"Not Dead Yet" (1999).
2000s, 2000, Unacknowledged Legislation: Writers in the Public Sphere (2000)
“Though espionage is supposed to be thrilling, CIA memoirs are often boring. Usually written decades after the fact, always sanitized by government censors, the typical "autospyography" has the vague, approximate effect of a police sketch drawn from the memory of a traumatized witness.”
His Long War: E Howard Hunt's American Spy (2007)
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Mark Riebling 39
American writer 1963Related quotes
“To witness titanic events is always dangerous, usually painful, and often fatal.”
Source: Ringworld (1970), p. 133
Rex v. Inhabitants of Burton-Bradstock (1765), Burrow (Settlement Cases), 535.
United States v. Rodriguez-Moreno, 526 U.S. 275 (1998) (Scalia, dissenting).
1990s
“A little wit and plenty of authority, that is what has almost always governed the world.”
Un peu d'esprit et beaucoup d'autorité, c'est ce qui a presque toujours gouverné le monde.
Socrate Chrétien, Discours VIII.
Translation reported in Harbottle's Dictionary of quotations French and Italian (1904), p. 230.
Socrate Chrétien (1662)
“( Von Glasersfeld (2010) Partial Memories: Sketches from an Improbable Life.”
p. 136
"The Banality of Heroism" in The Greater Good (Fall/Winter 2006/2007), co-written with Zeno Franco
Context: The idea of the banality of heroism debunks the myth of the “heroic elect,” a myth that reinforces two basic human tendencies. The first is to ascribe very rare personal characteristics to people who do something special — to see them as superhuman, practically beyond comparison to the rest of us. The second is the trap of inaction — sometimes known as the "bystander effect." Research has shown that the bystander effect is often motivated by diffusion of responsibility, when different people witnessing an emergency all assume someone else will help. Like the “good guards,” we fall into the trap of inaction when we assume it’s someone else’s responsibility to act the hero.