H. W. Brands Quotes
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Indeed, the key to all diplomacy was knowing when they were serious about their threats and when they were posturing. Nations were like individuals, requiring cultivation and the paying of respect.
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From all over the planet they came…. They came in companies and alone, with money and without, knowing and naïve. They tore themselves from warm hearths and good homes, promising to return; they fled from cold hearts and bad debts, never to return. They were farmers and merchants and sailors and slaves and abolitionists and soldiers of fortune and ladies of the night. They jumped bail to start their journey, and jumped ship at journey’s end. They were the pillars of their communities, and their communities’ dregs…
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Abilene possessed greater vision, perhaps because it possessed little else.
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Clemens’s loss was literature’s gain. Forced to earn his daily bread once more, he turned to mining in the Mother Lode country. He found little gold, but gathered impressions and experiences. He met Bret Harte, and guessed that if Harte could make money from stories about the gold country, so could he. He proved himself right with a tale about a jumping-frog contest in Calaveras County, which won him a wide and enthusiastic national readership.
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It was a typical point, made in typical style, mixing pride and humility.
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In imperial relationships, getting out proves much more complicated than getting in.
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Shiloh showed him what he could ask of his men, and indeed what he MUST ask of them.
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The very lack of explicit pressure was itself a compelling force, for it created a world in which the expectation of success was simply there, a fact of life as basic as breakfast.
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Both sides had more confidence in their opponents weaknesses than their own strength.
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The politics of the possible was being replaced by the politics of purity.
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I believe my mother was smart enough to know that in the night, you are willing to tell all. If she waited until the next day, she knew she'd get one-syllable answers.
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Such was the code: Strive for victory, but never seem to be self-involved.