Category: Book highlights

Yellow highlight | Page: 119

The Japanese’s mouth glowed with huge gold-crowned teeth, and his captor wanted them. He put the point of his kabar on the base of a tooth and hit the handle with the palm of his hand. Because the Japanese was kicking his feet and thrashing about, the knife point glanced off the tooth and sank deeply into the victim’s mouth. The Marine cursed him and with a slash cut his cheeks open to each ear. He put his foot on the sufferer’s lower jaw and tried again. Blood poured out of the soldier’s mouth. He made a gurgling noise and thrashed wildly. I shouted, “Put the man out of his misery.” All I got for an answer was a cussing out. Another Marine ran up, put a bullet in the enemy soldier’s brain, and ended his agony. The scavenger grumbled and continued extracting his prizes undisturbed.

Yellow highlight | Page: 122

As we talked, I noticed a fellow mortarman sitting next to me. He held a handful of coral pebbles in his left hand. With his right hand he idly tossed them into the open skull of the Japanese machine gunner. Each time his pitch was true I heard a little splash of rainwater in the ghastly receptacle. My buddy tossed the coral chunks as casually as a boy casting pebbles into a puddle on some muddy road back home; there was nothing malicious in his action. The war had so brutalized us that it was beyond belief.

Yellow highlight | Page: 151

“Have you gone Asiatic?” I gasped. “You know you can’t keep that thing. Some officer’ll put you on report sure as hell,” I remonstrated as I stared in horror at the shriveled human hand he had unwrapped.

Yellow highlight | Page: 221

There was nothing unique in the conversation. Thousands like it occurred every day among infantrymen scheduled to enter the chaos and inferno of an attack. But it illustrates the value of camaraderie among men facing constant hardship and frequent danger. Friendship was the only comfort a man had.

Yellow highlight | Page: 228

I expected to get hit. So did the others. I wasn’t being brave, but Redifer was, and I would rather take my chances than be yellow in the face of his risks to screen us. If he got hit while I was cringing in safety, I knew it would haunt me the rest of my life—that is, if I lived much longer, which seemed more unlikely every day.

Yellow highlight | Page: 231

War is mostly waiting. The men around me sat silently with drawn faces. Some replacements had come into the company to make up for our earlier losses.

Yellow highlight | Page: 257

I vividly recall grimly making a pledge to myself. The Japanese might kill or wound me, but they wouldn’t make me crack up.

55
In retrospect, I realize that we did not exhaust all the options available to us…..I was young and impatient, and did not see any virtue in waiting. Escape seemed the only way.

84
We were not different people with separate languages; we were one people, with different tongues.

182
I saw how my own people had remained in one place, while I had moved on and seen new worlds and gained new ideas…..if I had returned, my political evolution would have been stunted.

192
I was not going to let my involvement in the struggle and the scope of my political activities be determined by the enemy I was fighting against.

201
A nation should not be judged by how it treats its highest citizens, but its lowest ones.

267
The key to being underground is to be invisible. Just as there is a way to walk in a room in order to make yourself stand out, there is a way of walking and behaving that makes you inconspicuous.

298
Guerrilla warfare…was not designed to win a military victory so much as to unleash political and economic forces that would bring down the enem…..not to neglect the political side of war……international public opinion…is sometimes worth more than a fleet of jet fighters.

305
A liberation army is an egalitarian army. You must treat your men entirely differently than you would in a capitalist army……But when you are off duty, you must conduct yourself on the basis of perfect equality.

367
many leaders of the newly independent states of Africa, who accepted the need for some form of socialism to enable their people to catch up with the advanced countries of the West.

390
It would be very hard if not impossible for one man alone to resist. I do not know that I could have done it had I been alone.

488
To survive in prison, one must develop ways to take satisfaction in one’s daily life.

526
There are times when a leader must move out ahead of the flock, go off in a new direction, confident that he is leading his people the right way.

623
I was not born with a hunger to be free. I was born free — free in every way that I could know.

Like many, I watched Jon’s TED talk years ago; before I was married, before I had a kid. I have been feeling trapped, at work and at family, these 2 years. That gave me the motive to attend his speech in Taipei.

• The meaning of happiness is different for everyone.
  • shopping, traveling, sex, etc.

Being poor and suffer

• TV is the first thing that tell us we’re poor.
• Before, we call it “suffer”, we suffer because there’s not enough food, so we find it in the forest. No enough bamboo to build a home, so we cut it with the neighbors.
• Because of poor, we must work in the city.

Poor in the city

• I worked hard, but I don’t have anything. I only have the money to live day by day.
• The bird does not have to go to school, no credit card debt, and flies to feed itself. But clever people like me don’t have enough food.

The system (capitalism) and fear

• Education and school doesn’t teach us to face fear. If anything, it designed more fear and worry.
• Objective of business and the system: eat less healthy, eat more.
  • organic food is expensive, so I buy instant noodle. I need organic rice, but I’m tired from work, so I spend it on coffee.
  • this world is full of food, but people live without having enough.
• Happy people consume less.

How it started

1. Went back home, a small land to farm.
2. Lists out the 50 vegetables I want to eat.
3. ask for seeds
4. collect cow poop and fertilize
5. people think I’m crazy
6. 3 months later, it grew and it’s more than we can consume
7. Everyday, I could sell the 20 excess vegetables for money.

Design my life and self-esteem, confidence

• When I’m a kid, I know the people and land 2 to 3 km around me. I have no fear.
• Most people let society design our life, it builds the fear of no choice.
• Being natural means having no formula, it needs to be designed.

Living as a community 

• Living in community is easier than living alone. I only have to cook 1 day a week, my kid is with other kids so I only have to ask “where is my kid?”
• No leader, no rule, no regulations. It’s not fun to live with dictator.
• Everyone must take turn do the work: cook, gardening, seed saving
• this month we build home for this person, next month for another person.
• our kids learn to be a farmer this month and artist the next month.
  • people never learn from listening or reading (memorize), they must do it (understand).

Finding a community

• Reconnect with ourself
  • be with ourselves, don’t run away from our feeling.
  • if I feel sad, then sit down and watch my sadness. How long will it last?
  • When we like it, every problem will be fun.
• reconnect with people
  • a community is build by a shared space and activity, not particularly land.
  • do we really love the nature? If we’re not sure, spend a month to live there to experiment.
• diversity
  • Diversity keeps it the society function.

Loc 453

If a man must live in a mud and go hungry and risk his flesh, you must give him a reason for it, you must give him a cause. A conclusion is not a cause.

Loc 1398

Hunger, the jungle, the Japanese, not one nor all of these could be quite as corrosive as the feeling of expendability.

Loc 2820

Right private has no chance against a wrong major.

Loc 3898

The nurses talked only to doctors and the doctors talked only to God.

Loc 4371

Heroes turn traitor, warriors age and grow soft — but a victim is changeless, sacrifice is eternal.

Page 20

At a certain point in our lives, we lose control of what’s happening to us, and our lives become controlled by fate. That’s the world’s greatest lie.

Page 25

In the long run, what people think about shepherds and bakers becomes more important for them than their own Personal Legends.

Page 26

Most people learn, early in their lives, what is their reason for being…maybe that’s why they give up on it so early, too. But that’s the way it is.

Page 34

The secret of happiness is to see all the marvels of the world, and never to forget the drops of oil on the spoon.

Page 42

I’m going to become bitter and distrustful of people because one person betrayed me. I’m going to have those who have found their treasure because I never found mine. And I’m going to hold on to what little I have, because I’m too insignificant to conquer the world.

Page 67

He suddenly felt tremendously happy. He could always go back to being a shepherd. He could always become a crystal salesman again. Maybe the world had other hidden treasures, but he had a dream, and he had met with a king.

Page 129

There is only one way to learn…it’s through action. Everything you need to know you have learned through your journey. You need to learn only one thing more.

Page 133

Why should I listen to my heart?……Because you will never again be able to keep it quiet. Even if you pretend not to have heard what it tells you, it will always be there inside you, repeating to you what you’re thinking about life and about the world.

Page 155

When we strive to become better than we are, everything around us becomes better, too.