T. E. Lawrence
T. E. Lawrence
Thomas Edward Lawrence CB DSO FASwas a British author, archaeologist, military officer, and diplomat. He was renowned for his liaison role during the Sinai and Palestine Campaign and the Arab Revolt against the Ottoman Empire during the First World War. The breadth and variety of his activities and associations, and his ability to describe them vividly in writing, earned him international fame as Lawrence of Arabia—a title used for the 1962 film based on his wartime activities...
NationalityBritish
ProfessionSoldier
Date of Birth16 August 1888
They taught me that no man could be their leader except he ate the ranks' food, wore their clothes, lived level with them, and yet appeared better in himself.
Mankind has had ten-thousand years of experience at fighting and if we must fight, we have no excuse for not fighting well.
To have news value is to have a tin can tied to one's tail.
Half a calamity is better than a whole one.
An opinion can be argued with; a conviction is best shot. The logical end of a war of creeds is the final destruction of one, and Salammbo is the classical text-book instance.
I could write for hours on the lustfulness of moving Swiftly,
Do not try and do too much with your own hands. Better the Arabs do it tolerably than you do it perfectly. It is their war, and you are to help them, not win it for them.
The dreamers of the day are dangerous... for they may act their dream with open eyes, to make it possible.
The people of England have been led in Mesopotamia into a trap from which it will be hard to escape with dignity and honor.
This creed of the desert seemed inexpressible in words, and indeed in thought.
Your success will be proportioned to the amount of mental effort you devote to it.
Yet when we achieved, and the new world dawned, the old men came out again and took our victory to remake it in the likeness of the former world they knew. Youth could win, but had not learned to keep: and was pitiably weak against age. We stammered that we had worked for a new heaven and a new earth, and they thanked us kindly and made their peace.
He was old and wise, which meant tired and disappointed...
All men dream, but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds, wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act on their dreams with open eyes, to make them possible.