“She was a student of history, valued the lessons of it. The worst atrocities began with half-measures, with apologies, compromising with the wrong side, shrinking from what had to be done.”

— C. J. Cherryh , book Downbelow Station

Book 3, Chapter 2 (p. 192)
Downbelow Station (1981)

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C. J. Cherryh 24

United States science fiction and fantasy author 1942

Donna Rice

"Enough Is Enough: Donna Rice Hughes" Interview by Ramona Cramer Tucker, Christianity Today International/Christian Reader Woman magazine, September/October 1996, Vol. 18, No. 5, Page 42

“The careful student of history will discover that Christianity has been of very little value in advancing civilization, but has done a great deal toward retarding it.”

Matilda Joslyn Gage (1826–1898) American abolitionist, writer

Source: Woman, Church and State (1893), p. 539

“The two sides (Mainland China and Taiwan) should learn a lesson from history and never fight each other again.”

Andrew Hsia (1950) Taiwanese politician

Source: Andrew Hsia (2015) cited in " Hsia, Zhang evoke the past at Taiwan-China meeting http://focustaiwan.tw/news/aipl/201505230020.aspx" on Focus Taiwan, 23 May 2015.

“Yesterday began like any other day. Students woke up, and they grabbed their backpacks and they headed for class. And soon the day took a dark turn, with students and faculty barricading themselves in classrooms and dormitories -- confused, terrified, and deeply worried. By the end of the morning, it was the worst day of violence on a college campus in American history -- and for many of you here today, it was the worst day of your lives.”

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

2000s, 2007, Virginia Tech Prayer Vigil (April 2007)

“The only privilege a student had that was worth his claiming, was that of talking to the professor, and the professor was bound to encourage it. His only difficulty on that side was to get them to talk at all. He had to devise schemes to find what they were thinking about, and induce them to risk criticism from their fellows. Any large body of students stifles the student. No man can instruct more than half-a-dozen students at once. The whole problem of education is one of its cost in money.”

Henry Adams (1838–1918) journalist, historian, academic, novelist

The Education of Henry Adams (1907)

“When I was ambushed by global warming advocates recently—no, they haven't given up—they asked me the same questions they always ask: "What if you're wrong?" and "If you're wrong will you apologize to future generations?" I always answer, "What if you're wrong? Will you apologize to my twenty kids and grandkids for the largest tax increase in American history?"”

James Inhofe (1934) American politician

They usually don't have anything to say after that.
[The Greatest Hoax: How the Global Warming Conspiracy Threatens Your Future, WorldNetDaily Books, 9781936488490, 25334579M]

“Don’t pay any attention to what she says. Half of it’s always wrong and she doesn’t mean the rest.”

Robert A. Heinlein (1907–1988) American science fiction author

The Menace from Earth (p. 351)
Short fiction, The Past Through Tomorrow (1967)

“What about a compromise? I’ll kill them first, and if it turns out they were friendly, I’ll apologize.”

Rick Riordan book The Lost Hero

Source: The Lost Hero

“Now, under the very confused circumstances of KAL 007, if that was the worst atrocity in human history, well, what about the freedom fighters that we support along with South Africa, who did something much worse?”

Noam Chomsky (1928) american linguist, philosopher and activist

Quotes 1960s-1980s, 1980s, Talk at University of California, Berkeley, 1984
Context: On September 1st of last year, the Soviet Union shot down Korean KAL 007, killing 269 people, and the immediate response here was that this proves that the Russians are the most barbaric people since Attila the Hun or something, and therefore we have to step up the attack against Nicaragua, set in MX missiles, put Pershings in West Germany, and increase the military system.… The story was given unbelievable coverage. Not only the story, but the American government interpretation of it, which is roughly what I've just said, was given the kind of coverage that I doubt has ever been given to any story in history.… Right in the middle of all of this furor about the Korean airliner, on November 11th in fact, there was a 100 word item in the New York Times devoted to the interesting fact that UNITA—which is a group that we call "freedom fighters", supported by us and South Africa, in Angola—they took credit for shooting down a civilian Angolan jet, killing 126 people.… Now, under the very confused circumstances of KAL 007, if that was the worst atrocity in human history, well, what about the freedom fighters that we support along with South Africa, who did something much worse?

“She's no chicken; she's on the wrong side of thirty, if she be a day.”

Jonathan Swift (1667–1745) Anglo-Irish satirist, essayist, and poet

Polite Conversation (1738), Dialogue 1

“She was a student of history, valued the lessons of it. The worst atrocities began with half-measures, with apologies, compromising with the wrong side, shrinking from what had to be done.”

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C. J. Cherryh 24

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