Real destiny takes everything-the last drop of blood, and strip out your veins to be sure-and gives it back doubled. Quadrupled. A thousand-fold! But you can't give halves. You have to give it all. I know. I swear. I've come back from the dead to speak the truth to you. Real destiny gives you a mountain of life, and puts you on top of it.

Not that I haven't leaped up into the blinding light of competence now and then. It's sustaining the altitude that defeats me.

For a while, I thought I was going mad. At last, I became reconciled to my despair. The medications helped, too, I thought, sir.

You couldn't be that good and not know it, somewhere in your secret heart, however much you'd been abused into affecting public humility.

Any communitys arm of force - military, police, security - needs people in it who can do necessary evil, and yet not be made evil by it. To do only the necessary and no more. To constantly question the assumptions, to stop the slide into atrocity.

Never do yourself, what you can con professionals into doing for you.

The world is made by the people who show up for the job.