You just had to apply judgment to your action, and such judgment came with experience — but experience often came from bad decisions. - 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.

The KGB still killed people, the KGB would not execute its last prisoner until the final days of its existence in 1991, but by the eighties a termination required paperwork and signatures and a post-action review.

The only real difference between a wise man and a fool, Moore knew, was that the wise man tended to make more serious mistakes — and only because no one trusted a fool with really crucial decisions; only the wise had the opportunity to lose battles, or nations.