Every country in the world had a bureaucracy, whose entire purpose was to delay important things from happening. - Tom Clancy

Of all human lamentations, without doubt, the most common is if only I had known. But we can't know, and so days of death and fire so often begin no differently than those of love and warmth.

"One presidential advisor to another: "If the world made sense, we'd all have to find honest work.

Each of a hundred ships, built by the same men at the same yard to the same plans, will have her own special characteristics — most of them bad, really, but after her crew becomes accustomed to them they are spoken of affectionately, particularly in retrospect.