Sublime
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At Chattanooga in 1863, George Thomas refused Grant’s order to attack until he was resupplied with draft horses to pull his artillery. Grant was furious, but Thomas was right and, by refusing to attack prematurely, he probably saved Grant’s career. Ridgway and Taylor were also correct, and may well have saved Ike from certain disaster.f
Jean Edward Smith • Eisenhower in War and Peace
In essence, it was an argument about a trilemma. Republicanism, white supremacy, and overseas expansion—the country could have at most two. In the past, republicanism and white supremacy had been jointly maintained by carefully shaping the country’s borders. But absorbing populous nonwhite colonies would wreck all that.
Daniel Immerwahr • How to Hide an Empire
... See moreRussell was for twenty-six years either Chairman or dominant member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, which oversaw the battle readiness of the nation’s far-flung legions and armadas. As senators of Rome had insisted that, regardless of the cost, the legions must be kept at full complement because the peace and stability of the known world—th
myrmidons
Jean Edward Smith • Eisenhower in War and Peace
“There are lots of good peacetime CEOs and lots of good wartime CEOs, but almost no CEOs that can function in both peacetime and in wartime. You’re a peacetime/wartime CEO.”
Ben Horowitz • The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers
But “anti-Fascism” or “anti-Communism” is not enough. Nor is even the defense of freedom. What has been gained may not be maintained, against invasion without and erosion within, if we are content to stand still. The peoples who are partially free as a result of what their forebears achieved in the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries
... See moreB.H. Liddell Hart • Why Don't We Learn from History?
a warrior is known not just by muscle and valor, but by scars.
David Von Drehle • The Book of Charlie: Wisdom from the Remarkable American Life of a 109-Year-Old Man
hortatory