Dead battles, like dead generals, hold the military mind in their dead grip.
Interpretation
The past influences present thinking and decision-making, especially in military contexts.
This quote illustrates how the memories of past conflicts and the influence of historical figures can dominate contemporary military strategy and thought. It suggests that clinging to the lessons or memories of defeated battles can hinder progress and innovation, trapping military minds in outdated concepts and limiting their ability to adapt to new challenges.
In practice
During a lecture on military strategy, one might use this quote to discuss how historical battles influence present decision-making.
In a country where misery and want were the foundation of the social structure, famine was periodic, death from starvation common, disease pervasive, thievery normal, and graft and corruption taken for granted, the elimination of these conditions in Communist China is so striking that negative aspects of the new rule fade in relative importance.
When every autumn people said it could not last through the winter, and when every spring there was still no end in sight, only the hope that out of it all some good would accrue to mankind kept men and nations fighting. When at last it was over, the war had many diverse results and one dominant one transcending all others: disillusion.
One constant among the elements of 1914βas of any eraβwas the disposition of everyone on all sides not to prepare for the harder alternative, not to act upon what they suspected to be true.
Nothing is more satisfying than to write a good sentence. It is no fun to write lumpishly, dully, in prose the reader must plod through like wet sand. But it is a pleasure to achieve, if one can, a clear running prose that is simple yet full of surprises. This does not just happen. It requires skill, hard work, a good ear, and continued practice.
The unrecorded past is none other than our old friend, the tree in the primeval forest which fell without being heard
Theology being the work of males, original sin was traced to the female.
People talk vaguely about the innocence of a little child, but they take mighty good care not to let it out of their sight for twenty minutes.
I've become convinced that nostalgia is a fundamentally unhealthy modality. When you see it, it's usually attached to something else that's really, seriously bad. I don't traffic in nostalgia. We're becoming a global culture.
Chekhov is this poet of melancholy and isolation and of wishing you were somewhere else than where you are.
I must go in, the fog is rising.
The universe has a body and soul and evolves through cosmic time. As microcosms of stardust, we do the same.
He that buildeth his nest upon a Divine promise shall find it abide and remain until he shall fly away to the land where promises are lost in fulfillments.
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