buy love. Man has subdued bodies, but all the power on earth has been unable to subdue love. Man has conquered whole nations, but all his armies could not conquer love. Man has chained and fettered the spirit, but he has been utterly helpless before love. High on a throne, with all the splendor and pomp his gold can command, man is yet poor and desolate, if love passes him by. And if it stays, the poorest hovel is radiant with warmth, with life and color. Thus love has the magic power to make of a beggar a king. Yes, love is free; it can dwell in no other atmosphere. In freedom it gives itself unreservedly, abundantly, completely. All the laws on the statutes, all the courts in the universe, cannot tear it from the soil, once love has taken root.
”
”
Emma Goldman (Marriage and Love)
“
You were wrong, commander. Whatever chains you try to place on me, I will always, always, rise from them. I'm not buying my freedom, because you never owned it. But I am taking it back, for me, and for my country.
”
”
Jennifer A. Nielsen (The Shadow Throne (Ascendance, #3))
“
God has created me to do Him some definite service. He has committed some work to me which He has not committed to another. I have my mission. I may never know it in this life, but I shall be told it in the next. I am a link in a chain, a bond of connection between persons.
He has not created me for naught. I shall do good; I shall do His work. I shall be an angel of peace, a preacher of truth in my own place, while not intending it if I do but keep His commandments.
Therefore, I will trust Him, whatever I am, I can never be thrown away. If I am in sickness, my sickness may serve Him, in perplexity, my perplexity may serve Him. If I am in sorrow, my sorrow may serve Him. He does nothing in vain. He knows what He is about. He may take away my friends. He may throw me among strangers. He may make me feel desolate, make my spirits sink, hide my future from me. Still, He knows what He is about.
”
”
John Henry Newman
“
Rule of policing number one – when something good falls into your lap, pass it up the chain of command as quickly as possible before something else bad can happen.
”
”
Ben Aaronovitch (Foxglove Summer (Peter Grant, #5))
“
Once you have hierarchy you need rules to protect and administer it, and then you need law and the enforcement of the rules, and you end up with some kind of chain of command or system of order that destroys relationship rather than promotes it. Hierarchy imposes laws and rules and you end up missing the wonder of relationship that we intended for you.
”
”
William Paul Young (The Shack)
“
Cruel Prince James strode into the chamber, his cape flashing behind him and his terrible, terrible mustache askew with rage,” Lucie narrated the moment James walked through the door.
“Does it need be said twice that it’s terrible?” James said.
“He required a hot beverage to soothe his throat, parched from barking out his wicked commands all day. Tea, he thought, yes, tea and revenge.”
“I’ll just go put the kettle on,” James sighed.
”
”
Cassandra Clare (Chain of Gold (The Last Hours, #1))
“
Chain of command, Synthia. I say it. You do it. End of chain, am I clear?
”
”
Amelia Hutchins (Escaping Destiny (The Fae Chronicles, #3))
“
The truth is that everything starts from the top. What determines your failure or success is your style of leadership and the chain of command that you design.
”
”
Robert Greene (The 33 Strategies of War)
“
CEASE FIRE,' Captain Johansen shouted. 'Cease fire, what's wrong with you guys? Stop wasting the goddamn ammo. CEASE FIRE!'
Cease fire,' the lieutenants hollered.
Cease fire,' the platoon sergeants hollered.
Cease the goddamn fire,' shouted the squad leaders.
That,' I told Barney, 'is the chain of command.
”
”
Tim O'Brien (If I Die in a Combat Zone, Box Me Up and Ship Me Home)
“
The Hierarchic Qualm: The sword kills. But the arm moves the sword. Is the arm to blame for murder? No. The mind moves the arm. Is the mind to blame? No. The mind has sworn an oath to duty, and that duty moves the mind, as written by the Throne. So it is that a servant of the Throne is blameless.
”
”
Seth Dickinson (The Traitor Baru Cormorant (The Masquerade, #1))
“
He was a good man... No. He was a great man. A maester of the Citadel, chained and sworn, and Sworn Brother of the Night's Watch, ever faithful. When he was born they named him for a hero who had died too young, but though he lived a long long time, his own life was no less heroic. No man was wiser, or gentler, or kinder. At the Wall, a dozen lords commander came and went during his years of service, but he was always there to counsel them. He counseled kings as well. He could have been a king himself, but when they offered him the crown he told them they should give it to his younger brother. How many men would do that? He was the blood of the dragon, but now his fire has gone out. He was Aemon Targaryen. And now his watch is ended.
”
”
George R.R. Martin (A Feast for Crows (A Song of Ice and Fire, #4))
“
What you of the CHOAM directorate seem unable to understand is that you seldom find real loyalties in commerce ... Men must want to do things of their own innermost drives. People, not commercial organisations or chains of command, are what make great civilizations work, every civilization depends upon the quality of the individuals it produces. If you overorganize humans, over-legalize them, suppress their urge to greatness — they cannot work and their civilization collapses.
”
”
Frank Herbert (Children of Dune (Dune #3))
“
Leadership isn’t one person leading a team. It is a group of leaders working together, up and down the chain of command, to lead. If
”
”
Jocko Willink (Extreme Ownership: How U.S. Navy SEALs Lead and Win)
“
Coltaine rattles slow
across the burning land.
The wind howls through the bones
of his hate-ridden command.
Coltaine leads a chain of dogs
ever snapping at his hand.
Coltaine`s fist bleeds the journey home
along rivers of red-soaked sand.
His train howls through his bones
in spiteful reprimand.
Coltaine leads a chain of dogs
ever snapping at his hand.
”
”
Steven Erikson (Deadhouse Gates (Malazan Book of the Fallen, #2))
“
Is that all?” he blurted out.
Crowley and Halt exchanged slightly puzzled glances. Then Crowley pursed his lips thoughtfully.
“Um…it seems to be…Listed your trainging, mentioned a few achievements, made sure you know which end of an arrow is the sharp part…decided your new name…I think that’s…” Then it seemed that understanding dawned on him and his eyes opened wide.
“Of course! You have to have you Silver…whatsis, don ‘t you?” He took hold of the chain that held his own Silver Oakleaf around his throat and shook it lightly. It was a badge of a Graduate Ranger. Then he began to search through his pockets, frowning.
“Had it here! Had it here! Where the devil is it…wait. I heard something fall on the boards as I came in! Must have dropped it. Just check outside the front door, will you, Will?”
Too stunned to talk, Will rose and went to the door. As he set his hand on the latch, he looked back at the two Rangers, still seated at the table. Crowley made a small shooing motion with the back of his hand, urging him to go outside. Will was still looking back at them when he opened the door and stepped through on the verandah.
“Congratulations!”
The massive cry went up from at least forty throats. He swung around in shock to find all his friends gathered in the clearing outside around the table laid for a feast, their faces beaming with smiles. Baron Arald, Sir Rodney, Lady Pauline and Master Chubb were all there. So were Jenny and George, his former wardmates. There were a dozen others in the Ranger uniform – men he had met worked with over the past five years. And wonder of wonders, there were Erak and Svengal , bellowing his name and waving their huge axes overhead in his praise. Close by them stood Horace and Gilan, both brandishing their swords overhead as well. It looked like a dangerous section of the crowd to be in, Will thought.
After the first concerted shout, people began cheering and calling his name, laughing and waving to him.
Halt and Crowley joined him on the verandah. The Commandant was doubled over with laughter.
“Oh, if you could have seen yourself!” he wheezed. “Your face! Your face! It was priceless! ‘Is that all?’” He mimicked Will’s plaintive tones and doubled over again.
Will tuned to Halt accusingly. His teacher grinned at him.
“Your face was a study,” he said.
“Do you so that to all apprentices?” Will asked.
Halt nodded vigorously. “Every one. Stops them getting a swelled head at the last minute. You have to swear never to let an apprentice in on the secret.
”
”
John Flanagan (Erak's Ransom (Ranger's Apprentice, #7))
“
Come on, Jack. Be reasonable. Let’s run this up the chain of command.”
“Acker will never approve, and even if he does, we would have to deal with some Barney Fife type cop up in Manistee, and he would never agree. I’m screwed either way.”
“Who’s Barney Fife?”
“He’s an old television character…oh…never mind . . .
”
”
Mark M. Bello (Betrayal In Blue (Zachary Blake Legal Thriller, #3))
“
our democracy is controlled by a wealthy elite. Politicians who work for the wealthy need the police to protect them from the people. And so the whole chain of command protects the killer cop. The ruling class give carte blanche to law enforcement, who in turn press down on those most stranded by the neoliberal state, the poor-- and more so, the Black poor."
-- Nicolas Powers
”
”
Maya Schenwar (Who Do You Serve, Who Do You Protect? Police Violence and Resistance in the United States)
“
A spiritual reinterpretation of events gives us miraculous authority to command the winds, to part the waters, and to break all chains that bind us.
”
”
Marianne Williamson (Tears to Triumph: The Spiritual Journey from Suffering to Enlightenment)
“
It’s a fucked-up war when you are more worried about fighting your chain of command than the actual enemy.
”
”
Eric Blehm (The Only Thing Worth Dying For: How Eleven Green Berets Forged a New Afghanistan)
“
Everyone deserves to be treated fairly. If leaders are the problem, we ask those being served by leaders to let them know or go up the chain of command—without the threat of retaliation.” “Store
”
”
Robert I. Sutton (The No Asshole Rule: Building a Civilized Workplace and Surviving One That Isn't)
“
What have you done, brother?" Anubis snarled. "You have betrayed us."
"I did what I had to do to save the world."
"Chain him," Anubis commanded. He looked at his brother and his stuff face managed to twist and contort in rage. "Waerloga,"he spat.
The Elder nodded in agreement. "Aten the Warlock. It has a ring to it, don't you think?
”
”
Michael Scott (The Warlock (The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel, #5))
“
It’s ironic that the only way to kill a zombie is to destroy its brain, because, as a group, they have no collective brain to speak of. There was no leadership, no chain of command, no communication or cooperation on any level. There was no president to assassinate, no HQ bunker to surgically strike. Each zombie is its own, self-contained, automated unit, and this last advantage is what truly encapsulates the entire conflict.
”
”
Max Brooks (World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War)
“
People, not commercial organizations or chains of command, are what make great civilizations work. Every civilization depends upon the quality of the individuals it produces. If you over-organize humans, over-legalize them, suppress their urge to greatness—they cannot work and their civilization collapses.
”
”
Frank Herbert (Children of Dune (Dune, #3))
“
What I was quickly discovering about the presidency was that no problem that landed on my desk, foreign or domestic, had a clean, 100 percent solution. If it had, someone else down the chain of command would have solved it already.
”
”
Barack Obama (A Promised Land: The powerful political memoir from the former US President)
“
Strange as it may seem, within plain sight of this same house, looking down from its commanding height upon it, was the Capitol. The voices of patriotic representatives boasting of freedom and equality, and the rattling of the poor slave's chains, almost commingled. A slave pen within the very shadow of the Capitol!
”
”
Solomon Northup (Twelve Years a Slave)
“
I will not intercept your decisions that belong in your chain of command, but I will give and receive information anywhere in the organization, at any time. I just can’t get enough understanding of the organization from listening to the voices at the top.
”
”
David Epstein (Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World)
“
Stephen nodded. 'Tell me,' he said, in a low voice, some moments later. 'Were I under naval discipline, could that fellow have me whipped?'He nodded towards Mr Marshall.
'The master?' cried Jack, with inexpressible amazement.
'Yes,' said Stephen looking attentively at him, with his head slightly inclined to the left.
'But he is the master...' said Jack. If Stephen had called the sophies stem her stern, or her truck her keel, he would have understood the situation directly; but that Stephen should confuse the chain of command, the relative status of a captain and a master, of a commissioned officer and a warrant officer, so subverted the natural order, so undermined the sempiternal universe, that for a moment his mind could hardly encompass it. Yet Jack, though no great scholar, no judge of a hexameter, was tolerably quick, and after gasping no more than twice he said, 'My dear sir, I beleive you have been lead astray by the words master and master and commander- illogical terms, I must confess. The first is subordinate to the second. You must allow me to explain our naval ranks some time. But in any case you will never be flogged- no, no; you shall not be flogged,' he added, gazing with pure affection, and with something like awe, at so magnificent a prodigy, at an ignorance so very far beyond anything that even his wide-ranging mind had yet conceived.
”
”
Patrick O'Brian (Master & Commander (Aubrey & Maturin, #1))
“
silver crucifix in a chain high in the air. "NO!" he yelled. "I command you to leave this body! I command you to leave her now!
”
”
Willow Rose (Five, Six ... Grab Your Crucifix (Rebekka Franck #3))
“
Fear breeds a desire for simplicity. Good and evil. Right and wrong. Chains of command.
”
”
Solas
“
Chain of command knows no age restrictions," he once told Connor. "You could be six, but if you were my superior, I'd still do as I was told.
”
”
Neal Shusterman (UnWholly (Unwind, #2))
“
The workers think there are people along the chain of command who are watching out for them, but melanin and accents are ineffective binding substances.
”
”
Karla Cornejo Villavicencio (The Undocumented Americans)
“
I will give you a few guarantees of my own, Mukthar. I guarantee that before the sun sets, even if you win, even if my cold, dead body is lying on the field, you will rue the day you ever set foot in the Plains. For every inch you advance I'll exact gallons of Mukthar blood. I guarantee that there will be not one family of the Bear Mukthars or they will mourn at least one of theirs. I guarantee that even if you are triumphant the fruits of victory will taste like dust in your mouth. I guarantee that if you fail to kill me today, you will meet me again. You will meet me at the Ximerionian border. You will meet me at every city, town, village, and hamlet. You will meet me on every Amirathan crossroad, on every hill. I will fight you with every sword at my command, with every arrow, with every dagger. I will fight you with pitchforks. I will fight you with the very rocks of the land you try to conquer. I will never, never, never give up.
~Anaxantis, before the Battle of the Zinchara (May 29th, 1453 aed)
”
”
Andrew Ashling (The Invisible Chains - Part 3: Bonds of Blood (Dark Tales of Randamor the Recluse, #3))
“
The very emphasis of the commandment: Thou shalt not kill, makes it certain that we are descended from an endlessly long chain of generations of murderers, whose love of murder was in their blood as it is perhaps also in ours.
”
”
Sigmund Freud (Reflections on War and Death)
“
top-down chains of command are not particularly efficient: they tend to promote stupidity among those on top and resentful foot-dragging among those on the bottom.
”
”
David Graeber (Debt: The First 5,000 Years)
“
In the World War nothing was more dreadful to witness than a chain of men starting with a battalion commander and ending with an army commander sitting in telephone boxes, improvised or actual, talking, talking, talking, in place of leading, leading, leading.
”
”
J.F.C. Fuller (Generalship: Its Diseases And Their Cure: A Study Of The Personal Factor In Command)
“
But you who walk facing the sun, what images drawn on the earth can hold you?
You who travel with the wind, what weathervane shall direct your course?
What man's law shall bind you if you break your yoke but upon no man's prison door?
What laws shall you fear if you dance but stumble against no man's iron chains?
And who is he that shall bring you to judgment if you tear off your garment yet leave it in no man's path?
People of Orphalese, you can muffle the drum, and you can loosen the strings of the lyre, but who shall command the skylark not to sing?
”
”
Kahlil Gibran
“
When leading up the chain of command, use caution and respect. But remember, if your leader is not giving the support you need, don’t blame him or her. Instead, reexamine what you can do to better clarify, educate, influence, or convince that person to give you what you need in order to win.
”
”
Jocko Willink (Extreme Ownership: How U.S. Navy SEALs Lead and Win)
“
The Columbia Accident Investigation Board concluded that NASA’s culture “emphasized chain of command, procedure, following the rules, and going by the book. While rules and procedures were essential for coordination, they had an unintended negative effect.” Once again, “allegiance to hierarchy and procedure” had ended in disaster. Again, lower ranking engineers had concerns they could not quantify; they stayed silent because “the requirement for data was stringent and inhibiting.
”
”
David Epstein (Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World)
“
If anyone attempted to rule the world by the gospel and to abolish all temporal law and sword on the plea that all are baptized and Christian, and that, according to the gospel, there shall be among them no law or sword - or need for either - pray tell me, friend, what would he be doing? He would be loosing the ropes and chains of the savage wild beasts and letting them bite and mangle everyone, meanwhile insisting that they were harmless, tame, and gentle creatures; but I would have the proof in my wounds. Just so would the wicked under the name of Christian abuse evangelical freedom, carry on their rascality, and insist that they were Christians subject neither to law nor sword, as some are already raving and ranting.
To such a one we must say: Certainly it is true that Christians, so far as they themselves are concerned, are subject neither to law nor sword, and have need of neither. But take heed and first fill the world with real Christians before you attempt to rule it in a Christian and evangelical manner. This you will never accomplish; for the world and the masses are and always will be unchristian, even if they are all baptized and Christian in name. Christians are few and far between (as the saying is). Therefore, it is out of the question that there should be a common Christian government over the whole world, or indeed over a single country or any considerable body of people, for the wicked always outnumber the good. Hence, a man who would venture to govern an entire country or the world with the gospel would be like a shepherd who should put together in one fold wolves, lions, eagles, and sheep, and let them mingle freely with one another, saying, “Help yourselves, and be good and peaceful toward one another. The fold is open, there is plenty of food. You need have no fear of dogs and clubs.” The sheep would doubtless keep the peace and allow themselves to be fed and governed peacefully, but they would not live long, nor would one beast survive another.
For this reason one must carefully distinguish between these two governments. Both must be permitted to remain; the one to produce righteousness, the other to bring about external peace and prevent evil deeds. Neither one is sufficient in the world without the other. No one can become righteous in the sight of God by means of the temporal government, without Christ's spiritual government. Christ's government does not extend over all men; rather, Christians are always a minority in the midst of non-Christians. Now where temporal government or law alone prevails, there sheer hypocrisy is inevitable, even though the commandments be God's very own. For without the Holy Spirit in the heart no one becomes truly righteous, no matter how fine the works he does. On the other hand, where the spiritual government alone prevails over land and people, there wickedness is given free rein and the door is open for all manner of rascality, for the world as a whole cannot receive or comprehend it.
”
”
Martin Luther (Luther and Calvin on Secular Authority (Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought))
“
You know, I'm really trying to cut down on this stuff. But..." Peabody ripped into the pack of cookies. "Thing is, weird, McNab doesn't think I'm chubby. And when a guy sees you naked, he knows where the extra layers are."
"Peabody, do you have some delusion that I want to hear how McNab sees you naked?"
She crunched into a cookie. "I'm just saying. Anyway, you know we have sex, so you've probably reached the conclusion we're naked when we're having it. You being an ace detective and all."
"Peabody, in the chain of command, you may, on rare occasions and due to my astonishing good nature, respond to sarcasm with sarcasm. You are not permitted to lead with it. Give me a damn cookie."
"They're coconut crunchies. You hate coconut."
"Then why did you buy coconut?"
"To piss you off." Grinning now, Peabody pulled another pack of cookies from her bag. "Then I bought chocolate chip, just for you."
"Well, hand them over then."
"Okay, so ..." Peabody ripped open the second pack, offered Eve a cookie. "Anyway, McNab's got a little, bitty butt, and hardly any shoulders. Still -- "
"Stop. Stop right there. If I get an image of a naked McNab in my head, you're going back to traffic detail."
Peabody munched, hummed, waited.
"Damn it! There he is."
Hooting with laughter, Peabody polished off the last cookie. "Sorry. Dallas, I'm sorry. I couldn't help it. Kinda cute, isn't he?
”
”
J.D. Robb (Witness in Death (In Death, #10))
“
The chain of command, I wear it around my neck.
”
”
Jarod Kintz (99 Cents For Some Nonsense)
“
Chain of command was always a nominal concept in the division, you trusted people to do their job right.
”
”
Peter F. Hamilton (Pandora's Star (Commonwealth Saga #1))
“
Leadership doesn’t just flow down the chain of command, but up as well,” he said. “We have to own everything in our world. That’s what Extreme Ownership is all about.
”
”
Jocko Willink (Extreme Ownership: How U.S. Navy SEALs Lead and Win)
“
It's the secrecy surrounding drone strikes that's most troubling. . . We don't know the targeting criteria, or whether the rules for CIA and military drone strikes differ; we don't know the details of the internal process through which targets are vetted; we don't know the chain of command, or the details of congressional oversight. The United States does not release the names of those killed, or the location or number of strikes, making it impossible to know whether those killed were legitimately viewed as combatants or not. We also don't know the cost of the secret war: How much money has been spent on drone strikes? What's the budget for the related targeting and intelligence infrastructures? How is the government assessing the costs and benefits of counterterrorism drone strikes? That's a lot of secrecy for a targeted killing program that has reportedly caused the deaths of several thousand people. (117-118)
”
”
Rosa Brooks (How Everything Became War and the Military Became Everything: Tales from the Pentagon)
“
Never in the history of American warfare has this nation witnessed such an exhibition of cowardice, indecisiveness, incompetence, and laziness in the army’s senior officer ranks. Battle after battle was lost, untrained troops were sacrificed in fights they could never win, territories won were quickly squandered, and the chain of command was ignored to near-treasonous levels.
”
”
Dennis Byrne (Madness: The War of 1812)
“
When we Shienarans ride, every man knows who is next in line if the man in command falls. A chain unbroken right down to the last man left, even if he's nothing but a horseholder. That way, you see, even if he is the last man, he is not just a straggler running and trying to stay alive. He has the command,and duty calls him to do what must be done. If I go to the last embrace of the mother, the duty is yours. You will find the Horn, and you will take it where it belongs. You will.
”
”
Robert Jordan (The Great Hunt (The Wheel of Time, #2))
“
His thought turned to the Ring, but there was no comfort there, only dread and danger. No sooner had he come in sight of Mount Doom, burning far away, than he was aware of a change in his burden. As it drew near the great furnaces where, in the deeps of time, it had been shaped and forged, the Ring's power grew, and it became more fell, untameable except by some mighty will. As Sam stood there, even though the Ring was not on him but hanging by its chain about his neck, he felt himself enlarged, as if he were robed in a huge distorted shadow of himself, a vast and ominous threat halted upon the walls of Mordor. He felt that he had from now on only two choices: to forbear the Ring, though it would torment him; or to claim it, and challenge the Power that sat in its dark hold beyond the valley of shadows. Already the Ring tempted him, gnawing at his will and reason. Wild fantasies arose in his mind; and he saw Samwise the Strong, Hero of the Age, striding with a flaming sword across the darkened land, and armies flocking to his call as he marched to the overthrow of Barad-dur. And then all the clouds rolled away, and the white sun shone, and at his command the vale of Gorgoroth became a garden of flowers and trees and brought forth fruit. He had only to put on the Ring and claim it for his own, and all this could be. In that hour of trial it was his love of his master that helped most to hold him firm; but also deep down in him lived still unconquered his plain hobbit-sense: he knew in the core of his heart that he was not large enough to bear such a burden, even if such visions were not a mere cheat to betray him. The one small garden of a free gardener was all his need and due, not a garden swollen to a realm; his own hands to use, not the hands of others to command. 'And anyway all these notions are only a trick, he said to himself.
”
”
J.R.R. Tolkien (The Return of the King (The Lord of the Rings, #3))
“
And GUESS WHO ordered your guards to chain up Clay?” Tsunami demanded. She flung an accusing talon toward Shark. “COMMANDER SHARK! Of all the dragons who should obey you in everything! Is that not UTTERLY SHOCKING?” “It is,” Coral said. Tsunami thought she might be grinding her teeth, but she hid it well. “I find it quite hard to believe.” “Imagine the distress the poor guards felt,” Tsunami said, “when I explained to them that you would never have ordered those chains on Clay. To have to choose between their commander and their queen! Naturally they chose you, of course. That’s why they gave me the key to Clay’s chains. Because they understood that’s what you would have wanted them to do. Right?” Queen Coral gave Tsunami an appraising glance. Beside her, Blister was eating her soup with an amused expression. “Very good,” Coral said slowly. “It sounds like those guards are practically heroes.” “And Shark —” Tsunami prodded her. “To the dungeon with him as well,” the queen said with a wave. Shark didn’t protest like Lagoon had. He snarled at the guards who approached him, shot Tsunami a look full of hatred, and headed off to the dungeon without another word. Splendid,
”
”
Tui T. Sutherland (The Lost Heir (Wings of Fire, #2))
“
The big man glanced at the princess in chains for permission, hefting his axe suggestively. Jael expected her to nod and give him the go-ahead to serve as her executioner. Instead, she put out a hand and took the weapon from him. Her green eyes were like chips of jade in her pale, bloody countenance. This was the face of the Dread Queen.
"Kneel," she commanded, and the command had an inexorable weight.
Not only did Priest drop to his knees, so did the other men in the vicinity; two belonged to Silence. The Speaker frowned at this.
In a single swing, she took her enemy's head. The crowd roared.
And Jael fell a little in love.
”
”
Ann Aguirre (Perdition (Dred Chronicles, #1))
“
What I was quickly discovering about the presidency was that no problem that landed on my desk, foreign or domestic, had a clean, 100 percent solution. If it had, someone else down the chain of command would have solved it already. Instead, I was constantly dealing with probabilities: a 70 percent chance, say, that a decision to do nothing would end in disaster; a 55 percent chance that this approach versus that one might solve the problem (with a 0 percent chance that it would work out exactly as intended); a 30 percent chance that whatever we chose wouldn’t work at all, along with a 15 percent chance that it would make the problem worse.
”
”
Barack Obama (A Promised Land)
“
I fought to stay awake and keep the car on the road. And I thought back to texts I had read from the British Army in India, during the Raj, at the height of their empire. Young subalterns trapped in junior ranks had their own mess. They would dine together in splendid dress uniforms and talk about their chances of promotion. But they had none, unless a superior officer died. Dead men's shoes was the rule. So they would raise their crystal glasses of fine French wine and toast "bloody wars and dread diseases" because a casualty further up the chain of command was their only way to get ahead. Brutal, but that's how it's always been, in the military.
”
”
Lee Child (Persuader (Jack Reacher, #7))
“
The common definition of a clique is an exclusive group of girls who are close friends. I see it a little differently. I see them as a platoon of soldiers who have banded together because they think this is the best way to survive Girl World. There’s a chain of command, and they operate as one to the outside world, even if there may be dissatisfaction within the ranks. Group cohesion is based on unquestioned loyalty to the leaders and an “It’s us against the world” mentality.
”
”
Rosalind Wiseman (Queen Bees and Wannabes: Helping Your Daughter Survive Cliques, Gossip, Boys, and the New Realities of Girl World)
“
But time brought healing,
Downsizing of ego,
And freedom from bondage.
Alas, neither damnation
Nor salvation
Would come—
No terror of some hellish fiend
Or apocalyptic fury
Upon his command.
There was nothing to fear,
And there was everything.
”
”
D.K. Sanz/Kyrian Lyndon (Remnants of Severed Chains)
“
Men must want to do
things out of their own innermost drives. People, not commercial organizations or chains of command, are what make great civilizations work.
Every civilization depends upon the quality of the individuals it produces. If you over-organize humans, over-legalize them, suppress their urge to
greatness—they cannot work and their civilization collapses.
”
”
Frank Herbert (Children of Dune)
“
So, early in the war, he created an entirely separate department outside the normal chain of command, called the Statistical Office, with the principal function of feeding him—continuously updated and completely unfiltered—the most brutal facts of reality.
”
”
Jim Collins (Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap...And Others Don't)
“
In our tribunal, we look only at personal criminal responsibility in a very tightly defined, narrow way and we demand proof beyond a resonable doubt about the involvement of the individual. We do no have a mandate to establish the moral responsibility of those who saw things happen and did nothing, including people who might have had the capacity to stop the process and did nothing. But we have to be careful in thinking that just because we focus on individual criminal guilt we therefore absolve the community. The old distinctions are too simplistic when we move up the chain of command and witness the merging of the collectivity into the personae of these charismatic political and military leaders.'
-Louise Arbour, Chief Prosecutor for International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia
”
”
Erna Paris (Long Shadows: Truth, Lies and History)
“
A recurrent theme of this book is that architects, fairly low in the chain of command and needing jobs, are prone to compromise with the state and the establishment. Very rarely do they resist the zeitgeist. On a political level such compromise leads to the folly of invading Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan, follies of modern complicity too obvious to need comment. On an architectural level they lead to tearing down historic districts, building leviathans for multinationals or, for instance, constructing with cheap building systems that soon collapse.
”
”
Charles Jencks (The Story of Post-Modernism: Five Decades of the Ironic, Iconic and Critical in Architecture)
“
Here then is a scientific answer to the question, “What went wrong?”. Man is the victim of an evolutionary error, an error in brain building. Nature or the Mind Force was in too much of a hurry. It created our truly magnificent neocortex without setting up a clear chain of command to ensure that the new brain, seat of the reason, would dominate the old brains, seats of the instincts and emotions. The result was a highly suggestible, unstable naked ape that lived largely in the world of fantasy, was full of paranoid delusions and chronically liable to panic.
”
”
Robert S. de Ropp (Self-Completion: Keys to the Meaningful Life (Consciousness Classics))
“
We have more computing power in the drop ships’ tactical integrated neural network computers than existed on the entire planet fifty years ago, and somehow mission planning goes better when you’re outside in the fresh air and drawing diagrams and maps into the dirt with a pointy stick. “Two
”
”
Marko Kloos (Chains of Command (Frontlines, #4))
“
Where once universities, corporations, movie studios, and the like had been governed by a combination of relatively simple chains of command and informal patronage networks, we now have a world of funding proposals, strategic vision documents, and development team pitches—allowing for the endless elaborations of new and ever more pointless levels of managerial hierarchy, staffed by men and women with elaborate titles, fluent in corporate jargon, but who either have no firsthand experience of what it's like to do the work they are supposed to be managing, or who have done everything in their power to forget it.
”
”
David Graeber (Bullshit Jobs: A Theory)
“
In general, I don’t like to blame the creators. They are making work that appeals to them and the people in the room with them. They are making something that is, at some level, genuine. But the distributors, the networks that bring art to the population, they are the ones who ensure that there’s a flattening and narrowing. The younger me may have sat up all night with bandmates raging against Puffy or DMX or whoever, but the fact is that they were never the problem. The problem was that someone in the corporate chain of command felt that there was a need to play those songs fourteen times a day and to eliminate alternatives.
”
”
Ahmir "Questlove" Thompson (Mo' Meta Blues: The World According to Questlove)
“
if one keeps climbing upward in the chain of command within the brain, one finds at the very top those over-all organizational forces and dynamic properties of the large patterns of cerebral excitation that are correlated with mental states or psychic activity…. Near the apex of this command system in the brain…. we find ideas. Man over the chimpanzee has ideas and ideals. In the brain model proposed here, the causal potency of an idea, or an ideal, becomes just as real as that of a molecule, a cell, or a nerve impulse. Ideas cause ideas and help evolve new ideas. They interact with each other and with other mental forces in the same brain, in neighboring brains, and, thanks to global communication, in far distant, foreign brains. And they also interact with the external surroundings to produce in toto a burst-wise advance in evolution that is far beyond anything to hit the evolutionary scene yet, including the emergence of the living cell. Who
”
”
Douglas R. Hofstadter (I Am a Strange Loop)
“
If one of you sons of bitches gets killed for lack of shooting back because you ran out of ammo, I will personally violate your carcass. Understood?” “Yes, Master Sergeant,” the enlisted grunts shout back. I grin behind the shield of my visor. Nobody does motivational premission pep talks better than Sergeant Fallon. I
”
”
Marko Kloos (Chains of Command (Frontlines, #4))
“
We are so incredibly skilled at adapting to even the most hostile of environments, and so often we use those skills to be more efficient at killing each other.
”
”
Marko Kloos (Chains of Command (Frontlines, #4))
“
We are not garrison troops. We are in the business of killing people and breaking their shit.
”
”
Marko Kloos (Chains of Command (Frontlines, #4))
“
Discipline
If you set out to seek freedom, then learn above all things to govern your soul and your senses,
for fear that your passions and longings may lead you away from the path you should follow.
Chaste be your mind and your body, and both in subjection, obediently, steadfastly seeking the aim set before them;
only through discipline may a man learn to be free.
Action
Daring to do what is right, not what fancy may tell you,
valiantly grasping occasions, not cravenly doubting –
freedom comes only through deeds, not through thoughts taking wing.
Faint not nor fear, but go out to the storm and the action,
trusting in God whose commandment you faithfully follow;
freedom, exultant, will welcome your spirit with joy.
Suffering
A change has come indeed.
Your hands, so strong and active, are bound; in helplessness now you see your action is ended;
you sigh in relief, your cause committing to stronger hands; so now you may rest contented.
Only for one blissful moment could you draw near to touch freedom;
then, that it might be perfected in glory, you gave it to God.
Death
Come now, thou greatest of feasts on the journey to freedom eternal;
death, cast aside all the burdensome chains, and demolish the walls of our temporal body, the walls of our souls that are blinded,
so that at last we may see that which here remains hidden.
Freedom, how long we have sought thee in discipline, action, and suffering;
dying, we now may behold thee revealed in the Lord.
”
”
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
“
All men must sleep, Bran. Even princes.”
“When I sleep I turn into a wolf.” Bran turned his face away and looked back out into the night. “Do wolves dream?”
“All creatures dream, I think, yet not as men do.”
“Do dead men dream?” Bran asked, thinking of his father. In the dark crypts below Winterfell, a stonemason was chiseling out his father’s likeness in granite.
“Some say yes, some no,” the maester answered. “The dead themselves are silent on the matter.”
“Do trees dream?”
“Trees? No . . .”
“They do,” Bran said with sudden certainty. “They dream tree dreams. I dream of a tree sometimes. A weirwood, like the one in the godswood. It calls to me. The wolf dreams are better. I smell things, and sometimes I can taste the blood.”
Maester Luwin tugged at his chain where it chafed his neck. “If you would only spend more time with the other children—”
“I hate the other children,” Bran said, meaning the Walders. “I commanded you to send them away.
”
”
George R.R. Martin (A Clash of Kings (A Song of Ice and Fire, #2))
“
A man in love ... is the master, so it seems, but only if his lady friend permits it! The need to interchange the roles of slave and master for the sake of the relationship is never more clearly demonstrated than in the course of an affair. Never is the complicity between victim and executioner more essential. Even chained, down on her knees, begging for mercy, it is the woman, finally, who is in command ... the all powerful slave, dragging herself along the ground at her master's heels, is now really the god. The man is only her priest, living in fear and trembling of her displeasure.
”
”
Pauline Réage
“
Paradise,’ he began, and the p meant a spray. ‘The old legend about Paradise—that was about us, about right now. Yes! Just think about it. Those two in Paradise, they were offered a choice: happiness without freedom, or freedom without happiness, nothing else. Those idiots chose freedom. And then what? Then for centuries they were homesick for the chains. That’s why the world was so miserable, see? They missed the chains. For ages! And we were the first to hit on the way to get back to happiness. No, wait ... listen to me. The ancient God and us, side by side, at the same table. Yes! We helped God finally overcome the Devil—because that’s who it was that pushed people to break the commandment and taste freedom and be ruined. It was him, the wily serpent. But we gave him a boot to the head! Crack! And it was all over: Paradise was back. And we’re simple and innocent again, like Adam and Eve. None of those complications about good and evil: Everything is very simple, childishly simple —Paradise! The Benefactor, the Machine, the Cube, the Gas Bell, the Guardians: All those things represent good, all that is sublime, splendid, noble, elevated, crystal pure. Because that is what protects our nonfreedom, which is to say, our happiness.
”
”
Yevgeny Zamyatin
“
Even as I regarded those two men, I became aware of the flying beams of the spotlights, to the north-east, painting ephemeral infinity symbols across the pregnant clouds that increasingly commanded the sky, of the distant roller-coaster chain clacking through the ratchet angles of the guideway as cars full of riders climbed an incline toward the next long drop, of the dusty smell of the campground, and of the scent of rain pending.
”
”
Dean Koontz (Saint Odd (Odd Thomas, #7))
“
Imagine then a fleet or a ship in which there is a captain who is taller and stronger than any of the crew, but he is a little deaf and has a similar infirmity in sight, and his knowledge of navigation is not much better. The sailors are quarrelling with one another about the steering --every one is of opinion that he has a right to steer, though he has never learned the art of navigation and cannot tell who taught him or when he learned, and will further assert that it cannot be taught, and they are ready to cut in pieces any one who says the contrary. They throng about the captain, begging and praying him to commit the helm to them; and if at any time they do not prevail, but others are preferred to them, they kill the others or throw them overboard, and having first chained up the noble captain's senses with drink or some narcotic drug, they mutiny and take possession of the ship and make free with the stores; thus, eating and drinking, they proceed on their voyage in such a manner as might be expected of them. Him who is their partisan and cleverly aids them in their plot for getting the ship out of the captain's hands into their own whether by force or persuasion, they compliment with the name of sailor, pilot, able seaman, and abuse the other sort of man, whom they call a good-for-nothing; but that the true pilot must pay attention to the year and seasons and sky and stars and winds, and whatever else belongs to his art, if he intends to be really qualified for the command of a ship, and that he must and will be the steerer, whether other people like or not-the possibility of this union of authority with the steerer's art has never seriously entered into their thoughts or been made part of their calling. Now in vessels which are in a state of mutiny and by sailors who are mutineers, how will the true pilot be regarded? Will he not be called by them a prater, a star-gazer, a good-for-nothing?
”
”
Plato (The Republic)
“
Here ends Prometheus' surprising itinerary. Proclaiming his hatred of the gods and his love of mankind, he turns
away from Zeus with scorn and approaches mortal men in order to lead them in an assault against the heavens. But
men are weak and cowardly; they must be organized. They love pleasure and immediate happiness; they must be
taught to refuse, in order to grow up, immediate rewards. Thus Prometheus, in his turn, becomes a master who first
teaches and then commands. Men doubt that they can safely attack the city of light and are even uncertain whether
the city exists. They must be saved from themselves. The hero then tells them that he, and he alone, knows the city.
Those who doubt his word will be
thrown into the desert, chained to a rock, offered to the vultures. The others will march henceforth in
darkness, behind the pensive and solitary master. Prometheus alone has become god and reigns over the
solitude of men. But from Zeus he has gained only solitude and cruelty; he is no longer Prometheus, he is
Caesar. The real, the eternal Prometheus has now assumed the aspect of one of his victims. The same cry,
springing from the depths of the past, rings forever through the Scythian desert.
”
”
Albert Camus
“
Hamish Alexander-Harrington knew his wife as only two humans who had both been adopted by a pair
of mated treecats ever could. He'd seen her deal with joy and with sorrow, with happiness and with fury,
with fear, and even with despair. Yet in all the years since their very first meeting at Yeltsin's Star, he
suddenly realized, he had never actually met the woman the newsies called "the Salamander." It wasn't his
fault, a corner of his brain told him, because he'd never been in the right place to meet her. Never at the
right time. He'd never had the chance to stand by her side as she took a wounded heavy cruiser on an
unflinching deathride into the broadside of the battlecruiser waiting to kill it, sailing to her own death, and
her crew's, to protect a planet full of strangers while the rich beauty of Hammerwell's "Salute to Spring"
spilled from her ship's com system. He hadn't stood beside her on the dew-soaked grass of the Landing
City duelling grounds, with a pistol in her hand and vengeance in her heart as she faced the man who'd
bought the murder of her first great love. Just as he hadn't stood on the floor of Steadholders' Hall when
she faced a man with thirty times her fencing experience across the razor-edged steel of their swords,
with the ghosts of Reverend Julius Hanks, the butchered children of Mueller Steading, and her own
murdered steaders at her back.
But now, as he looked into the unyielding flint of his wife's beloved, almond eyes, he knew he'd met the
Salamander at last. And he recognized her as only another warrior could. Yet he also knew in that
moment that for all his own imposing record of victory in battle, he was not and never had been her
equal. As a tactician and a strategist, yes. Even as a fleet commander. But not as the very embodiment of
devastation. Not as the Salamander. Because for all the compassion and gentleness which were so much
a part of her, there was something else inside Honor Alexander-Harrington, as well. Something he himself
had never had. She'd told him, once, that her own temper frightened her. That she sometimes thought she
could have been a monster under the wrong set of circumstances.
And now, as he realized he'd finally met the monster, his heart twisted with sympathy and love, for at last
he understood what she'd been trying to tell him. Understood why she'd bound it with the chains of duty,
and love, of compassion and honor, of pity, because, in a way, she'd been right. Under the wrong
circumstances, she could have been the most terrifying person he had ever met.
In fact, at this moment, she was .
It was a merciless something, her "monster"—something that went far beyond military talent, or skills, or
even courage. Those things, he knew without conceit, he, too, possessed in plenty. But not that deeply
personal something at the core of her, as unstoppable as Juggernaut, merciless and colder than space
itself, that no sane human being would ever willingly rouse. In that instant her husband knew, with an icy
shiver which somehow, perversely, only made him love her even more deeply, that as he gazed into those
agate-hard eyes, he looked into the gates of Hell itself. And whatever anyone else might think, he knew
now that there was no fire in Hell. There was only the handmaiden of death, and ice, and purpose, and a
determination which would not— couldnot—relent or rest.
"I'll miss them," she told him again, still with that dreadful softness, "but I won't forget. I'll never forget,
and one day— oneday, Hamish—we're going to find the people who did this, you and I. And when we
do, the only thing I'll ask of God is that He let them live long enough to know who's killing them.
”
”
David Weber (Mission of Honor (Honor Harrington, #12))
“
{From Lindsey's address at the funeral of renowned scientist Luther Burbank. Burbank was one of the most beloved people in the early 20th century due to his countless contributions to humanity, but when, in an interview, he revealed that he was an atheist, the public quickly turned on him, sending him hundreds of death threats. Upset and grief stricken, the kind-hearted Burbank tried to respond to every letter amiably, a task that ultimately led to his death}
. . . Luther Burbank had a philosophy that actually works for human betterment, that dares to challenge the superstition, hypocrisy, and sham, which so often have worked for cruelties, inquisitions, wars and massacres. Superstition that stood across the road of Progress, commanded, not by a god or gods, but the meanest devils that we know--Ignorance, Intolerance, Bigotry, Fanaticism, and Hate. The prejudiced beneficiaries of organized theology refused to see what Burbank, the gifted child of Nature, saw with a vision as crystal as theirs is dense and dark. And so they assailed him.
One of the saddest spectacles of our times is the effort of hidebound theologians, still desperately trying to chain us to the past--in other forms that would still invoke the inquisitions, the fears, and the bigotries of the dark ages, and keep the world in chains. The chains of lies, hypocrisies, taboos, and the superstitions, fostered by the dying, but still the organized, relentless outworn theology of another age. They refuse to see that in their stupid lust for power they are endangering all that is good.
”
”
Benjamin Barr Lindsey
“
Spinner parts, who do not themselves become dizzy, have the job of spinning internally to send out feelings or impulses to all the other parts, the main person, or a group of selected parts. Many of the “booby traps" or “fail-safe" programmes involve spinning. Often, when a programme (that is, a particular training) is in operation, the survivor feels dizzy, as though something or someone is “spinning" inside his or her head. If this is happening to you, you can speak to the spinner and ask that part to stop spinning or to slow down the spin. If this does not work, ask to speak with whoever is making the spinner part spin.
This strategy, of working up through the chain of command, applies to mind control treatment recovery in general. Another tactic you can use is to ask the spinner to spin in the opposite direction, which will often put away whatever is being spun. If permitted by those in charge, a spinner can also replace whatever lesson is being spun with something positive, such as a feeling of calmness, taken from a positive memory.
”
”
Alison Miller (Becoming Yourself: Overcoming Mind Control and Ritual Abuse)
“
Another approach is actually to build the job around the person, to create a virtual job portfolio to match what he/she does best. Say you find a highly competent human being. Rather than asking the person to conform, you find appropriate things for that person to do. This permits a great deal of mobility within the organization, breaks up the traditional hierarchy, unlinks the rigid chain-of-command, and uncovers new functional slots. Such an idea is disturbing to First Tier entities, quite natural in Second Tier structures.
”
”
Don Edward Beck (Spiral Dynamics: Mastering Values, Leadership and Change)
“
There is one fierceness of Jews that I like a whole lot", the Texan told her one night, during a discussion of the Virginal intercessions and saintly go-betweens, of the baroque hierarchy of priests and monsignors and bishops and archbishops and cardinals and pope that lay between God and the Catholic soul, which Sofia found pointless and mystifying. "Most people, no, they don't like to go straight to the top, not really. They need to sidle up to a proposition, come at the thing a little off-center. They feel better with a chain of command," D.W. said, an old Marine squadron commander whose years in the Jesuit order had done nothing to diminish his tendency to think in military terms. "Got a problem, you ask the sergeant. Sergeant might go to a captain he knows. Most folks would have a hell of a time getting up the nerve to bang on the general's office door, even if he was the nicest fella in the world. Catholicism makes allowances for that in human beings." ..."But the children of Abraham? They look God straight in the face. Praise, Argue! Dicker, complain. Takes a lot of guts to deal with the Almighty like that.
”
”
Mary Doria Russell (Children of God (The Sparrow, #2))
“
Primitive (and guerrilla) warfare consists of war stripped to its essentials: the murder of enemies; the theft or destruction of their sustenance, wealth, and essential resources; and the inducement in them of insecurity and terror. It conducts the basic business of war without recourse to ponderous formations or equipment, complicated maneuvers, strict chains of command, calculated strategies, time tables, or other civilized embellishments. When civilized soldiers meet adversaries so unencumbered, they too must shed a considerable weight of intellectual baggage and physical armor just to even the odds.
”
”
Lawrence H. Keeley (War Before Civilization)
“
There was the goal of all those con men of library and classroom, who sold their revelations as reason, their “instincts” as science, their cravings as knowledge, the goal of all the savages of the non-objective, the non-absolute, the relative, the tentative, the probable—the savages who, seeing a farmer gather a harvest, can consider it only as a mystic phenomenon unbound by the law of causality and created by the farmers’ omnipotent whim, who then proceed to seize the farmer, to chain him, to deprive him of tools, of seeds, of water, of soil, to push him out on a barren rock and to command: “Now grow a harvest and feed us!
”
”
Ayn Rand (Atlas Shrugged)
“
The Cloud Ark Constitution is now in effect.” Dinah drew breath, knowing what this meant. Markus spelled it out anyway. “This means that all nation-states of Earth, and their governments and constitutions, no longer exist. Their military and civilian chains of command are no more. Oaths you may have taken to them, allegiances you may have held, loyalties you may have felt, citizenships you may have had are now and forever dissolved. The rights granted you by the Cloud Ark Constitution, no more and no less, are your rights. The laws and responsibilities of the Cloud Ark Constitution now bind you. You are citizens of a new nation now, the only nation. Long may it endure.
”
”
Neal Stephenson (Seveneves)
“
It is very hard to break armored infantry groups without artillery or machines,” Darrow explained as if detailing how to clean a rifle. “So you don’t target them. You target their psyche. You target their groupthink. “First you send in a man like Sev or Valdir with their best ghouls—that’s what we call them. If you can’t plant the ghouls ahead of time, they should sneak deep as possible into the enemy ranks before hunkering down. “Then you kill a scout on the outskirts. Badly. The more screaming the better. That’ll draw curiosity and a heavy squad. The squad will investigate. If you can, make them disappear in silence. You want the rest of them using their imagination. You want the commander wondering if he should send another squad, maybe even a century. “Then you confirm their worst fear. Give them a death chant—we carry recordings when we don’t have Obsidians. You want anticipation. You want them preparing to face a known fear, physically, mentally. That’s when your ghouls awaken and start killing the command chain. “Then you have your main force close in silence at a fast pace and hit them as hard as you possibly can. Groups can hold a line together. Groups will make last stands. But alone, rarely. It’s very hard for the human mind to accept dying alone. No matter their number, if you summon enough chaos they will feel alone. Especially with anonymity, especially in the dark. Once the first breaks, the rest will feel like they have permission to follow.
”
”
Pierce Brown (Light Bringer (Red Rising Saga, #6))
“
King Saul stood opposite him staring at his sworn enemy, now held in chains in the prison outside the royal palace. They were alone. He noticed a restlessness and a slight tremor in the arms and head of his captive, accompanied by a perpetual grin that looked more painful than humorous and resulted in occasional blurts of maniacal laughter. These Amalekites were not merely evil, they were stricken with a madness because of their diet of human flesh. They were cannibals. They were also very hard to kill. They engaged in dark rituals and howled when they fought because they were known to be possessed by the siyyim and iyyim, howling desert demons. They worshipped the satyr goat god Azazel and the goddess Lilith, connected with their Edomite and Seirim past. Saul was king of Israel and Yahweh had commanded him to wipe out the Amalekites. They
”
”
Brian Godawa (David Ascendant (Chronicles of the Nephilim, #7))
“
Inexpensive Progress
Encase your legs in nylons,
Bestride your hills with pylons
O age without a soul;
Away with gentle willows
And all the elmy billows
That through your valleys roll.
Let's say goodbye to hedges
And roads with grassy edges
And winding country lanes;
Let all things travel faster
Where motor car is master
Till only Speed remains.
Destroy the ancient inn-signs
But strew the roads with tin signs
'Keep Left,' 'M4,' 'Keep Out!'
Command, instruction, warning,
Repetitive adorning
The rockeried roundabout;
For every raw obscenity
Must have its small 'amenity,'
Its patch of shaven green,
And hoardings look a wonder
In banks of floribunda
With floodlights in between.
Leave no old village standing
Which could provide a landing
For aeroplanes to roar,
But spare such cheap defacements
As huts with shattered casements
Unlived-in since the war.
Let no provincial High Street
Which might be your or my street
Look as it used to do,
But let the chain stores place here
Their miles of black glass facia
And traffic thunder through.
And if there is some scenery,
Some unpretentious greenery,
Surviving anywhere,
It does not need protecting
For soon we'll be erecting
A Power Station there.
When all our roads are lighted
By concrete monsters sited
Like gallows overhead,
Bathed in the yellow vomit
Each monster belches from it,
We'll know that we are dead.
”
”
John Betjeman (Collected Poems)
“
BAPTISM BY FIRE Scriptures for meditation: 2 Chronicles 6; 7:1-6 Confession: Jer. 20:9 PRAYER POINTS Thank God for the purifying power of the fire of the Holy Ghost. I cover myself with the blood of the Lord Jesus. Father, let Your fire that burns away every deposit of the enemy fall upon me in the name of Jesus. Holy Ghost fire, incubate me in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. I reject any evil stamp or seal placed upon me by ancestral spirits in the name of Jesus. I release myself from every negative anointing in the name of Jesus. Let every door of spiritual leakage be closed in the name of Jesus. I challenge every organ of my body with the fire of the Holy Spirit. (Lay your right hand methodically on various parts of the body beginning from the head.) Let every human spirit attacking my own spirit release me in the mighty name of Jesus. I reject every spirit of the tail in the name of Jesus. Sing the song "Holy Ghost fire, fire fall on me". Let all evil marks on my body be burnt off by the fire of the Holy Spirit in the name of Jesus. Let the anointing of the Holy Ghost fall upon me and break every negative yoke in the name of Jesus. Let every garment of hindrance and dirtiness be dissolved by the fire of the Holy Ghost in the name of Jesus. I command all my chained blessings to be unchained in the name of Jesus. Let all spiritual cages inhibiting my progress be roasted by the fire of the Holy Spirit in the name of Jesus. Now Make this Powerful Confession Before You Proceed I boldly declare that my body is the temple of God and that the Holy Ghost is dwelling in me. I am cleansed through the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, whosoever wants me to go into captivity shall go into captivity. Whosoever wants me to die by the sword shall die by the sword. The strangers shall fade away and be afraid out of their close places in the mighty name of the Lord Jesus Christ. They shall lick the dust like a serpent, they shall move out of their holes like worms of the earth,
”
”
D.K. Olukoya (Pray your Way to Breakthrough)
“
Brastias, general of the Dark Plains rebellion and Annwyl’s second in command, leaned back into the hard wood chair and rubbed his tired eyes. She must be dead. She had to be dead. Annwyl would never disappear this long without word sent. He’d already sent trackers out to find her, but they came back empty-handed, losing her trail somewhere near Dark Glen, a haunted place most men dare not enter.
Of course, Annwyl was not most men. She often dared where others fled. She remained the bravest warrior Brastias knew and he’d met many men over the years who he considered brave.
But Annwyl could be foolhardy and her anger . . . formidable.
And yet every day for two years Brastias thanked the gods for his good fortune. On a whim they had attacked a heavily armed caravan coming from Garbhán Isle. Its cargo had been Annwyl. Dressed in white bridal clothes and chained to the horse she rode, her destiny to be the unwilling bride for some noble in Madron. And based on how heavily armed her procession was, dangerously unhappy about it as well. Once the attack began, one of his men released Annwyl and told her to escape. She didn’t. Instead she took up a sword and fought. Fought, in fact, like a demon sent from the gods of hate and revenge. Her rage a mighty sight to behold. By the time the girl finished, she stood among the headless remains of those she killed. Her white gown completely covered in blood. On that day the men had given her the name Annwyl the Bloody and, as much as she hated it, the name stuck.
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G.A. Aiken (Dragon Actually (Dragon Kin, #1))
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SMALLER, BUT I CAN STILL SEE YOU!” said Owen Meany. Then he left us; he was gone. I could tell by his almost cheerful expression that he was at least as high as the palm trees. Major Rawls saw to it that Owen Meany got a medal. I was asked to make an eyewitness report, but Major Rawls was instrumental in pushing the proper paperwork through the military chain of command. Owen Meany was awarded the so-called Soldier’s Medal: “For heroism that involves the voluntary risk of life under conditions other than those of conflict with an opposing armed force.” According to Major Rawls, the Soldier’s Medal rates above the Bronze Star but below the Legion of Merit. Naturally, it didn’t matter very much to me—exactly where the medal was rated—but I think Rawls was right in assuming that the medal mattered to Owen Meany. Major Rawls did not attend Owen’s funeral. When I spoke on the telephone with him, Rawls was apologetic about not making the trip to New Hampshire; but I assured him that I completely understood his feelings. Major Rawls had seen his share of flag-draped caskets;
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John Irving (A Prayer for Owen Meany)
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We're accustomed to thinking in terms of centralized control, clear chains of command, the straightforward logic of cause and effect. But in huge, interconnected systems, where every player ultimately affects every other, our standard ways of thinking fall apart. Simple pictures and verbal arguments are too feeble, too myopic. That's what plagues us in economics when we try to anticipate the effect of a tax cut or a change in interest rates, or in ecology, when a new pesticide backfires and produces dire, unintended consequences that propagate through the food chain.
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Steven H. Strogatz (Sync: The Emerging Science of Spontaneous Order)
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Not all of history is recorded in the books supplied to school children in Harlem or Birmingham. Yet this boy and this girl know something of the part of history which has been censored by the white writers and purchasers of board-of-education books. They know that Negroes were with George Washington at Valley Forge. They know that the first American to shed blood in the revolution which freed his country from British oppression was a black seaman named Crispus Attucks. The boy's Sunday-school teacher has told him that one of the team who designed the capital of their nation, Washington, D.C., was a Negro, Benjamin Banneker. Once the girl had heard a speaker, invited to her school during Negro History Week. This speaker told how, for two hundred years, without wages, black people, brought to this land in slave ships and in chains, had drained the swamps, built the homes, made cotton king and helped, on whip-lashed backs, to lift this nation from colonial obscurity to commanding influence in domestic commerce and world trade.
Wherever there was hard work, dirty work, dangerous work—in the mines, on the docks, in the blistering foundries—Negroes had done more than their share.
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Martin Luther King Jr. (Why We Can't Wait)
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One mother Mark and I met with, Bernadette MacArthur, had used the underground networks in conjunction with fleeing the country with her five precious children. Four of them reportedly had been horribly abused, and when the corrupt court system threatened to perpetuate it, Bernadette, pregnant, fled all the way to Turkey with them in 1988. Brilliantly maneuvering through Europe and Mexico, she slipped back into the US and Faye Yeager’s underground in 1989. Determined to surface and ‘normalize’ her children’s lives, Bernadette appeared on national TV and began speaking out. To further their safety, she then joined the Sheriff’s Department and worked her way up the chain of command achieving the rank of Major. This extraordinary mother went to extremes to protect her children and ensure their freedom! Additionally, Bernadette taught Sheriff’s Department personnel how to identify mind control survivors, satanic victims, and occult ritual sites. Her highly acclaimed accomplishments paved the way for others, while providing a backdoor into the undergrounds for those on the run. Unbeknownst to her, Bernadette saved the minds and lives of countless survivors while saving her own children.
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Cathy O'Brien (ACCESS DENIED For Reasons Of National Security: Documented Journey From CIA Mind Control Slave To U.S. Government Whistleblower)
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TRUMP EVENTUALLY REALIZED THAT he needed executives with a strong background in running casinos. He scouted the competition and picked Stephen Hyde, a devout Mormon with a large family. The Church of Latter-day Saints opposed gambling, but the casino industry employed many Mormons in key positions, in part because executives believed the faithful wouldn’t be tempted to bet. Hyde was soft-spoken, unflappable, and widely considered one of the nation’s savviest gaming executives, having most recently worked for Trump’s competitor Steve Wynn. Trump, who once wrote, “I can be a screamer,” would occasionally humiliate Hyde by cursing him out in front of other executives. Yet Trump recognized Hyde’s capabilities and entrusted him with a business potentially worth billions of dollars. Hyde was, Trump wrote, “a very sharp guy and highly competitive, but most of all, he had a sense of how to manage to the bottom line.” Trump throughout his career would rely on small circles of advisers, and Hyde became one of Trump’s most trusted associates at the time. That meant some other senior executives felt shut out, unable to convey their concerns to Trump without going through the tight inner circle. Hyde was at the top of that chain of command. Hyde
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Michael Kranish (Trump Revealed: The Definitive Biography of the 45th President)
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The concept of surfaces and gaps demands leadership from the front as opposed to leadership from the rear. The commander must be where he can make swift decisions. He must be where the situation is developing. Obviously, leadership from the front had become a scarcity by World War I. J. F. C. Fuller, in his book, Generalship, wrote: In the World War, nothing was more dreadful to witness than a chain of men, starting with a battalion commander and ending with an army commander, sitting in telephone boxes, improvised or actual, talking, talking, talking, in place of leading, leading, leading. The result was unresponsive leadership and slow reactions.
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William S. Lind (Maneuver Warfare Handbook)
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The intellect, as we have seen, cannot command the emotions, but it can channel currently existing emotional energy. If, for example, the emotions want X, the intellect might talk them into wanting to do Y by pointing out that doing it will get them X. As soon as the emotions are convinced that doing Y will get them X, the anxiety they felt with respect to X will transfer to Y. The intellect can then point out to the emotions that by doing Z, they can get Y; again, the anxiety will transfer. In this manner, anxiety flows down the chains of desire formed by the intellect. We thereby become motivated to fulfill the instrumental desires in these chains, even though doing so won’t itself feel good—indeed, even though doing so will feel bad.
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William B. Irvine (On Desire: Why We Want What We Want)
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We immoral ones!— This world which we're concerned with, in which we have to fear and love, this almost invisible and inaudible world of sophisticated commanding, sophisticated obeying, a world of “almost” from every way of looking at it —entangled, embarrassing, cutting, and tender— yes, this world is well defended against clumsy spectators and familiar curiosity! We have been woven into a strict yarn and shirt of duties and cannot get out of it — in that respect we are simply “men of duty,” we as well! Now and then, it's true, we dance happily in our “chains” and between our “swords.” More often, it's no less true, we gnash our teeth about it and are impatient with all the secret hardness of our fate. But we can do what we like: the fools and appearance speak against us: “They are men without duty.” —We always have fools and appearance against us!
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Friedrich Nietzsche (Beyond Good and Evil)
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Type II trauma also often occurs within a closed context - such as a family, a religious group, a workplace, a chain of command, or a battle group - usually perpetrated by someone related or known to the victim. As such, it often involves fundamental betrayal of the relationship between the victim and the perpetrator and within the community (Freyd, 1994). It may also involve the betrayal of a particular role and the responsibility associated with the relationship (i.e., parent-child, family member-child, therapist-client, teacher-student, clergy-child/adult congregant, supervisor-employee, military officer-enlisted man or woman). Relational dynamics of this sort have the effect of further complicating the victim's survival adaptations, especially when a superficially caring, loving or seductive relationship is cultivated with the victim (e.g., by an adult mentor such as a priest, coach, or teacher; by an adult who offers a child special favors for compliance; by a superior who acts as a protector or who can offer special favors and career advancement). In a process labelled "selection and grooming", potential abusers seek out as potential victims those who appear insecure, are needy and without resources, and are isolated from others or are obviously neglected by caregivers or those who are in crisis or distress for which they are seeking assistance. This status is then used against the victim to seduce, coerce, and exploit. Such a scenario can lead to trauma bonding between victim and perpetrator (i.e., the development of an attachment bond based on the traumatic relationship and the physical and social contact), creating additional distress and confusion for the victim who takes on the responsibility and guilt for what transpired, often with the encouragement or insinuation of the perpetrator(s) to do so.
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Christine A. Courtois
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Qualities such as honesty, determination, and a cheerful acceptance of stress, which can all be identified through probing questionnaires and interviews, may be more important to the company in the long run than one's college grade-point average or years of "related experience."
Every business is only as good as the people it brings into the organization. The corporate trainer should feel his job is the most important in the company, because it is.
Exalt seniority-publicly, shamelessly, and with enough fanfare to raise goosebumps on the flesh of the most cynical spectator. And, after the ceremony, there should be some sort of permanent display so that employees passing by are continuously reminded of their own achievements and the achievements of others.
The manager must freely share his expertise-not only about company procedures and products and services but also with regard to the supervisory skills he has worked so hard to acquire. If his attitude is, "Let them go out and get their own MBAs," the personnel under his authority will never have the full benefit of his experience. Without it, they will perform at a lower standard than is possible, jeopardizing the manager's own success.
Should a CEO proclaim that there is no higher calling than being an employee of his organization? Perhaps not-for fear of being misunderstood-but it's certainly all right to think it. In fact, a CEO who does not feel this way should look for another company to manage-one that actually does contribute toward a better life for all.
Every corporate leader should communicate to his workforce that its efforts are important and that employees should be very proud of what they do-for the company, for themselves, and, literally, for the world. If any employee is embarrassed to tell his friends what he does for a living, there has been a failure of leadership at his workplace.
Loyalty is not demanded; it is created.
Why can't a CEO put out his own suggested reading list to reinforce the corporate vision and core values? An attractive display at every employee lounge of books to be freely borrowed, or purchased, will generate interest and participation. Of course, the program has to be purely voluntary, but many employees will wish to be conversant with the material others are talking about. The books will be another point of contact between individuals, who might find themselves conversing on topics other than the weekend football games. By simply distributing the list and displaying the books prominently, the CEO will set into motion a chain of events that can greatly benefit the workplace. For a very cost-effective investment, management will have yet another way to strengthen the corporate message.
The very existence of many companies hangs not on the decisions of their visionary CEOs and energetic managers but on the behavior of its receptionists, retail clerks, delivery drivers, and service personnel.
The manager must put himself and his people through progressively challenging courage-building experiences. He must make these a mandatory group experience, and he must lead the way.
People who have confronted the fear of public speaking, and have learned to master it, find that their new confidence manifests itself in every other facet of the professional and personal lives. Managers who hold weekly meetings in which everyone takes on progressively more difficult speaking or presentation assignments will see personalities revolutionized before their eyes.
Command from a forward position, which means from the thick of it. No soldier will ever be inspired to advance into a hail of bullets by orders phoned in on the radio from the safety of a remote command post; he is inspired to follow the officer in front of him. It is much more effective to get your personnel to follow you than to push them forward from behind a desk.
The more important the mission, the more important it is to be at the front.
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Dan Carrison (Semper Fi: Business Leadership the Marine Corps Way)
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These include: 1.Do the Right Thing—the principle of integrity. We see in George Marshall the endless determination to tell the truth and never to curry favor by thought, word, or deed. Every one of General Marshall’s actions was grounded in the highest sense of integrity, honesty, and fair play. 2.Master the Situation—the principle of action. Here we see the classic “know your stuff and take appropriate action” principle of leadership coupled with a determination to drive events and not be driven by them. Marshall knew that given the enormous challenges of World War II followed by the turbulent postwar era, action would be the heart of his remit. And he was right. 3.Serve the Greater Good—the principle of selflessness. In George Marshall we see a leader who always asked himself, “What is the morally correct course of action that does the greatest good for the greatest number?” as opposed to the careerist leader who asks “What’s in it for me?” and shades recommendations in a way that creates self-benefit. 4.Speak Your Mind—the principle of candor. Always happiest when speaking simple truth to power, General and Secretary Marshall never sugarcoated the message to the global leaders he served so well. 5.Lay the Groundwork—the principle of preparation. As is often said at the nation’s service academies, know the six Ps: Prior Preparation Prevents Particularly Poor Performance. 6.Share Knowledge—the principle of learning and teaching. Like Larry Bird on a basketball court, George Marshall made everyone on his team look better by collaborating and sharing information. 7.Choose and Reward the Right People—the principle of fairness. Unbiased, color- and religion-blind, George Marshall simply picked the very best people. 8.Focus on the Big Picture—the principle of vision. Marshall always kept himself at the strategic level, content to delegate to subordinates when necessary. 9.Support the Troops—the principle of caring. Deeply involved in ensuring that the men and women under his command prospered, General and Secretary Marshall taught that if we are loyal down the chain of command, that loyalty will be repaid not only in kind but in operational outcomes as well.
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James G. Stavridis (The Leader's Bookshelf)
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Nothing could be more admirable than the manner in which for forty years he [Joseph Black] performed this useful and dignified office. His style of lecturing was as nearly perfect as can well be conceived; for it had all the simplicity which is so entirely suited to scientific discourse, while it partook largely of the elegance which characterized all he said or did ... I have heard the greatest understandings of the age giving forth their efforts in its most eloquent tongues-have heard the commanding periods of Pitt's majestic oratory-the vehemence of Fox's burning declamation-have followed the close-compacted chain of Grant's pure reasoning-been carried away by the mingled fancy, epigram, and argumentation of Plunket; but I should without hesitation prefer, for mere intellectual gratification (though aware how much of it is derived from association), to be once more allowed the privilege which I in those days enjoyed of being present while the first philosopher of his age was the historian of his own discoveries, and be an eyewitness of those experiments by which he had formerly made them, once more performed with his own hands.
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Henry Peter Brougham
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To what end does consciousness exist at all when it is basically superfluous? If one is willing to hear my answer and its possibly extravagant conjecture, it seems to me that the subtlety and strength of consciousness is always related to a person's (or animal's) ability to communicate; and the ability to communicate, in turn, to the need to communicate: the latter not to be understood as if precisely the individual himself who is master in the art of communicating and making known his necessities would at the same time have to be most dependent upon others for his necessities seems to me however to be so in relation to whole races and successions of generations: where necessity and need have long compelled men to communicate with their fellows and understand each other rapidly and subtly, a surplus of the power and art of communication is at last acquired as if it were a fortune which had gradually accumulated, and now waited for an heir to squander it prodigally (the so called artists are these heirs in like manner the orators, preachers, and authors: all of them people who come at the end of a long chain, each of them 'born late' in the best sense of the term, and each of them, again, squanderers by nature). Assuming this observation is correct, I may go on to conjecture that consciousness in general has developed only under the pressure of the need to communicate: that from the first it has been necessary and useful only between man and man (especially between those commanding and those obeying) and has only developed in proportion to its utility.
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Friedrich Nietzsche (The Gay Science: With a Prelude in Rhymes and an Appendix of Songs)