Quotes by Authors - Page 18

There’s nothing like a military man, even out of uniform.
Sara Sheridan
Complex operations, in which agencies assume complementary roles and operate in close proximity-often with similar missions but conflicting mandates-accentuate these tensions. The tensions are evident in the processes of analyzing complex environments, planning for complex interventions, and implementing complex operations. Many reports and analyses forecast that these complex operations are precisely those that will demand our attention most in the indefinite future.As essayist Barton and O'Connell note, our intelligence and understanding of the root cause of conflict, multiplicity of motivations and grievances, and disposition of actors is often inadequate. Moreover, the problems that complex operations are intended and implemented to address are convoluted, and often inscrutable. They exhibit many if not all the characteristics of "wicked problems," as enumerated by Rittel and Webber in 1973: they defy definitive formulations; any proposed solution or intervention causes the problem to mutate, so there is no second chance at a solution; every situation is unique; each wicked problem can be considered a symptom of another problem. As a result, policy objectives are often compound and ambiguous. The requirements of stability, for example, in Afghanistan today, may conflict with the requirements for democratic governance. Efforts to establish an equitable social contract may well exacerbate inter-communal tensions that can lead to violence. The rule of law, as we understand it, may displace indigenous conflict management and stabilization systems. The law of unintended consequences may indeed be the only law of the land. The complexity of the challenges we face in the current global environment would suggest the obvious benefit of joint analysis - bringing to bear on any given problem the analytic tools of military, diplomatic and development analysts. Instead, efforts to analyze jointly are most often an afterthought, initiated long after a problem has escalated to a level of urgency that negates much of the utility of deliberate planning.
Michael Miklaucic
I’ll give you one chance to run,but may your shoulder always whisper in your ear…“It’s best to watch out for men, like me.
Ryan Goodrich
Who supports the troops? The troops support the troops.
Clint Van Winkle
Mounting tensions in Eastern Europe send shivers down the spine. Barely a quarter of a century after the end of the Cold War we seem to be sliding inexorably towards another.
Alex Morritt
The young girl giggled again and Jake shook his head in amazement. Not only was the U.S. dark operative cooking pancakes, but it seemed he'd won over the timid teenager in no time flat."I've been entertaining this pretty girl with my vast repertoire of daring and heroic adventures from around the globe."Jake snorted as he opened the refrigerator and pulled out the container of orange juice. "You sound like Blackbeard the pirate. Don't believe a word he says, Alyssa. He's actually Insurance salesman and lies like a rug.""An Insurance salesman?" She narrowed her eyes at Carter as he flipped three pancackes off the electric griddle sitting on the island and onto a plate for her. "I knew you were conning me," she chastised, then rolled her eyes toward Jake. "He said he was a government spy, like James Bond."After filling a glass, Jake smirked at his friend who shrugged his shoulders and gave the girl a sad puppy-dog expression. "Who are you going to believe, me or Jake from State Farm?
Samantha A. Cole
War is a soul-shattering experience for the innocent.
Suzy Kassem
I fought to stay awake and keep the car on the road. And I thought back to texts I had read from the British Army in India, during the Raj, at the height of their empire. Young subalterns trapped in junior ranks had their own mess. They would dine together in splendid dress uniforms and talk about their chances of promotion. But they had none, unless a superior officer died. Dead men's shoes was the rule. So they would raise their crystal glasses of fine French wine and toast "bloody wars and dread diseases" because a casualty further up the chain of command was their only way to get ahead. Brutal, but that's how it's always been, in the military.
Lee Child
Only a foolish woman would allow her man to earn his living as a moving target.
David H. Hackworth
Instead of finishing the sentence she slid a business card across the counter. It listed her contact information for every social media site I'd heard of, and several that were still in beta. Except for Google Plus. Even Internet-addicted fairies have standards.
Alex Shvartsman
Great brands listen, learn and then leverage
Bernard Kelvin Clive
Photobomb me at your own risk!
Ken Poirot
I love social media. I love the connectivity it provides, the creativity it allows, and the breathtaking wealth of information we all have at our fingertips because of it.
Galit Breen
In a social media world, the danger is being overexposed and when something is overexposed it is no longer interesting...if ever it was.
Donna Lynn Hope
Presidential campaign observer Teddy White on the second Kennedy-Nixon debate in which the candidates spoke from separate television studios: "It was as if, separated by comments from his adversary, Richard Nixon was more at ease and could speak directly to the nation that lay between them.
David Pietrusza
So many of the things I invented I honestly did for fun, out of some perverse game of whether or not they’d work, whether people would use them. I mean, it was like setting up a guillotine in the public square. You don’t expect a thousand people to line up to put their heads in it
Dave Eggers
Tech isn’t morally good or bad until it’s wielded by the corporations that fashion it for mass consumption. Apps and platforms can be designed to promote rich social connections; or, like cigarettes, they can be designed to addict. Today, unfortunately, many tech developments do promote addiction.
Adam Alter
We are continuously challenged to discover new works of culture—and, in the process, we don’t allow any one of them to assume a weight in our minds.
Alain de Botton
And I will raise up for them a plant of renown, and they shall be no more consumed with hunger in the land, neither bear the shame of the heathen any more.
Anonymous
Recovering is a process of coming to experience a sense of self. More precisely, it is a process of learning to sense one's self, to attune to one's subjective physical, psychic, and social self- experience. These woman's core sense of shame and their difficulty tolerating painful emotions had led them to avoid turning their attention inward to their internal sense of things. In recovering, they "came to their senses" and learned to trust their sensed experience, in particular their sense of "enoughness"".
Sheila M. Reindl
Do not ever get agitated by provoking thoughts and actions. Always keep your calm. This will shame the alien.
Lailah Gifty Akita
There is no disgrace in being knocked down, there is only shame in not getting back up; never quit!
Ken Poirot
Hypercritical, Shaming ParentsHypercritical and shaming parents send the same message to their children as perfectionistic parents do - that they are never good enough. Parents often deliberately shame their children into minding them without realizing the disruptive impact shame can have on a child's sense of self. Statements such as "You should be ashamed of yourself" or "Shame on you" are obvious examples. Yet these types of overtly shaming statements are actually easier for the child to defend against than are more subtle forms of shaming, such as contempt, humiliation, and public shaming.There are many ways that parents shame their children. These include belittling, blaming, contempt, humiliation, and disabling expectations.-BELITTLING. Comments such as "You're too old to want to be held" or "You're just a cry-baby" are horribly humiliating to a child. When a parent makes a negative comparison between his or her child and another, such as "Why can't you act like Jenny? See how she sits quietly while her mother is talking," it is not only humiliating but teaches a child to always compare himself or herself with peers and find himself or herself deficient by comparison.-BLAMING. When a child makes a mistake, such as breaking a vase while rough-housing, he or she needs to take responsibility. But many parents go way beyond teaching a lesson by blaming and berating the child: "You stupid idiot! Do you think money grows on trees? I don't have money to buy new vases!" The only thing this accomplishes is shaming the child to such an extent that he or she cannot find a way to walk away from the situation with his or her head held high.-CONTEMPT. Expressions of disgust or contempt communicate absolute rejection. The look of contempt (often a sneer or a raised upper lip), especially from someone who is significant to a child, can make him or her feel disgusting or offensive. When I was a child, my mother had an extremely negative attitude toward me. Much of the time she either looked at me with the kind of expectant expression that said, "What are you up to now?" or with a look of disapproval or disgust over what I had already done. These looks were extremely shaming to me, causing me to feel that there was something terribly wrong with me.-HUMILIATION. There are many ways a parent can humiliate a child, such as making him or her wear clothes that have become dirty. But as Gershen Kaufman stated in his book Shame: The Power of Caring, "There is no more humiliating experience than to have another person who is clearly the stronger and more powerful take advantage of that power and give us a beating." I can personally attest to this. In addition to shaming me with her contemptuous looks, my mother often punished me by hitting me with the branch of a tree, and she often did this outside, in front of the neighbors. The humiliation I felt was like a deep wound to my soul.-DISABLING EXPECTATIONS. Parents who have an inordinate need to have their child excel at a particular activity or skill are likely to behave in ways that pressure the child to do more and more. According to Kaufman, when a child becomes aware of the real possibility of failing to meet parental expectations, he or she often experiences a binding self-consciousness. This self-consciousness - the painful watching of oneself - is very disabling. When something is expected of us in this way, attaining the goal is made harder, if not impossible.Yet another way that parents induce shame in their children is by communicating to them that they are a disappointment to them. Such messages as "I can't believe you could do such a thing" or "I am deeply disappointed in you" accompanied by a disapproving tone of voice and facial expression can crush a child's spirit.
Beverly Engel
When you think of the amount of turnover and profit made by most companies in this country - and especially the big chains, it's a shame that they pay their employees minimum wage and no more than that. What that really says is: 'We're paying you minimum wage, because we're not allowed to pay you any less.
Christina Engela
Oh, tell me, who first declared, who first proclaimed that man only does nasty things because he does not know his own real interests; and that if he were enlightened, if his eyes were opened to his real normal interests, man would at once cease to do nasty things, would at once become good and noble because, being enlightened and understanding his real advantage, he would see his own advantage in the good and nothing else… . Oh, the babe! Oh, the pure, innocent child!
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
There is no shame in feeling bad about having to kill. The shame comes when you no longer care.
Robyn Wideman
It's shame that gets us killed. Shame is the anchor, the heaviest burden to carry from the battlefield. Fortunately shame was an affliction I'd never suffered from.
Mark Lawrence
I wanted to give you a victory. But by their essential nature triumphs can’t be given.
Lois McMaster Bujold
If the gift of God is for personal use and gain, God would have used it personally
Ernest Agyemang Yeboah
The Dark Powers have to give before they can take.
Stephen King
The energy that mosquitoes need to lay eggs is neither the same as that which elephants need to bring forth nor that which a woman needs to push, yet they all need a certain amount of energy vital for them to produce something! Go help somebody for God’s sake; your little is vital! Your little will inspire! Your little will bring smiles! Go help somebody now!
Ernest Agyemang Yeboah
...if I try to make only enough money for my family' immediate needs, it may violate Scripture. ...Even though earning just enough to meet the needs of my family may seem nonmaterialistic, it's actually selfish when I could earn enough to care for others as well.
Randy Alcorn
It's not what you have on the outside that glitters in light, it's what you have on the inside that shines in the dark.
Anthony Liccione
The algorithms that orchestrate our ads are starting to orchestrate our lives.
Eli Pariser
Grey hoped the Church would yet be able to save England from the fate of Tyre or Carthage, the great trading nations
Thomas Hughes
If I were a member of the class that rules, I would post men in all the neighborhoods of the nation, not to spy upon or club rebellious workers, not to break strikes or disrupt unions, but to ferret out those who no longer respond to the system in which they live. I would make it known that the real danger does not stem from those who seek to grab their share of wealth through force, or from those who try to defend their property through violence, for both of these groups, by their affirmative acts, support the values of the system in which they live. The millions that I would fear are those who do not dream of the prizes that the nation holds forth, for it is in them, though they may not know it, that a revolution has taken place and is biding its time to translate itself into a new and strange way of life.
Richard Wright
Bread is a second cause; the LORD Himself is the first source of our sustenance. He can work without the second cause as well as with it; and we must not tie Him down to one mode of operation. Let us not be too eager after the visible, but let us look to the invisible God.
Charles Haddon Spurgeon
I got that money on my mind but I ain't blind. I see that if I want it, I have to grind.
Jonathan Anthony Burkett
I liked James and James liked me and we both knew it and if you think about it, that's like a miracle. A real miracle. Everyone says that babies are miracles, and don't get me wrong, I love cute little pudgy babies, but if you think about it, me having a baby right now would not be a miracle. At all. But finding someone that gets me? That's the real work. That's where the miracles are.
Robin Benway
Miracles are like murders. After the first one, each becomes easier than the last for, with each success, the miracle-worker's certainty in himself becomes stronger.
Karen Maitland
When we would say 'No way,' he would say, 'My way.' Then the ones who doubted would scramble to salvage the blessing. And the one who gave it would savor the surprise.
Max Lucado
A gospel that is focused on miracle is creating fraudulent act.
Sunday Adelaja
You carry the message you've been seeking, but realization of it is found in healthy retrospection, not among the wilderness of chaotic noise.
T.F. Hodge
A motorcycle is a vehicle of change, after all. It puts the wheels beneath a midlife crisis, or a coming-of-age saga, or even just the discovery of something new, something you didn't realize was there. It provides the means to cross over, to transition, or to revitalize; motorcycles are self-discovery's favorite vehicle.
Lily Brooks-Dalton
Who in the world am I? Ah, that's the great puzzle.
Lewis Carroll
Do you like a good ghost story?”-Jonah
Dana Michelle Burnett
The morning heat had already soaked through the walls, rising up from the floor like a ghost of summers past.
Erik Tomblin
In addition to unfinished business, some ghosts haunt so that they will be remembered.
Donna Lynn Hope
Everybody in my family believed in ghosts, and my grandma said it wasn't just bad people who turned into them, it was bad deeds too.
Anna North
Most people would probably call me a ghost. I am, after all, dead. But I don't think of myself that way. It wasn't so long ago that I was alive, you see. I was only eighteen. I had my whole life in front of me. Now I suppose you could say I have all of eternity before me. I'm not sure exactly what that means yet. I'm told everything's going to be fine. But I have to wonder what I would have done with my life, who I might have been. That's what saddens me most about dying--that I'll never know.
Christopher Pike
I am not dead. Death does not exist. I am alive! That is the purpose of this tale, to let everyone know that they do go on and that they don't need to be afraid, as I was afraid. Yet I also have a selfish reason for wanting my story told. I was young when I died. I didn't have a chance to make my mark in the world. I didn't do anything unique, nothing that will change the course of history. But I wasn't a bad girl. I don't want to be forgotten. I want people to remember me.
Christopher Pike
It's Halloween,The night we all play,Trick or treat,We won't go away.Be we ghoul or goblin, ghost,We'll knock on your door,To see who scares you the most.But cringe not in fear,Or cry out in pain,Cause it's only a game,Oh, what a shame.But don't despair,In the cold night air,Because we'll be back,And then you'll be scared!But not just one,Or even two.And so we bid you,A sweet adieu.
Anthony T.Hincks
All of us can lie but it is not a must that we should lie.
Auliq-Ice
The real truth lies below the surface.
Bohdi Sanders
Shirtless, they’d stretch out in the long grass and take the healing brunt of a noontime sun that gave no clue of the thunderheads it already, in secret, had begun to breed.
Paul Russell
The sun beasts the shit out of a dirty road called Raton Pass where the closest thing to a pair of matching earring is a guy named Carl who punches you in the head with his fist.
Amelia Gray
He threw his hands to his eyes and hissed. Like the hiss of incinerating ashes. "What is this bright, orange orb in the sky that mocks me with its warmth?
Jesikah Sundin
This morning, the sun endures past dawn. I realise that it is August: the summer's last stand.
Sara Baume
It is better to have little and be right than to have much and be wrong.
Lailah Gifty Akita
Lord lead us to the right places.
Lailah Gifty Akita