Physics, tennis, chemistry, military science, table tennis, geopolitics, the nature of humanity...you name it and I've probably dabbled in it.
Oh, and starting this January...fencing!
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"Reports of my demise have been greatly exaggerated."
---Mark Twain
The only people I'd like to meet, right off the top of my head, are dead, and since I'd like to live quite a while longer, if it's all the same to you, I don't really want to meet anyone.
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"Chop a hole, the rest follows."
---Erich Ludendorff, Deputy Chief of the German General Staff, 1916-18
Hmm...don't really listen to much music; I'll have to get back to you on this.
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"Anyone who is among the living has hope."---Ecclesiastes 9:4
Gods and Generals , Star Wars , The Sound of Music , The Mark of Zorro
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"He who has success has honor."
---Louis XI, King of France 1461-83, nicknamed "The Spider King"
Don't really watch much TV, but I've liked most of what I've watched. Oh, and Arthur 's been a perennial favorite of mine.
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""With two thousand years of examples behind us we have no excuse, when fighting, for not fighting well."--- T.E. Lawrence , "Lawrence of Arabia", Expert in guerilla warfare.
The Bible , The Saga of the Seven Suns series , Dune , The Age of Battles: The Quest for Decisive Warfare from Breitenfield to Waterloo , The Great War: Perspectives on the First World War , Watership Down ...and yes, I know it's about a group of rabbits...
Also, Ender's Game and anything by Harry Turtledove
As for genres, historical fiction and science fiction, as well as anything in the areas of my interests (see above)
*Quote of the Section*
"So in war, the way is to avoid what is strong and to strike at what is weak."
--- Sun Tzu , author of the one of the world's first known treatises on strategy, The Art of War.
Field Marshal Gotthard Heinrici , Marshal Villars , ZhuGe Liang , and of course, my mother...don't ask me for a link.
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"Find the enemy and shoot him down. Anything else is nonsense"
--- Manfred Von Richthofen (The Red Baron), 1892-1918, top rated ace of World War I with 80 kills
Quotes
"La Garde meurt, et ne se rend pas!" "The Guard dies, it does not surrender!"
---Last stand of the Old Guard of the French Imperial Guard at the Battle of Waterloo
"If you hear my ship has been captured, know that I am dead"
---Commodore Don Cosme Damian Churruca, Captain of the Spanish 74 gun ship of the line San Juan Nepomuceno, killed aboard commanding that vessel at the Battle of Trafalgar
"My God! An army retreats when it must, but it does not announce this fact to the enemy in advance!"
---Marshal Hubert Lyautey, 1854-1934, counterinsurgency expert and inventor of the "oil-spot (tache d'huile)" method of counterinsurgency still used today...and this quote probably has bearing on the war in Iraq today.
"Honor in our age of corruption has been invented in order to make vanity do the work of virtue"
---Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord, Napoleon's foreign minister and great statesman of the 19th century
"Tell my people I played the game."
---Last words of Commander R.H.C. Verner, gunnery officer of HMS Inflexible, killed March 18th, 1915 at the Battle of the Dardanelles
"We shall beat them, but they'll break our hearts first."
---Sergeant "Jock", patient at a World War I field hospital, 1915
"La Garde meurt, et ne se rend pas!" "The Guard dies, it does not surrender!"
---Last stand of the Old Guard of the French Imperial Guard at the Battle of Waterloo
"I have three children-how may I teach them to walk like men in the world, and I sold my friends?"
---John Proctor, from the play "The Crucible", by Arthur Miller
"Because it is my name! Because I cannot have another in my life! Because I lie and sign myself to lies! Because I am not worth the dust on the feet of those that hang! How may I live without my name? I have given you my soul, leave me my name!"
---John Proctor, from the play "The Crucible", by Arthur Miller
"Viva la muerte!", "Long live death!"
---Former motto of the Spanish Foreign Legion
"Fools say that they learn by experience. I prefer to profit by others experience"
---Otto Von Bismarck, "The Iron Chancellor", German statesman responsible for the Unification of Germany
"Be polite; write diplomatically; even in a declaration of war one observes the rules of politeness."
---Otto Von Bismarck, "The Iron Chancellor", German Statesman responsible for the Unification of Germany
"Power should be a check to power."
---Charles de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu, famous Enlightenment thinker
"It had been a war fought without the displays of strategic genius so often illuminating other Napoleonic campaigns. It also strikes the military critic as approaching...some quintessential model of war, in which genius is rare, and in which decision is reached as on the Peninsula only through a terrible process of prolonged attrition..."
---Russell F. Weigley in his book The Age of Battles: The Quest for Decisive Battle from Breitenfeld to Waterloo on the Peninsular Campaign of the Napoleonic Wars
Funny Quotes
"...Lucas is an idiot...he's our idiot, but he's still an idiot."
---Landon Vance(1991-Present), on...on second thought, better not say what it's about.
"Lauren, don't be demeaning yourself
...that's my job!"---Landon Vance(1991-Present)
Favorite Battles
In no particular order:1) The Battle of Malplaquet , September 11th 1709
2) The Battle of Zorndorf , August 25th, 1758
3) The Battle of Dien Bien Phu , March 13th - May 7th, 1954
4) The Battle of Berlin , April 16th - May 2nd, 1945
5) The Battle of Copenhagen , April 2nd, 1801
6) The Battle of Jutland , May 31st, 1916-June 1st, 1916
7) The Battle of Shanghai , August 13th, 1937-November 26th, 1937
8) The Battle of Friedland , June 14th, 1807
Favorite Military Leaders
See above for a few...and of course, below (again, in no particular order):
1) Prince Eugene of Savoy
2) Captain Julien Marie Cosmao-Kerjulien
3) Marshal Jean Lannes
4) Marshal Louis Nicolas Davout
5) The Archduke Charles
6) Collectively, the German General Staff