“Let this be one invariable rule of your conduct—never to show the least symptom of resentment, which you cannot, to a certain degree, gratify; but always to smile, where you cannot strike.”
26 March 1754
Letters to His Son on the Art of Becoming a Man of the World and a Gentleman (1774)
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Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield 65
British statesman and man of letters 1694–1773Related quotes
(British Pathé newsreel · They're Going To Get It - Roosevelt (1943) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u_V6tL6QRQs)
1940s, State of the Union Address (1943)
Context: I cannot tell you when or where the United Nations are going to strike next in Europe. But we are going to strike — and strike hard. I cannot tell you whether we are going to hit them in Norway, or through the Low Countries, or in France, or through Sardinia or Sicily, or through the Balkans, or through Poland — or at several points simultaneously. But I can tell you that no matter where and when we strike by land, we and the British and the Russians will hit them from the air heavily and relentlessly. Day in and day out we shall heap tons upon tons of high explosives on their war factories and utilities and seaports.
Hitler and Mussolini will understand now the enormity of their miscalculations — that the Nazis would always have the advantage of superior air power as they did when they bombed Warsaw, and Rotterdam, and London and Coventry. That superiority has gone — forever.
Yes, we believe that the Nazis and the Fascists have asked for it — and they are going to get it.
Conductors by John L. Holmes (1988) pp 256-261 ISBN 0-575-04088-2
“Let us have integrity and not write checks with our tongues which our conduct cannot cash.”
Source: 1980s, The Ecstasy of Communication (1987), p. 67
The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883), I Prolegomena and General Introduction to the Book on Painting
As quoted in "George Kennan Speaks Out About Iraq" at History News Network (26 September 2002)
Context: A doctrine is something that pins you down to a given mode of conduct and dozens of situations which you cannot foresee, which is a great mistake in principle. When the word ‘containment’ was used in my ‘X’ article, it was used with relation to a certain situation then prevailing, and as a response to it.
F 81
Aphorisms (1765-1799), Notebook F (1776-1779)