Quotes of Past Months

• Fred Charles Iklé, in The Role of Character and Intellect in Strategy:

  To do good work on national strategy almost demands a rotund intellect, a well-rounded personality. He whose vocation it is to work on these issues of war and peace cannot suffer from intellectual poverty. His soul must be in harmony with this world of ours. He must not only appreciate different cultures and good art, but also find nourishment in things that are beautiful and be endowed with a sense of humor. He might have, perhaps, an eye for architecture or painting, an ear for the best music; he must have a broad understanding of philosophy, literature, and, of course, history.



• Robert Heinlein, in Time Enough for Love:

  Anyone who cannot cope with mathematics is not fully human. At best he is a tolerable subhuman who has learned to wear shoes, bathe and not make messes in the house.



• Adlai Stevenson running agaist Ike in 1952 and being told by a woman "Mr. Stevenson, you have the vote of every thinking person":

  That's not enough, madam. We need a majority!



• President George W. Bush:

  I will never arm-wrestle Arnold Schwarzenegger.



• Herodotus

  But the Persians suffered from that most dangerous tendency in war: a wish to kill but not to die in the process.



• George Orwell, 1946:

  In our age there is no such thing as "keeping out of politics." All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred, and schizophrenia.



• William Baker, CIA spokesman, to the press:

  In a general way, we try to anticipate some of your questions so that I can respond “no comment” with some degree of knowledge.



• Slogan in a Bulgarian chicken farm:

  Every egg --- a bomb, every chicken --- a flying fortress against the aggressors!



• Albert Einstein, on political science:

  Einstein was once asked, "Why is it that when the mind of man has stretched so far as to discover the structure of the atom we have been unable to devise the political means to keep the atom from destroying us?" He replied, "That is simple, my friend, it is because politics is more difficult than physics."



• The ancient Sumerians, on learning proper English in college:

  A scribe who knows not Sumerian, what kind of scribe is he?



• Winston Churchill, on graduate study in political science:

  "I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears, and sweat. We have before us an ordeal of the most grievous kind. We have before us many, many months of struggle and suffering... You ask, what is our aim? I can answer in one word. It is victory. Victory at all costs - Victory in spite of all terrors - Victory, however long and hard the road may be, for without victory there is no survival." Winston Churchill, May 13, 1940.

  
  
• Puritan John Cotton, 1642, on higher education:

  "The more learned and witty you bee, the more fit to act for Satan will you bee."

  
  
• Nelba Blandon, Interior Ministry Director of Censorship, 1984, on freedom of speech:

  "They [La Prensa] accused us of suppressing freedom of expression. This was a lie and we could not let them publish it." (Quoted in New York Times.)