But If it is to be, or not, That's all in God's hands.

Plans let past drives the future.

Questions bring options, decrees burn them.

When someone takes your time, it doesn't cost them anything, but it costs you everything.

You'll often hear that people don't like change, but that's not quite right. People have no problem with change they asked for. What people don't like is forced change—change they didn't request on a timeline they didn't choose. Your "new and improved" can easily become their "what the fuck?" when it is dumped on them as a surprise.

You have to be able to improvise. You have to be able to pick up opportunities that come along.

Most people suffering from a lack of motivation will blame themselves first. "Ah, it's because I'm such a procrastinator!" "Why can't I just get myself together?" The truth, more often than not, is that you are not the problem; it's the world you're working in.

We live in a world of guided missiles and misguided men.

What is important is seldom urgent and what is urgent is seldom important.

Plans are worthless, but planning is everything.

My own recommendation, then as always, was that no operations should be undertaken in the Mediterranean except as a directly supporting move for the Channel attack and that our planned redeployment to England should proceed with all possible speed. Obviously a sufficient strength had to be kept in the Mediterranean to hold what we had already gained and to force the Nazis to maintain sizable forces in that area.

But after a moment a sense of waste and ruin overcame him. There they were, close together and safe and shut in; yet so chained to their separate destinies that they might as well been half the world apart.