“‘A king is a creature of the moment,’ he went on. ‘He’s constantly under threat, from rebels within his own kingdom and from neighboring monarchs. He needs allies.’” ––The Pillars of the Earth, by Ken Follett, loc. 7395 “I liken the intelligence-policy dialogue as a room with two doors, one labeled intelligence, the other […]
“A sense of doom swamped Aliena. This was to be their fate, then: Richard would avenge Father, and she would take care of Richard. For her it would be a mission of revenge, for if Richard became earl, William Hamleigh would lose his inheritance. It flashed across her mind that no one had asked her […]
“‘Highborn people make poor servants. They are disobedient, resentful, thoughtless, touchy, and they think they’re working hard even though they do less than everyone else––so they cause trouble among the rest of the staff.’ He shrugged. ‘This is my experience.’” ––The Pillars of the Earth, by Ken Follett, loc. 6638 “We make much in […]
“As he walked past the ruins, the prospect of building a new cathedral suddenly seemed daunting: all that stone, all that timber, all those craftsmen, all those years. He would have to control it all, make sure there was a steady supply of materials, monitor the quality of timber and stone, hire and fire men, […]
“Good people overcome imperfect structures. That’s usually not the formula for success recommended by management treatises, but in the real world of complex and important enterprises, it is sometimes the best we can do.” ––Playing to the Edge: American Intelligence in the Age of Terror, by Michael V. Hayden, pg. 178
“I have often compared the current evolution of cyberspace to the last great age of globalization, the centuries of European discovery. That era, for all its accomplishments, jammed together the good and the bad and the weak and the strong in ways that had never been experienced before. What the Europeans got out it was […]
“It’s not just our safety but our character as a free people that is at stake here. Every nation is required to balance the needs of security with the needs of liberty. Thanks to James Madison and a bunch of his friends, we have planted our flag well on the side of liberty in that […]
“In September 2005, following the London Tube bombings, Manningham-Buller (now chief of MI5) advocated that ‘there needs to be a debate on whether some erosion of civil liberties we all value may be necessary to improve the chances of our citizens not being blown apart as they go about their daily lives.’ I realized later […]
I’m not sure I’ve ever been so annoyed by a book that taught me so much. Frederic Laloux’s Reinventing Organizations is, in some ways, exactly what it claims to be––a guide for creating organizations with internal dynamics that radically diverge from prevailing models. But it’s also a highly repetitive text with a lot of fuzzy […]
“Hunger is the best seasoning.” ––The Pillars of the Earth, by Ken Follett, loc. 939 “We don’t have much time. Because our mind predisposes us to think of trends as linear, we often fail to grasp the urgency of the situation. The demand we place on the planet grows, like our economies, not linearly […]