Jack looked out the window as they passed the Mormon temple, just outside the beltway near Connecticut Avenue. A decidedly odd-looking building, it had grandeur with its marble columns and gilt spires. The beliefs represented by that impressive structure seemed curious to Ryan, a lifelong Catholic, but the people who held them were honest and hardworking, and fiercely loyal to their country, because they believed in what America stood for.
And so began something that had not quite begun and would not soon end, with many people in many places moving off in directions and on missions which they all mistakenly thought they understood. That was just as well. The future was too fearful for contemplation, and beyond the expected, illusory finish lines were things fated by the decisions made this morning – and, once decided, best unseen.
A trend was a trend only because people thought it so. And in thinking it so, they made it so.
Tradition is important,” Evans said. “For a soldier, tradition is often the reason one carries on when there are so many reasons not to. It’s more than just yourself, more than just your mates – but it’s not just something for soldiers, is it? It is true – or should be true – of any professional community.
A wise man knows his limitations.’ And a bold one seizes opportunities.
One of the compensations for wearing a uniform and earning less money than an equally talented man can make in the real world is the off chance of being killed.
A lively discussion is usually helpful, because the hottest fire makes the hardest steel.
If you give people a firm opinion, you run the risk of being wrong. Guess what? People remember when you’re wrong a lot more often than when you’re right. So the tendency is to include all the possibilities. It’s intellectually honest, even.
At this table, a loud voice was just a man venting his stress. A quiet one was far more dangerous.
The only people Ryan needed to impress were those who knew him; he cared little for the rest.
People in the intelligence community are not made to believe in coincidences.
Courage was not something one picked out of the air. It was something like a bank account. You could withdraw only so much before it was necessary to stop, to take the time to make new deposits.
Politicians are more concerned with “issues” than “principles,” but talked as though the two nouns had the same meaning.
It’s a leadership function. They taught me that at Quantico. The troops have to see you doing the job. They have to know you’re there for them.” And I have to be sure that it’s all real, that I actually am the President.
Diplomacy “was like a card game. The difference was that you never really knew the value of the cards in your own hand.
The media “could not be policed from without and had to be policed from within.
All history is really nothing more than the application of ideology to the past.
The Good of the People was a laudable enough goal, but in denying a man’s soul, an enduring part of his being, Marxism stripped away the foundation of human dignity and individual value.
War is the ultimate criminal act, an armed robbery writ large. And it’s always about greed. It’s always a nation that wants something another nation has. And you defeat that nation by recognizing what it wants and denying it to them.
Ladies and gentlemen, it is not the job of government to be the national nanny. The average citizen can look after his or her own needs without assistance from somebody who works here in Washington.