“The load that Soldiers carry is an important planning consideration. How much Soldiers carry, how far, and in what configuration are critical mission considerations requiring command emphasis and inspection. Historical experience and research show that Soldiers can carry 30 percent of their body weight and retain much of their agility, stamina, alertness, and mobility.” – Combined Arms Doctrine Directorate, U.S. Army Combined Arms Center, ADP 3-90, Offense and Defense
Month: January 2025
“Surveillance is a systematic collection of information. It should be continuous, and it involves active and passive activities.” – Combined Arms Doctrine Directorate, U.S. Army Combined Arms Center, ADP 3-90, Offense and Defense
“Bold decisions that are adequately informed give the best promise of success.” – Combined Arms Doctrine Directorate, U.S. Army Combined Arms Center, ADP 3-90, Offense and Defense
“If one does fail, there’s a touch of glory in having tried at all.” – Ovid: The Metamorphoses, trans. Horace Gregory
“Success during operations depends on a willingness to embrace risk as opportunity rather than treating it as something to avoid. The best COA [course of action] may be the one with the greatest risk.” – Combined Arms Doctrine Directorate, U.S. Army Combined Arms Center, ADP 3-90, Offense and Defense
“An idiot holds his bauble for a god, and keeps the oath which by that god he swears.” – William Shakespeare, Titus Andronicus 5.1
“The eagle suffers little birds to sing, and is not careful what they mean thereby, knowing that with the shadow of his wing he can at pleasure stint their melody.” – William Shakespeare, Titus Andronicus 4.4
“In a democracy it is the duty of every citizen to think.” – James Russell Lowell, The Atlantic Monthly
“A marked tendency to overstate successes has been a consistent feature of Russian intelligence and military BDA [Battle Damage Assessments] and planning cycles during the period leading up to and then during the 2022 invasion of Ukraine. This is an almost unavoidable consequence of the way that the Russian political system works, where reporting what seniors wish to hear, reinforcing their previous decisions and inflating successes, is an absolute prerequisite for promotion to higher rank.” – Justin Bronk, et al., “The Russian Air War and Ukrainian Requirements for Air Defense”
“Public sentiment is everything. With public sentiment, nothing can fail; without it, nothing can succeed. Consequently he who molds public sentiment goes deeper than he who enacts statutes or pronounces decisions. He makes statutes and decisions possible or impossible to be executed.” – Abraham Lincoln, 1858
“Sorrow concealed, like an oven stopp’d, doth burn the heart to cinders where it is.” – William Shakespeare, Titus Andronicus 2.4
“Because one’s right to retreat into his or her home without unreasonable government interference is a core principle of the fourth amendment (Kyllo v. United States, 533 U.S. 27, 31, 121 S. Ct. 2038, 150 L. Ed. 2d 94 (2001)), law enforcement officers generally may not enter, much less search, a person’s home without a warrant absent exigent circumstances.” – Justice Burke, Appellate Court of Illinois, Second District, The People v. Slavin, 964 N.E.2d 150 (2011)
“Amongst the acts done by permission of the law, for the advancement of public justice, may be reckoned those of the officer who in the execution of his office, either in a civil or criminal case, kills a person who assaults or resists him. The resistance will justify the officer in proceeding to the last extremity. So that in all cases, whether civil or criminal, where persons have a right to arrest and imprison, and using the proper means for that purpose, are resisted, in so doing they may repel force with force, and need not give back, and, if the party making resistance is unavoidably killed in the struggle, this homicide is justifiable.” – Justice Craig, Supreme Court of Illinois, Lynn v. People, 170 Ill. 527 (1897)
“To ask a novelist to talk about his novels is like asking somebody to cook about their dancing. All you get is a bad omelette and a worse tango.” – Jim Crace (interviewed by Adam Begley), “The Art of Fiction,” Paris Review
“Vocabulary is the Trojan horse that smuggles the lie. Facts don’t help. If you’re not a persuasive talker at a party, no one’s going to believe you, even if everything you say is true. But if you’re a persuasive liar then everyone is fooled.” – Jim Crace (interviewed by Adam Begley), “The Art of Fiction,” Paris Review
“There is nothing like a natural disaster to remind you of your powerlessness.” – Lyz, Men Yell at Me, October 2, 2024
“It easeth some, though none it ever cur’d, to think their dolour others have endur’d.” – William Shakespeare, The Rape of Lucrece
“Short time seems long in sorrow’s sharp sustaining. Though woe be heavy, yet it seldom sleeps; and they that watch see time how slow it creeps.” – William Shakespeare, The Rape of Lucrece
“Princes are the glass, the school, the book, where subjects’ eyes do learn, do read, do look.” – William Shakespeare, The Rape of Lucrece
“Who buys a minute’s mirth to wail a week? Or sells eternity to get a toy? For one sweet grape who will the vine destroy?” – William Shakespeare, The Rape of Lucrece
“Leaden slumber with life’s strength doth fight; and every one to rest themselves betake, save thieves, and cares, and troubled minds, that wake.” – William Shakespeare, The Rape of Lucrece
“By our ears our hearts oft tainted be.” – William Shakespeare, The Rape of Lucrece
“Quite often you want to tell somebody your dream, your nightmare. Well, nobody wants to hear about someone else’s dream, good or bad; nobody wants to walk around with it. The writer is always tricking the reader into listening to the dream.” – Joan Didion (interviewed by Linda Kuehl), “The Art of Fiction,” Paris Review
“Of Perseus’ company, Melaneus was killed, and Dorylas, millionaire of Nasamonia, no one as rich as he in land or spices, heaped up in mountains over his estates. Thrust from one side, a spear pierced through his groin—a deadly spot. When Halcyoneus, who threw the spear, heard Dorylas sigh and saw his eyes roll up, he said, ‘Here where you lie are all the lands you own.’” – Ovid: The Metamorphoses, trans. Horace Gregory
“The one irredeemable error of a supply program is not too much, but too little.” – “Report of War Department Procurement Review Board” (quoted in Robert W. Coakley and Richard M. Leighton, Global Logistics and Strategy: 1943-1945)
“Now this ill-wresting world is grown so bad, mad slanderers by mad ears believed be.” – William Shakespeare, “Sonnet CXL”
“My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun; coral is far more red than her lips’ red; if snow be white, why then her breast are dun; if hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head. I have seen roses damask’d, red and white, but no such roses see I in her cheeks; and in some perfumes there is more delight than in the breath that from my mistress reeks. I love to hear her speak,—yet well I know that music hath a far more pleasing sound; I grant I never saw a goddess go,—my mistress when she walks, treads on the ground; and yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare as any she belied with false compare.” – William Shakespeare, “Sonnet CXXX”
“Those lines that I before have writ, do lie; even those that said I could not love you dearer; yet then my judgment knew no reason why my most full flame should afterwards burn clearer. But reckoning time, whose million’d accidents creep in ‘twixt vows, and change decrees of kings, tan sacred beauty, blunt the sharp’st intents, divert strong minds to the course of altering things; alas! why, fearing Time’s tyranny, might I not then say, ‘Now I love you best,’ when I was certain o’er incertainty, crowning the present, doubting of the rest? Love is a babe; then might I not say so, to give full growth to that which still doth grow?” – William Shakespeare, “Sonnet CV”