- Growth
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- Nov 07, 2020
Accretion Quotes
On the slow, layered way things come to be.
These quotes treat accretion as a pattern rather than an event: a language shaped dialect by dialect, a life shaped decision by decision. One writer even traces a war back to a long chance series of choices, each defensible at the time.
- Last Updated on May 30, 2021
- History
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- Nov 07, 2020
The bipolar world of the Cold War is history. The new world order, however, is not the One World dreamed of by Wilsonian idealists. It is a Balkanizing world where race, tribe, culture and creed matter most, and democracy is seen not as an end in itself but as a means to an end - the accretion of power by one's own kind to achieve one's own dreams.
- Experience
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- Nov 07, 2020
Nothing happens quite by chance. It's a question of accretion of information and experience.
- People
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- Nov 07, 2020
As many people have chronicled, the decision to fight in Vietnam was a years-long accretion of step-by-step choices, each of which could be rationalized at the time. Invading Iraq was an unforced, unnecessary decision to risk everything on a 'war of choice' whose costs we are still paying.
- Being
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- Nov 07, 2020