Nero: And They Who Would Be As Gods
"Do not suppose, I pray, that I am offended because you killed your mother, your wife, and your brother; that you burned Rome and send to the darkness all the honest men in your lands.
No, heir of Chaos. Death is the inheritance of men; from you other deeds could not have been expected. But to destroy one's ear for whole years with your poetry, to see your big belly on slim legs whirled about in a Pyrrhic dance; to hear your music, your dramatic orations, your doggerel verses, wretched poet of the suburbs, — is a thing surpassing my power, and it has roused in me the wish to die.
The capitol stuffs its ears when it hears you; the world reviles you. I can blush for you no longer, and I have no wish to do so. The howls of Cerberus, the dog of the underworld, though resembling your music, will be less offensive to me, for I have never been the friend of Cerberus, and I need not be ashamed of his howling.
Farewell, but make no music; commit murder, but write no verses; poison people, but do not dance; be an incendiary, but do not play on a harp. This is the wish and the last friendly advice sent to you by me —
Petronius, Arbiter Elegantiae.”
Henryk Sienkiewicz, Quo Vadis
"I am freeing man from the restraints of an intelligence that has taken charge, from the dirty and degrading self-mortification of a false vision called conscience and morality, and from the demands of a freedom and independence which only a very few can bear...
The law of selection justifies this incessant struggle, by allowing the survival of the fittest. Christianity is a rebellion against natural law, a protest against nature. Taken to its logical extreme, Christianity would mean the systematic cultivation of human failure.”
A. Hitler
"And advanced forms of biological warfare that can target specific genotypes may transform biological warfare from the realm of terror to a politically useful tool. This is merely a glimpse of the possibilities inherent in the process of transformation, not a precise prediction. Whatever the shape and direction of this revolution in military affairs, the implications for continued American military preeminence will be profound.
As argued above, there are many reasons to believe that U.S. forces already possess nascent revolutionary capabilities, particularly in the realms of intelligence command and control, and long range precision strikes.
Indeed, these capabilities are sufficient to allow the armed services to begin an interim, short-to-medium-term process of transformation right away, creating new force designs and operational concepts – designs and concepts different than those contemplated by the current defense program – to maximize the capabilities that already exist. But these must be viewed as merely a way-station toward a more thoroughgoing transformation."
The Project For a New American Century, Rebuilding America's Defenses
"Heroes. Victims. Gods and human beings.
All throwing shapes, every one of them
Convinced he's in the right, all of them glad
To repeat themselves and their every last mistake,
No matter what."
Seamus Heaney, The Cure At Troy
