The first casualty of a civil war was justice, Philip had realized.
A white American can orbit the earth, but a black American can’t enter a restroom.
Trials rarely found men not guilty. The general view was that if a man were innocent he would not have got into trouble in the first place.
She was wilful, maddening, quarrelsome and intolerant, but somehow these things were trifling: there was a passion inside her that burned like a candle in a lantern, and it lit up his life.
After the Battle of Midway it was clear that the Pacific war would be won by planes launched from ships. Both Japan and the United States began crash programs to build aircraft carriers as fast as possible. During 1943 and 1944, Japan produced seven of these huge, costly vessels. In the same period, the United States produced ninety.
All birds and men are sure to die but songs may live forever.
It was said that pilgrims should not spend too much time planning their journey, for they might learn of so many hazards that they would decide not to go.
Men were the only animals that slaughtered their own kind by the million, and turned the landscape into a waste of shell craters and barbed wire. Perhaps the human race would wipe itself out completely, and leave the world to the birds and trees, Walter thought apocalyptically. Perhaps that would be for the best.
She had believed that love was something she could bestow upon whomever she liked, and that her main responsibility was to choose cleverly.
You didn’t ask for a priest.” “Whether I’ve been good or bad, I don’t think God will be fooled by a last-minute change of heart.
When you’re about to be turned down, go for a postponement.
Don’t worry. We who are born poor have to use cunning to get what we want. Scruples are for the privileged.” She.
A person who breaks a promise diminishes herself. It’s like losing a finger. It’s worse than being paralyzed, which is merely physical. Someone whose promises are worthless has a disabled soul.
Lenin’s idea of relaxation was to sit down with a foreign-language dictionary for an hour or two.
It was unladylike even to know the name of your lawyer, let alone to understand your rights under the law. No wonder women were mercilessly exploited.
He wondered if he really was capable of it. Then he thought what a thrill it would be to create something from nothing; to see, one day in the future, a new church here where now there was nothing but rubble, and to say: I made this.
If you don’t take an interest, then what happens is your fault.
This was her destiny, and it was a fit and proper one. She was not unwilling, but she knew this was a fateful moment, and she had a sense of doors closing behind her and the path of her life being fixed irrevocably.
When you were trying to enforce law and order, it was difficult to explain that the rules did not actually apply to you personally.
If you want to change the world, then foreign relations is the field in which you can do the most good – or evil.