Thomas E. Ricks Quotes

Other wartime leaders would do well to imitate his inquisitive approach. They should not look for consensus, and instead should examine differences between advisors, asking them for the reasons for their different views.

Ernest Hemingway, also in Spain at the time, provides an illuminating contrast to Orwell. He was as politically naive as Orwell was observant, in part because his macho posing got in the way of seeing accurately.

Jefferson was notably ambivalent about the French philosopher. “In the science of government Montesquieu’s spirit of laws is generally recommended. It contains indeed a great number of political truths; but almost an equal number of political heresies: so that the reader must be constantly on his guard.

It is a cliché, and a bad one, that generals try to “fight the last war” – that is, do what worked the last time out. That does not give them enough credit. Rather they tend to fight the war they would like to fight or the one they expected to fight. But neither of those responses is usually sufficient. The foremost task of a general is to understand the nature of the war he or she faces – which often turns out to be a third way, neither the one preferred nor the one expected.

But as far as I can tell, there does not exist a study of what our first four presidents learned, where they learned it, who they learned it from, and what they did with that knowledge. That is what I endeavor to explore in this work.

Churchill, sensitive to class considerations in his conduct of the war, instructed his generals and admirals to be careful in how they governed the armed forces. Early on, he warned the navy to be “particularly careful that class prejudice does not enter into these decisions” about selection of cadets for officer training at the Royal Naval College in Dartmouth, England. “Unless some better reasons are given to me,” he vowed, he would investigate the matter. The navy resisted this direction, so he did as promised and intervened directly. He even met with some of the candidates who had scored well on entrance examinations but had still been rejected. “I have seen the three candidates,” he informed the navy’s top officers. “It is quite true that A has a slightly cockney accent, and that the other two are the sons of a chief petty officer and an engineer in the merchant service. But the whole intention of competitive examination is to open the service to ability, irrespective of class or fortune.” Concluding that an injustice had been done, he ordered that the three be admitted to officer training. This was a lot of effort for someone trying to run a war and stave off invasion.

England is the most class-ridden country under the sun,” Orwell charged in “The Lion and the Unicorn.” “It is a land of snobbery and privilege, ruled largely by the old and silly.” Yet

As the People are the Fountain of Power and Authority, the original Seat of Majesty, the Authors of Laws, and the Creators of Officers to execute them; if they shall find the Power they have conferred abused by their Trustees, their Majesty violated by Tyranny or by Usurpation, their Authority prostituted to support Violence or screen Corruption, the Laws grown pernicious through Accidents unforeseen or unavoidable, or rendered ineffectual through the Infidelity and Corruption of the Executors of them; then it is their Right, and what is their Right is their Duty, to resume that delegated Power, and call their Trustees to an Account; to resist the Usurpation, and extirpate the Tyranny; to restore their sullied Majesty and prostituted Authority; to suspend, alter, or abrogate those Laws, and punish their unfaithful and corrupt Officers. Nor is it the Duty only of the united Body; but every Member of it ought, according to his respective Rank, Power, and Weight in the Community, to concur in advancing and supporting those glorious Designs.

Essentially these books consist of asking the reader to forget about the forest of Churchill’s life and instead focus on a few trees that a given writer believes deserve more attention

We do not call ourselves ‘Native American,’ because our blood and people were here long before this land was called the Americas. We are older than America can ever be and do not know the borders.

How long shall thy Madness outbrave our justice?

Adams was paying attention to such thinking. He would later note that this was the sermon that made Mayhew’s reputation.

Work diligently to discern the facts of the matter, and then use your principles to respond.

And what voices! A sort of over-fedness, a fatuous self-confidence, a constant bah-bahing of laughter about nothing, above all a sort of heaviness & richness combined with a fundamental ill-will — people who, one instinctively feels, without even being able to see them, are the enemies of anything intelligent or sensitive or beautiful.

relatively powerless — the front-line American soldier doing his best in a difficult situation, the Iraqi civilian trying to care for a family amid chaos and violence. They are the people who pay every day with blood and tears for the failures of high officials and powerful institutions. The run-up to the war is particularly significant because it also laid the shaky foundation for the derelict occupation that followed, and that constitutes the