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The hope was, apparently, that if the Navy built a defense the Soviets would feel obliged to come up with the threat it was meant to avert. Alas, they didn't. When Senator Stewart Symington, former Air Force Secretary, pointed this out, the military replied that building a defense against a threat that didn't exist insured that the Soviets would never bother creating the threat. Or, if they did, they would waste a lot of money, which was a good thing as they had less of it than the U.S.

William L. O'Neill, Coming Apart

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A common criticism of McCarthy's candidacy by liberals was that he didn't care about the job enough to make a "strong" President. The New Republic called this the "passion-for-office" test of presidential fitness, the theory being, apparently, that if the candidate didn't want the office bad enough to lie, cheat, and steal, he wasn't qualified to have it.

William L. O'Neill, Coming Apart

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Ornithology now dominated the politics of war. The friends of American intervention were called hawks, critics were doves. Senator George D. Aiken of Vermont thought the country needed more owls. Senator Warren Magnuson of Washington proclaimed himself an American eagle. Art Buchwald, noted social philosopher, admitted to being chicken.

William L. O'Neill, Coming Apart

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Following the Buddhist monks' example, two men burned themselves to death in protest against the war. One, Norman Morrison, a Quaker, did so on the steps of the Pentagon. He was soon forgotten in America, though not in North Vietnam. Others took the less drastic step of burning their draft cards. In the manner of symbolic gestures, these acts were thought especially atrocious. One of the peculiar features of nationalism is that while death and mutilation leave its practitioners unmoved, flag desecrations and the like inflame them. Accordingly, when pacifists started burning draft cards Congress passed a law making it a federal offense ($10,000 fine or 5 years in jail) to knowingly kill or wound a Selective Service card.

William L. O'Neill, Coming Apart

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As usual, Congress considered the rich more deserving of aid than the poor. Handouts for the poor were considered degrading and destructive; for the rich they were declarations of faith in the free-enterprise system.

Willian L. O'Neill, Coming Apart

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As they had been subverting governments and winning wars for so long, President Kennedy believed them. Had he looked at their records more closely he might not have. The CIA did indeed help overthrow the governments of Iran, Guatemala, and Laos. But they had also tried and failed in Costa Rica, Burma, and Indonesia. The Joint Chiefs, Kennedy would discover, automatically favored every hostile act. Their consent meant less than nothing.

William L. O'Neill, Coming Apart

[lythrontiro-argestes]

Strong nations need not bargain, and weak ones dare not. Real negotiation assumes equality, otherwise there is nothing to bargain over.

- William L. O'Neill, Coming Apart

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“There are those who know and those who don’t know. And for every ten thousand who don’t know there’s only one who knows. That’s the miracle of all time - the fact that these millions know so much but don’t know this.”

— Carson McCullers, The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter

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Carson McCullers, from The Heart is a Lonely Hunter

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Amal El-Mohtar/Max Gladstone, This Is How You Lose the Time War

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How can you expect a man who's warm to understand a man who's cold?

Alexander Solzhenitsyn, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich

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And I realized that I was afraid of two things-- afraid that sooner or later I myself might meet an eldil, and afraid that I might get "drawn in." I suppose every one knows this fear of getting "drawn in"-- the moment at which a man realizes that what had seemed mere speculations are on the point of Landing him in the Communist Party or the Christian Church-- the sense that a door has just slammed and left him on the inside. The thing was such sheer bad luck.

C.S. Lewis, Perelandra

[lythrontiro-argestes]

This itch to have things over again, as if life were a film that could be unrolled twice or even made to work backwards . . . was it possibly the root of all evil? No: of course the love of money was called that. But money itself--perhaps one valued it chiefly as a defense against chance, a security for being able to have things over again, a means of arresting the unrolling of the film.

C.S. Lewis, Perelandra

[lythrontiro-argestes]

My fear was now of another kind. I felt sure that the creature was what we call "good," but I wasn't sure whether I liked "goodness" so much as I supposed. This is a very terrible experience. As long as what you are afraid of is something evil, you may still hope that the good may come to your rescue. But suppose you struggle through to the good and find that it is also dreadful?

C.S. Lewis, Perelandra

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He wondered how he could have ever thought of planets, even of the earth, as islands of life and reality floating in a deadly void. Now, with a certainty which never after deserted him, he saw the planets--the 'earths' he called them in his thought--as mere holes or gaps in the living heaven--excluded and rejected wastes of heavy matter and murky air, formed not by addition to, but by subtraction from, the surrounding brightness.

C.S. Lewis, Out of the Silent Planet

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“The biggest hesitation around allowing women in battle, however, as openly expressed by several male American military officials, may be that it changes the honor narrative of war, in which men are supposed to act as the protectors of women and home. And that may be the most dangerous thing of all to the military—if they cannot explain why we must fight. Presenting a convincing threat to loved ones is vital in selling any war, with the underlying idea that war is absolutely necessary to preserve peace. In Western society, and particularly in the American political story, women are still the bearers of honor for their family and their country, and the very reason to defend freedom; the most often cited reason for going to war in our time.”

— Jenny Nordberg, The Underground Girls of Kabul

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Schools are an instrument for transmitting ideas. When a war of ideas is underway, building a school is an act of war.

-Tamim Ansary