Quotes from John Lewis Gaddis

If only Americans "could have their toys taken away from them, be spanked, educated and made to grow up, it might be worthwhile to act as a guardian for their foreign interests in the meantime. But when one can do none of these things?" So

Their very independence from Great Britain resulted, as Thomas Paine had predicted it would in 1776, from the implausibility that "a Continent [could] be perpetually governed by an island."12

y Tolstói están, por tanto, más cerca de lo que parece y nosotros tenemos la suerte de asistir a sus seminarios siempre que queramos.

ejército recuerda a la del agua», explica Sun Tzu. Si atacas donde tu enemigo menos lo espera, es decir, «si evitas su fuerza y atacas su punto débil, entonces, como le ocurre al agua, nada se te opondrá».

WHAT IF Stalin himself was the problem, though, and communism might be salvaged with different leadership? The men who sought to succeed him all believed the diagnosis to be accurate and the prescription to be appropriate. Each of them set out to liberate Marxism-Leninism from the legacy of Stalinism. They found, though, that the two were inextricably intertwined: that to try to separate one from another risked killing both.

Rodearán las ciénagas, no las atravesarán con dificultad.

The United States and the Soviet Union are different. . . . America's new president, Richard Nixon, is a longtime rightist, a leader of the anti-communists there. I like to deal with rightists. They say what they really think—not like the leftists, who say one thing and mean another.72

la simplicidad coexiste con la complejidad y puede guiarnos con éxito con ella.

If one is fed, housed, and healthy, then debts, pride, conscience, standards, dignity, and what you will, will have to be laughed off....

Sun Tzu deja suficientes vías libres para contentar al zorro y mantiene, a la vez, el propósito y la determinación del erizo.

For without some sense of the past the future can be only loneliness: amnesia is a solitary affliction.

NON SUFFICIT ORBIS," a medal struck for Philip proclaimed in 1583, after he'd taken over Portugal and its overseas colonies: "The World Is Not Enough.

I got up alone the next morning in the darkness, and kissed my children good-by as they lay asleep in their beds.... [F]or the first time there was brought home to me a tiny part of that vast human misery summed up under the term of war-time separations. During the next four years, I was destined to see my children only on rare and brief occasions; and it was a loss which no victories, no reparations, no acquisitions of power could ever make good.

Despite having built his own movement with little help from Moscow, the new Chinese leader was a dedicated Marxist-Leninist who was more than ready to defer to Stalin as the head of the international communist movement. The new China, he announced in June, 1949, must ally "with the Soviet Union, . . . and with the proletariat and broad masses of the people in all other countries, and form an international united front. . . . We must lean to one side."53

So Kennan came back to America "glowing inwardly at everything which . . . is sound and right and refreshing, and wincing at everything which offends a taste rendered more discriminate than the average by its ability to draw comparisons." His sensitivity was that of a musical instrument, vibrating to the "most minute phenomena

It's worth remembering also that Lincoln—and Shakespeare—had a lifetime to become who they were. Young people today don't, because society so sharply segregates general education, professional training, ascent within an organization, responsibility for it, and then retirement.

Freedom hath been hunted round the globe. Asia, and Africa, have long expelled her. Europe regards her like a stranger, and England hath given her warning to depart. O! receive the fugitive, and prepare in time an asylum for mankind.

Tolstói rivaliza con él, en mi opinión, a la hora de detectar lo relevante y lo significativo donde, a primera vista, parece que no está.

abrirnos a la posibilidad de que, al menos en algunos aspectos, fueron más sabios que nosotros».[55]

I can't take communism nor can you, but to cross this bridge I would hold hands with the Devil.

es la diferencia, fundamental en el campo de la estrategia, entre respetar las limitaciones y negar su existencia.

It's here, I think, that science, history, and art have something in common: they all depend on metaphor, on the recognition of patterns, on the realization that something is like something else.

alinear aspiraciones y capacidades. Ambas

Mientras nuestros rivales tratan de alcanzar la fortaleza viril desde la misma cuna mediante la más dura de las disciplinas, en Atenas vivimos exactamente como deseamos vivir, y estamos igualmente dispuestos a enfrentar cualquier peligro legítimo.»