Discipline Quotes - page 43
Literature was a vast minefield occupied by enemies, except for a few classic authors (just a few), and every day I had to walk through that minefield, where any false move could be fatal, with only the poems of Archilochus to guide me. It's like that for all young writers. There comes a time when you have no support, not even from friends, forget about mentors, and there's no one to give you a hand; publication, prizes, and grants are reserved for the others, the ones who said "Yes, sir,” over and over, or those who praised the literary mandarins, a never-ending horde distinguished only by their aptitude for discipline and punishment - nothing escapes them and they forgive nothing.
Roberto Bolaño
Abuse of Germany for doing what we ourselves did, and for cherishing ambitions which every powerful nation at every stage of the world's history has entertained, is childish, irrelevant, and futile. History laughs at such criticisms. Lord Roberts made no such mistake. With penetrating instinct he stated his admiration of German temper and German discipline. Every virile citizen of any nationality, and, indeed, every person whose judgment is not debauched by a sentimentalism wholly out of contact with facts, will echo Lord Roberts' tribute. Abuse, disapproval, and pious exhortations are all utterly useless. Only one thing is useful. This country, if it means to survive, must develop its preparations upon the same scale and in the same spirit as does the great nation whose ambitions and development we are examining.
F. E. Smith, 1st Earl of Birkenhead