Annie Jacobsen · 575 pages
Rating: (1.8K votes)
“The past is a foreign country.” —L. P. Hartley”
― Annie Jacobsen, quote from Operation Paperclip: The Secret Intelligence Program that Brought Nazi Scientists to America
“The name came from the fact that prisoners could be “concentrated” in a group and held under protective custody following Nazi law. Quickly, this changed. Himmler made concentration camps “legally independent administrative units outside the penal code and the ordinary law.” Dachau”
― Annie Jacobsen, quote from Operation Paperclip: The Secret Intelligence Program that Brought Nazi Scientists to America
“General Loucks’s secret Saturday roundtable at his house in Heidelberg with the Nazi chemists remained hidden from the public for six decades. Here was a brigadier general with the U.S. Army doing business with a former brigadier general of the Third Reich allegedly in the interests of the United States. It was a Cold War black program that was paid for by the U.S. Army but did not officially exist. There were no checks and no balances. Operation Paperclip was becoming a headless monster. The”
― Annie Jacobsen, quote from Operation Paperclip: The Secret Intelligence Program that Brought Nazi Scientists to America
“The U.S. war crimes office for the chief counsel wrote up a list of doctors involved in medical research that resulted in “mercy killings,” a euphemism used by the Reich for its medical murder programs. The list was classified with a strict caveat that access to it remain “restricted for 80 years from the date of creation.” This meant that, by the time the world would know who was on this list, it would be the year 2025, and everyone named would be dead. A”
― Annie Jacobsen, quote from Operation Paperclip: The Secret Intelligence Program that Brought Nazi Scientists to America
“By the end of January 1946, 160 Nazi scientists had been secreted into America. The single largest group was comprised of the 115 rocket specialists at Fort Bliss, Texas, led by Wernher von Braun.”
― Annie Jacobsen, quote from Operation Paperclip: The Secret Intelligence Program that Brought Nazi Scientists to America
“The goal of Combined Intelligence Objectives Subcommittee was to investigate all things related to German science. Target types ran the gamut: radar, missiles, aircraft, medicine, bombs and fuses, chemical and biological weapons labs. And while CIOS remained an official joint venture, there were other groups in the mix, with competing interests at hand. Running parallel to CIOS operations were dozens of secret intelligence-gathering operations, mostly American. The Pentagon’s Special Mission V-2 was but one example. By late March 1945, Colonel Trichel, chief of U.S. Army Ordnance, Rocket Branch, had dispatched his team to Europe. Likewise, U.S. Naval Technical Intelligence had officers in Paris preparing for its own highly classified hunt for any intelligence regarding the Henschel Hs 293, a guided missile developed by the Nazis and designed to sink or damage enemy ships. The U.S. Army Air Forces (AAF) were still heavily engaged in strategic bombing campaigns, but a small group from Wright Field, near Dayton, Ohio, was laying plans to locate and capture Luftwaffe equipment and engineers. Spearheading Top Secret missions for British intelligence was a group of commandos called 30 Assault Unit, led by Ian Fleming, the personal assistant to the director of British naval intelligence and future author of the James Bond novels. Sometimes, the members of these parallel missions worked in consort with CIOS officers in the field.”
― Annie Jacobsen, quote from Operation Paperclip: The Secret Intelligence Program that Brought Nazi Scientists to America
“found to contain a markedly potent and hitherto unknown organophosphorus nerve agent” had been developed by the Nazis”
― Annie Jacobsen, quote from Operation Paperclip: The Secret Intelligence Program that Brought Nazi Scientists to America
“The war in Europe was over. Germans called it die Stunde Null, zero hour. Cities lay in ruins. Allied bombing had destroyed more than 1.8 million German homes. Of the 18.2 million men who had served in the German army, navy, Luftwaffe, and the Waffen-SS, a total of 5.3 million had been killed. Sixty-one countries had been drawn into a war Germany started. Some 50 million people were dead. The Third Reich was no more. Heinrich”
― Annie Jacobsen, quote from Operation Paperclip: The Secret Intelligence Program that Brought Nazi Scientists to America
“And I think that if I started to tell someone how I felt I’d never be able to stop so it’s easier just to not feel anything because that way there’s no issue.”
― Cecily Anne Paterson, quote from Invisible
“Life is about the good and the bad. Good is easy. Bad is hard. Finding a way to make good from the bad is the secret. The few who discover the ability within themselves--nothing can stand in their way of happiness.”
― quote from First Night of Summer
“I decided to masturbate with shampoo instead of conditioner today. Because yolo. Things Jesus never said.”
― Dave Matthes, quote from Sleepeth Not, the Bastard
“Billy noticed the expression on the young man’s face. “Think it’s a conspiracy theory? Once you’re labeled a rebel...someone protesting corporate greed and abuse of power…you’ll notice the dark, unmarked cars following you.” He lit a cigarette. The smoke calmed him. “Freedom is an illusion. Try walking along the road with long hair and it won’t be long before a sheriff pulls up asking questions.” The smoke curled around his face. “Try living your life in touch with nature. The government’s made it illegal to use our sacred plants. They’re afraid we’ll use them and remember how powerful we are. Meanwhile, they destroy the earth for profit and offer us chemicals to heal ourselves.” He snubbed out his cigarette. “Enough is enough. It is time to take back our land, our way of life. The white man has proven he can’t handle the responsibility.” Billy looked at Zachary’s light complexion. “No offense.”
― Elizabeth M. Herrera, quote from Earth Sentinels: The Storm Creators
“The World Has Need Of You”
everything here
seems to need us
—Rainer Maria Rilke
I can hardly imagine it
as I walk to the lighthouse, feeling the ancient
prayer of my arms swinging
in counterpoint to my feet.
Here I am, suspended
between the sidewalk and twilight,
the sky dimming so fast it seems alive.
What if you felt the invisible
tug between you and everything?
A boy on a bicycle rides by,
his white shirt open, flaring
behind him like wings.
It’s a hard time to be human. We know too much
and too little. Does the breeze need us?
The cliffs? The gulls?
If you’ve managed to do one good thing,
the ocean doesn’t care.
But when Newton’s apple fell toward the earth,
the earth, ever so slightly, fell
toward the apple.”
― Ellen Bass, quote from Like a Beggar
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.
We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.
Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.