Sublime
An inspiration engine for ideas
A war doesn’t merely kill off a few thousand or a few hundred thousand young men. It kills off something in a people that can never be brought back.
John McGahern • Stoner
General George C. Marshall—essentially
Ryan Holiday • Ego Is the Enemy
In this effort, the literary classics will ultimately be firmer and more useful guides than any social science methodology for those who have not had a personal experience with war and death. - Robert Kaplan
In war, men lose what makes them great. Their creativity. Their wisdom. Their joy. All that’s left is their utility. War is not monstrous for making corpses of men so much as it is for making machines of them. And woe to those who have no use in war except to feed the machines.
Pierce Brown • Morning Star (Red Rising Series Book 3)

Like terrorists, those combating terrorism should also think more like theater producers and less like army generals. Above all, if we want to combat terrorism effectively, we must realize that nothing the terrorists do can defeat us. We are the only ones who can defeat ourselves, if we overreact in a misguided way to their provocations. Terrorists
... See moreYuval Noah Harari • 21 Lessons for the 21st Century

War presents itself as necessary for self-protection, when in fact it is necessary for self-identification.
James P. Carse • Finite and Infinite Games
“LeMay says the only way a general can win a modern war is not fight one. Our whole raison d’être was deterrent force. When you don’t deter them any longer, you lose.