“This was the greatest invasion in this war so far – probably the greatest in human history – and the sea was crowded to the horizon with uncountable ships, but we were as lost and ineffective as babes in the wood.”

Mon beau navire ô ma mémoire
Avons-nous assez navigué
Dans une onde mauvaise à boire
Avons-nous assez divagué
De la belle aube au triste soir
"La Chanson du Mal-Aimé" (Song of the Poorly Loved), line 51; translation by William Meredith, from Francis Steegmuller Apollinaire: Poet Among the Painters (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1973) p. 95.
Alcools (1912)

The Zombie Survival Guide
Context: Joy, sadness, confidence, anxiety, love, hatred, fear—all of these feelings and thousands more that make up the human “heart” are as useless to the living dead as the organ of the same name. Who knows if this is humanity’s greatest weakness or strength? The debate continues, and probably will forever.

1930s, Address at San Diego Exposition (1935)
Context: Several centuries ago the greatest writer in history described the two most menacing clouds that hang over human government and human society as "malice domestic and fierce foreign war." We are not rid of these dangers but we can summon our intelligence to meet them. Never was there more genuine reason for Americans to face down these two causes of fear. "Malice domestic" from time to time will come to you in the shape of those who would raise false issues, pervert facts, preach the gospel of hate, and minimize the importance of public action to secure human rights or spiritual ideals. There are those today who would sow these seeds, but your answer to them is in the possession of the plain facts of our present condition.

On the teams created in the 1960s during the Space Race, in "Space Lifeguard : An Interview with Gene Kranz" at Space.com (11 April 2000) http://web.archive.org/web/20000818064509/http://www.space.com/peopleinterviews/apollo13_kranz_iview_000411.html
Context: We had risen to probably one of the greatest challenges in history, put a man on the moon in the decade. We'd created incredible technologies. But what was most important, we'd created the teams, what I call the human factor. People who were energized by a mission. And these teams were capable of moving right on and doing anything America asked them to do in space. And what we did is we watched these teams disappear. We watched the great contractors — the Grummans, the North Americans, the Lockheeds — disappear from the horizon. I think that's really sad that as Americans we have destroyed much of this infrastructure that we had in the days when we went to the moon.

Source: The Limits of State Action (1792), Ch. 16

Claimed, without evidence, as quoted by * 2020-10-20
Fact-checking Trump's dishonest weekend: The President made at least 66 false or misleading claims in three days
Daniel Dale
CNN
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/10/19/politics/fact-check-trump-dishonest-weekend-florida-michigan-georgia-wisconsin/index.html
2020s, 2020, October

Song lyrics, The Millennium Bell (1999)

Source: His Dark Materials, The Subtle Knife (1997), Ch. 15 : Bloodmoss
Context: If you're the bearer of the knife, you have a task that's greater than you can imagine. A child... How could they let it happen? Well, so it must be.... There is a war coming, boy. The greatest war there ever was. Something like it happened before, and this time the right side must win. We've had nothing but lies and propaganda and cruelty and deceit for all the thousands of years of human history. It's time we started again, but properly this time...."
He stopped to take in several rattling breaths.
"The knife," he went on after a minute. "They never knew what they were making, those old philosophers. They invented a device that could split open the very smallest particles of matter, and they used it to steal candy. They had no idea that they'd made the one weapon in all the universes that could defeat the tyrant. The Authority. God. The rebel angels fell because they didn't have anything like the knife; but now..."
"I didn't want it! I don't want it now!" Will cried. "If you want it, you can have it! I hate it, and I hate what it does — "
"Too late. You haven't any choice: you're the bearer. It's picked you out. And, what's more, they know you've got it; and if you don't use it against them, they'll tear it from your hands and use it against the rest of us, forever and ever."