“Today the word "hero" has been diminished. confused with "celebrity." But in my father's generation the word meant something.
celebrities seek fame. They take actions to get attention. Most often, the actions they take have no particular moral content. Heroes are heroes because they have risked something to help others. Their actions involve courage. Often, those heroes have been indifferent to the public's attention. But at least, the hero could understand the focus of the emotion.”
― James D. Bradley, quote from Flags of Our Fathers
“When I asked him, fifty-three years after the event, "Mr. Lucas, why did you jump on those grenades?" he did not hesitate with his answer: "To save my buddies.”
― James D. Bradley, quote from Flags of Our Fathers
“The battle of Iwo Jima would quickly turn into a primitive contest of gladiators: Japanese gladiators fighting from caves and tunnels like the catacombs of the Colosseum, and American gladiators aboveground, exposed on all sides, using liquid gasoline to burn their opponents out of their lethal hiding places.
All of this on an island five and a half miles long and two miles wide. An area smaller than Doc Bradley's hometown of Antigo, but bearing ten times the humanity. A car driving sixty miles an hour could cover its length in five and a half minutes. For the slogging, dying Marines, it would take more than a month.”
― James D. Bradley, quote from Flags of Our Fathers
“This giant fleet of American warships – a modern armada – churns across the ocean day and night for a journey of four thousand miles. It moves with the inevitability of a railroad schedule. It stops for nothing, it deviates for nothing. The United States, having been surprised at Pearl Harbor and then raked in battle after battle by the onrushing forces of imperial Japan, has finally stabilized and gathered its strength. Now the American giant is fully awake and cold-eyed. It is stalking an ocean, rounding the curve of the earth, to crush its tormentor.”
― James D. Bradley, quote from Flags of Our Fathers
“That is how we always keep our beloved dead alive, isn’t it? By telling stories about them; true stories.”
― James D. Bradley, quote from Flags of Our Fathers
“Like a moth, Rene was attracted to the flame of fame”
― James D. Bradley, quote from Flags of Our Fathers
“Roughly fifty percent of procedure in a Marine basic-training program is about disconnecting the young American boy from his concept of himself as a unique individual, a lone operator.”
― James D. Bradley, quote from Flags of Our Fathers
“Later he would declare that “not getting hit was like running through rain and not getting wet.”
― James D. Bradley, quote from Flags of Our Fathers
“Iwo Jima had become the number-one front-page story in newspapers across the country. And it had become the most heavily covered, written-about battle in World War II.”
― James D. Bradley, quote from Flags of Our Fathers
“Celebrities seek fame. They take actions to get attention. Most often, the actions they take have no particular moral content.”
― James D. Bradley, quote from Flags of Our Fathers
“Late in his life, Rene complained of living a life of a celebrity one minute and a “John Doe” the next.”
― James D. Bradley, quote from Flags of Our Fathers
“Use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without”
― James D. Bradley, quote from Flags of Our Fathers
“Here's a suggestion you might want to pay attention to. Try to forget everything you learned on Oprah and if you can't do that, at least refrain from regurgitating that crap at me. It spoils my appetite.”
― Samantha Young, quote from Scorched Skies
“A single action can cause a life to veer off in a direction it was never meant to go. Falling in love can do that, you think. And so can a wild party. You marvel at the way each has the power to forever alter an individual's compass. And it is the knowing that such a thing can so easily happen, as you did not know before, not really, that has fundamentally changed you and your son.”
― Anita Shreve, quote from Testimony
“You’re uncommon tall for a lass.” Surprised, she smiled. “Do you always speak your mind so?” He nodded. “You’ll find I do.” “Anything else?” “Aye,” he replied, coming around the press to close the distance between them. “Do you always court trouble, Miss Click, or does it just seem tae follow you where’er you go?”
― Laura Frantz, quote from The Frontiersman's Daughter
“why would it? He had won, and”
― Barbara Taylor Bradford, quote from Hold the Dream
“Nicholas showed her the way. “He would sometimes laugh at the idea of being what he called ‘an Ex,’ ” said Lili Dehn. Alexandra picked up the expression. “Don’t call me an Empress any more—I’m only an Ex,” she would say. One day at lunch when an especially unpalatable ham appeared on the table, Nicholas made everyone laugh by shrugging and saying, “Well, this may have once been a ham, but now it’s nothing but an ex-ham.”
― Robert K. Massie, quote from Nicholas and Alexandra
BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.
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