NotitiesThe Profession
Stwven Pressfield
Het document bespreekt het boek "The Profession" van Steven Pressfield, dat zich richt op moderne oorlogsvoering en de uitdagingen van leiderschap. Het bevat citaten die verschillende thema's behandelen, zoals corruptie, ambitie en de dynamiek van macht in de wereld. Het benadrukt ook de innerlijke strijd van schrijvers en de rol van nobodies in het creëren van verandering.
This is the bitch of modern warfare. Every technological breakthrough spawns its dedicated countermeasure, with each generation getting cheaper and more accessible. (Page 14)
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From our rise south of the highway, we can see Dragonfly drones in swarms over the city. Every punk-ass gang and militia is flying these little fuckers, some the size of kites, others no bigger than pie plates. (Page 15)
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You have to lead men sometimes. As unit commander, you have to put words to the bonds of love they feel but may be too embarrassed to speak of—and to the secret aspirations of their hearts, which are invariably selfless and noble. More important, you have to take those actions yourself, first and alone, that they themselves know they should take, but they just haven’t figured it out yet. (Page 29)
Tags: Geel
They say it’s tribes and religion in Baghdad, and that’s true. But in the end a militia is nothing but a well-armed gang. It may take to the streets in God’s name, but it plays by the rules of gangland. (Page 30)
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What Westerners call corruption is just life in 75 percent of the world. (Page 31)
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In both places you talked about the weather or family for fifteen minutes before you brought up anything of substance. To rush things was bad manners. (Page 33)
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A.D. has been a finalist twice for Pulitzers. Along with Ariel Caplan of Agence France-Presse (who is A.D.’ s best friend), she is one of the half-dozen most celebrated female journalists in the world, though you’d never know it to hear her talk. A.D. is tortured and insecure. That’s one of the things that first attracted me to her. For years when I was with her, I tried to save her—to take away her self-torment, or at least ease the pain it caused her. Finally I realized that she didn’t want to lose it. She needed it. It was the engine of her artist’s soul. I never knew a writer before I met A.D. Any time you have a writer, you have self-torture. Why? Because every one of them wants to be Shakespeare. And every American wants to write the Great American Novel. I don’t care how many awards they get for journalism or movie-writing, they all want to be Hemingway. The women more than anybody. A.D. has four novels she’s working on. I know them all by heart. She hasn’t finished one. (Page 48)
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She launches into a rant about when corporations and government become one, it’s called fascism. I say I have no problem with that if it keeps down the price of gas. (Page 51)
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Patience is the prime virtue of the warrior. (Page 99)
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In the West we have hope; that’s our drug of choice. (Page 109)
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I walked around that whole day, going over in my mind all the times growing up when I had felt crazy and wrong and different, in a bad way, from everyone else. I realized that they were all moments of ambition—and that what had made me disown my true feelings was that I had internalized this upper-class inhibition against manifest aspiration, against wanting anything in too unseemly a manner, or making a spectacle of myself by striving and failing.” (Page 110)
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I feel my secret self come forward. (Page 173)
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Jingly-jangly is SAS slang for running a mission in hajji-flage, meaning dressing up like the natives. (Page 200)
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The heroin trade was regarded as God’s work because the poppy was destroying the infidel. (Page 201)
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“The Russians love that shit. They want countries on their borders to be as weak and as fucked up as possible, so they can pull the strings. (Page 201)
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The Iranians and Syrians won’t make a move, I know, even though they’ve got plenty of armor and more than enough incentive. The Eastern mind is so tribal, so inured to systems of patronage and blood influence, that it can’t conceive that a venture of this scale could be mounted without the full knowledge and approval of the United States at the highest level. (Page 222)
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“Evening” in Beltway-speak means business. Evening is when things get done. The meetings and conferences that take place during working hours, I am learning fast, are only for exercise. It’s not till after hours that deals are actually struck. (Page 231)
Tags: Geel
It’s the nobodies, I come to understand, who get things done. Change happens at the nobody level. The nobodies craft the memos and prepare the policy papers. It is the nobodies who stuff a page of notes into a senator’s hand, which he then reads cold for the cameras as if he had penned every syllable himself. (Page 231)
Tags: Geel