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One winter morning Peter woke up and looked out the window. Snow had fallen during the night. It covered everything as far as he could see.
 Ezra Jack Keats, The Snowy Day

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Snow provokes responses that reach right back to childhood. 
Andy Goldsworthy

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Laugh and the world laughs with you, snore and you sleep alone.
Anthony Burgess

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Liberty, as we all know, cannot flourish in a country that is permanently on a war footing, or even a near war footing. Permanent crisis justifies permanent control of everybody and everything by the agencies of central government.
Aldous Huxley

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Everything that needs to be said has already been said. But since no one was listening, everything must be said again. 
André Gide

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As everyone in this room knows, it has become a right of passage for aspiring leaders and prime ministers to promise Senate reform - on their way to the top.  

The promises are usually made in Western Canada.  

And these statements of intent are usually warmly received by party activists, editorial writers and ordinary people.

But once they are elected, Senate reform quickly falls to the bottom of the Government's agenda.


Stephen Harper, September 2006, from his own website.

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the issue is not a matter of perception … you can not claim an expense you did not incur. That is not right, that is not proper, and that will not be tolerated in this party.
Prime Minister Harper's complete non denial.

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Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.
Mark Twain

There is no distinctly American criminal class, except Congress.
Mark Twain

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Never march by flank in front of an army in position. This principle is absolute.
Napoleon Bonaparte 

The only exception to this rule is well known for being an exception to this rule.  Lee had Stonewall Jackson do this at Chancellorsville.  Knowing his enemy, Joesph Hooker, Lee knew he would get away with it.  And he did.

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I hope Putin has taken adequate protections. Now that he is a Russian journalist his life may be in grave danger!
Gary Kasparov on Putin's NYT op-ed

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It's when the 'international community' expresses 'concern' about your 'situation' that your situation is well and truly fucked. 
Michael D. Weiss

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Oh, I am heartily tired of hearing about what Lee is going to do. Some of you always seem to think he is suddenly going to turn a double somersault, and land in our rear and on both of our flanks at the same time. Go back to your command, and try to think what are we going to do ourselves, instead of what Lee is going to do.
Ulysses S. Grant- the only time he ever lost his temper on the battlefield, after hearing once too often about Lee's ability.

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The genius of you Americans is that you never make clear-cut stupid moves, only complicated stupid moves which make the rest of us wonder at the possibility that we might be missing something.
Gamal Abdel Nasser

On further reflection, I have to admit that Nasser thought glib sound bites were the same as practical solutions.  

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The uprising in Egypt was initiated by the young generation. The uprising achieved two things. One is it made the lives of dictators impossible. Today, if you are looking for a safe job, don't become a dictator.
Shimon Peres

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People never lie so much as after a hunt, during a war or before an election.
Otto von Bismarck 

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Every election is a sort of advance auction sale of stolen goods.
H. L. Mencken

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“Scientific discovery is not valuable unless it has commercial value.”
National Research Council president John MacDougall
This is apparently the Canadian Government's new position on publicly funded scientific research. Galileo and Einstein?  Pasteur?  Darwin?  No work of any value there. 

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"This is not a military coup.  Coups happen early in the morning when everyone is asleep, not in the afternoon with 15 million people on the streets supporting them. 
Commentator on Al Jazeera

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My most splendid campaign was that of March 20; not a single shot was fired.
Napoleon Bonaparte

WW2

     De Gaulle, 1942

De Gaulle had a totally Franco-centric view of everything. This included a supreme disdain for inconvenient facts, especially anything which might undermine the glory of France. Only de Gaulle could have written a history of the French army and manage to make no mention of the Battle of Waterloo.  
Antony Beevor, D-Day.

Though he was a complete pain in the ass, De Gaulle was the man France needed.  And he knew it.