John Adams by David McCullough

• "All that part of Creation that lies within our observation is liable to change. Even mighty states and kingdoms are not exempted." - John Adams, 39
• "he would bend his whole soul to the law. He would let nothing distract him...'Reputation,' wrote Adams, 'ought to be the perpetual subject of my thoughts, and aim of my behavior.'" - 46
• "Why have I not genius to start some new thought?...Some thing that will surprise the world?" - John Adams, 47
• "The first news of the Stamp Act reached the American colonies during the last week of May 1765 and produced an immediate uproar, and in Massachusetts especially...The new law, the first British attempt to tax Americans directly, had been passed by Parliament to help pay for the cost of the French and Indian War and to meet the expense of maintaining a colonial military force to prevent Indian wars." - 59
• "above all, except the wife and children, I want to see my books." - John Adams, 64
• "Pen, ink, and paper and a sitting posture are great helps to attention and thinking." - John Adams, 66
• "The happiness of the people was the purpose of government...and therefore that form of government was best which produced the greatest amount of happiness for the largest number." - 102
• "Laws for the liberal education of youth, especially lower classes of people, are so extremely wise and useful that to a humane and generous mind, no expense for this purpose would be thought extravagant." - John Adams, 103
• "We are in the very midst of revolution, the most complete, unexpected, and remarkable of any in the history of the world." - John Adams, 127
• "With independence proclaimed, confederation - a working union of the colonies - had become the focus of 'spirit' animating the delegates. Union was as essential as independence, nearly all contended - indeed, more important in the view of many - and the issues to be resolved were formidable." - 146
• "The confederacy is to make us one individual only; it is to form us, like separate parcels of metal, into one common mass. We shall no longer retain our separate individuality, but become a single individual as to all questions submitted to the confederacy." - John Adams, 147
• "As time would prove, he had written one of the great, enduring documents of the American Revolution. The constitution of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts is the oldest functioning written constitution in the world." - 225
• "Everything in life should be done with reflection." - John Adams, 259
• "A chronic acquirer, Jefferson is not known to have ever denied himself anything he wished in the way of material possessions or comforts." - 319
• "One had only to stand on any London bridge, said a guidebook, to see fleets of ships 'carrying away the manufactures of Britain and bringing back the produce of the whole earth,' a spectacle illustrating Adams' chief concern as ambassador, since none was American." - 341
• "Before any great things are accomplished, he wrote to a correspondent, 'a memorable change must be made in the system of education and knowledge must become so general as to raise the lower ranks of society nearer to the higher. The education of a nation instead of being confined to a few schools and universities for the instruction of the few, must become the national care and expense for the formation of the many.'" - 364
• "I like a little rebellion now and then. It is like a storm in the atmosphere." - Thomas Jefferson, 371
• "He could not accept the idea of enshrining reason as a religion, as desired by the philosophes. 'I know not what to make of a republic of thirty million atheists.'" - 418
• "How few aim at the good of the whole, without aiming too much at the prosperity of parts." - John Adams, 422
• "The one, Hamilton, disliked and distrusted the French, while, for the good of the American economy, strongly favoring better relations with Britain. The other, Jefferson, disliked and distrusted the British, while seeing in France and the French Revolution the embodiment of the highest ideals of the American Revolution." - 436
• "Written in response to the Alien and Sedition Acts, Jefferson's Kentucky Resolutions declared that each state had a 'natural right' to nullify federal actions it deemed unconstitutional. The states were thus to be the arbiters of federal authority." - 521
• "Washington's death had seemed to mark the close of one era; the arrival of Napoleon Bonaparte ushered in another." - 534-5
• "Despite the malicious attacks on him, the furor over the Alien and Sedition Acts, unpopular taxes, betrayals by his own cabinet, the disarray of the Federalists, and the final treachery of Hamilton, he had, in fact, come very close to winning [a second term] in the electoral count." - 556
• "Were it not for John Adams making peace with France, there might never have been a Louisiana Purchase." - 586
• "Unlike Jefferson, who seldom ever marked a book, and then only faintly in pencil, Adams, pen in hand, loved to add his comments in the margins. It was part of the joy of reading for him, to have something to say himself, to talk back to, agree or take issue with, Rousseau, Condorcet, Turgot, Mary Wollstonecraft, Adam Smith, or Joseph Priestly." - 619

Washington: A Life by Ron Chernow

• "George Washington was always a man who monitored his every move." - 18
• "The proper degree of familiarity between governors and the governed would be an absorbing preoccupation throughout his career." - 25
• "he was able to corroborate the prevalent suspicion in Williamsburg that the French planned to encircle the British by uniting their Louisiana territory with Canada and the Great Lakes." - 33-4
• "Destiny had now conferred upon Washington a pivotal place in colonial, and even global, affairs, for the Jumonville incident was recognized as the opening shot that precipitated the French and Indian War, known in Europe as the Seven Years' War. In the words of Sir Horace Walpole in London, 'The volley fired by a young Virginian in the backwoods of America set the world on fire.'" - 45
• "The Fort Necessity debacle pointed up Washington's inexperience. Historians have rightly faulted him for advancing when he should have retreated; for fighting without awaiting sufficient reinforcements; for picking an indefensible spot; for the slapdash construction of the fort; for alienating his Indian allies; and for shocking hubris in thinking that he could defeat an imposing French force." - 49
• "Washington made a point of hanging people in public to deter others. His frontier experience only darkened his view of human nature, and he saw people as motivated more by force than by kindness." - 65
• "This young careerist brooded interminably over the discrimination leveled against colonial officers and betrayed a heightened sense of personal injustice -- feelings that would assume a more impressive and impersonal ideological form during the American Revolution." - 69
• "Human affairs are always checkered and vicissitudes in this life are rather to be expected than wondered at." - George Washington, 91
• "He practiced a minimalist art in politics, learning how to exert maximum leverage with the least force." - 99
• "That the slaves at Mount Vernon could move about without supervision runs counter to the common view of slavery as a system enforced only by the daily terror of whips and shackles....the only way to control a captive population was to convince them that runaways would be severely punished." - 116
• "Preoccupied with time pieces throughout his life, Washington aspired to stand at the center of an orderly, clockwork universe." - 119
• "Washington exemplified the self-invented American, forever struggling to better himself and rise above his origins." - 123
• "What has mystified posterity and puzzled some of his contemporaries was that Washington's church attendance was irregular; that he recited prayers standing instead of kneeling; that, unlike Martha, he never took communion; and that he almost never referred to Jesus Christ, preferring such vague locutions as 'Providence,' 'Destiny,' the 'Author of our Being,' or simply 'Heaven.' Outwardly at least, his Christianity seemed rational, shorn of mysteries and miracles, and nowhere did he directly affirm the divinity of Jesus Christ." - 131
• "On Friday, August 5, 1774, George Washington's life changed forever when he was elected one of seven Virginia delegates to the general congress that would meet in Philadelphia, to be known as the First Continental Congress." - 171
• "I shall constantly bear in mind that, as the sword was the last resort for the preservation of our liberties, so it ought to be the first thing laid aside when those liberties are firmly established." - George Washington, 278
• "With a mind neither quick nor nimble, Washington lacked the gift of spontaneity and found it difficult to improvise on the spot." - 305
• "A leitmotif of his wartime letters was that the shortsighted states would come to ruin without an effective central government. Increasingly Washington took a scathing view of lax congressional leadership." - 328
• "For Washington, the French alliance never flowed smoothly. The bulk of France's fleet remained based in the Caribbean, which hindered joint operations, and the alliance with a mighty power placed Washington in an uncomfortably subservient position." - 349
• "Ever since Valley Forge, Washington had lamented the profiteering that deprived his men of critically needed supplies, and he remained contemptuous of those who rigged and monopolized markets, branding them 'the pests of society and the greatest enemies we have to the happiness of America'" - 352
• "To compel a people to remain in a state of desperation and keep them at enmity with us...is playing the whole game against us." - George Washington, 360
• "Washington viewed the restoration of American credit as the country's foremost political need, and he supported loans and heavy taxation to attain it." - 369
• "The foundation of our empire was not laid in the gloomy age of ignorance and superstition, but at an epoch when the rights of mankind were better understood and more clearly defined than at any former period." - George Washington, 443
• "For all of Washington's professions of modesty, the though of his high destined niche in history was never far from his mind. Few historical figures have so lovingly tended their image." - 471
• "Less than a year after laying down his commission at Annapolis, the American Cincinnatus, badly strapped for cash, was reduced to a bill collector." - 479
• "In addition to his better-known title of father of his country, Washington is also revered in certain circles as the Father of the American Mule." - 484
• "Deafness can be an isolating experience, especially for a president. People would naturally have waited for him to respond to statements before proceeding with the conversation; to conceal his deafness, a self-conscious Washington may well have feigned hearing what they said and sat there in silence." - 581
• "Unlike Washington, Jefferson regarded the French Revolution as the proud and inevitable sequel to the American Revolution." - 600
• "'When he entered a room where we were all mirth and in high conversation, all were instantly mute.' When this happened, Washington would 'retire, quite provoked and disappointed.' It is a powerful commentary on the way in which fame estranged Washington from the casual pleasures of everyday life, making it hard for him to get the social solace he needed." - 616
• Hamilton "considered speculation to be an inescapable, if unsavory, aspect of functioning financial markets." - 621
• Jefferson "believed that Hamilton, to consolidate federal power and promote a northern financial cabal, wanted to make the federal debt so gigantic that it would never be extinguished." - 631
• "Washington and Hamilton had the thankless task of implementing the first tax systems in a country with a deeply ingrained suspicion of all taxes." - 636
• "Unlike his fellow planters, who tended to regard banks and stock exchanges as sinister devices, Washington grasped the need for these instruments of modern finance...With this stroke, he endorsed an expansive view of the presidency and made the Constitution a living, open-ended document. The importance of his decision is hard to overstate, for had Washington rigidly adhered to the letter of the Constitution, the federal government might have been stillborn." - 650
• "America's fervent attachment to France arose from gratitude for its indispensable help during the Revolutionary War, and no country saluted its revolution with more fraternal warmth. In a variety of ways, the French Revolution had been spawned by its American predecessor, which had bred dreams of liberty among French aristocrats who fought in the war, then tried to enshrine its principles at home." - 658
• "The entire project gratified Washington's vanity on another level: people assumed that the new city would be named either Washington or Washingtonople. In September Washington learned that the commissioners had indeed decided, without fanfare, to call the city Washington and the surrounding district Columbia, giving birth to Washington, D.C." - 663
• "The Hamiltonian party called itself Federalists, implying that it alone supported the Constitution and national unity. It took a robust view of federal power and a strong executive branch, and it favored banks and manufacturing as well as agriculture. Elitist in its politics, it tended to doubt the wisdom of the common people, but it also included a large number of northerners opposed to slavery. The Jeffersonians called themselves Republicans to suggest that they alone could save the Constitution from monarchical encroachments." - 671
• "Developments in France only aggravated the growing discord in American politics. Regarding the French revolutionaries as kindred spirits, Republicans rejoiced at the downfall of the Bourbon dynasty, while Federalists, dreading popular anarchy, dwelled on the grisly massacres." - 689

Burr by Gore Vidal

• "What a small group it was that fought the Revolution, founded the republic, and governed the better part of a continent for a quarter-century!" - 92
• "You will be favourable to Burr, and so must fail because the American reader cannot bear a surprise. He knows that this is the greatest country on earth, Washington the greatest man that ever lived, Burr the wickedest, and evidence to the contrary is not admissible. That means no inconvenient facts, no new information. If you really want the reader's attention, you must flatter him. Make his prejudices your own. Tell him things he already knows. He will love your soundness." - 139
• "for to the Puritan mind Hell is pre-ordained; therefore it is impious to tamper with God's earthly arrangements; better to sing hosannas to His celestial arbitrariness." - 212
• "You know, I made Hamilton a giant by killing him. If he had lived, he would have continued his decline. He would have been quite forgotten by now. Like me." - 270
• "Well, what are we anyway but so many critics in the stalls, criticising the grand performers?" - 344
• "For the average American freedom of speech is simply the freedom to repeat what everyone else is saying and no more." - 390
• "Apparently [Jeremy] Bentham thought that human beings had but two desires, gain and pleasure, and he accepted those desires as the facts of our condition (he hated St. Paul) and tried to make of them a philosophy whose keystone was an eloquent defense of usury." - 395-6

The Great Game: The Struggle for Empire in Central Asia by Peter Hopkirk - Chs. 5-9

Chapter 5: All Roads Lead to India

• "The glittering riches of India have always attracted covetous eyes" - 69

1. 500 BC - Darius of Persia

2. 300 BC - Alexander the Great of Macedonia

3. 997-1026 AD - Mahmoud of Ghazni (part of Afghanistan), 15 raids

4. 1175-1206 AD - Mohammed of Gor (northern Pakistan), 6 invasions

5. 1398 AD - Tamerlane's troops sack Delhi

6. 1526 AD - Babur the Turk invades from Kabul, establishes Mogul Empire

7. 1739 AD - Nadir Shah of Persia

• "Were it even possible for an enemy to succeed in constructing a fleet of materials conveyed, at vast trouble and expense, from the interior of Syria, or the shores of the Mediterranean...there is no harbour which could protect such a fleet from the attack of our cruisers." - John Kinneir, British risk assessor of sea invasion - 71
• "All roads ultimately led through Afghanistan, whatever [overland] route an invader came by." - 73
• "Unlike Wilson, Kinneir was not fully convinced that Tsar Alexander was planning to seize India: 'I suspect that the Russians are by no means desirous of extending their empire in this quarter; it is already too unwieldy, and may probably, ere long, crumble into pieces from its own accumulated weight.' He considered Constantinople a far more likely target for Alexander's ambitions." - 74

Chapter 6: The First of the Russian Players

• September 21, 1819: Captain Nikolai Muraviev sets off across the Karakum Desert in a caravan to attempt to win over the Khan of the Turcomans at Khiva - 79
• December 13, 1819: Muraviev returns to the eastern side of the Caspian Sea after the Khan agrees to send envoys to Tiflis, Georgia - 86
• Muraviev's "journey was destined to mark the beginning of the end of the independent khanates of Central Asia." - 88

Chapter 7: A Strange Tale of Two Dogs

• "It was in the course of the second of three long journeys he [William Moorcroft] made in search of these horses -- this one to the Kailas region of Tibet -- that something happened which gave birth to an obsession that haunted him for the rest of his life....he was greeted by two strange dogs which he knew at once to be of European origin....The two dogs had once belonged to [Russian] soldiers....From then until his death in 1825, Moorcroft was to deluge his superiors in Calcutta with impassioned warnings about Russian intentions in Central Asia." - 90
• "What Moorcroft did not realise was that their many months in Ladakh spent trying to negotiate with the Chinese across the mountains [for access to Bokhara through Chinese Turkestan to avoid the current conflict/civil war in Afghanistan] had been pointless almost from the start. For the artful [Mehkti] Rafailov...had successfully poisoned the minds of the senior Chinese officials against them" - 98

Chapter 8: Death on the Oxus

• "If the British did not get their hands on Afghanistan first, he [Moorcroft] warned, then the Russians almost certainly would." - 99
• February 25, 1825: after proceeding through the Khyber Pass and travelling north along the Oxus River, "Moorcroft and his companions were able to make out in the distance the unmistakable line of minarets and domes which they knew were those of Bokhara, the holiest city in Muslim Central Asia." - 101
• "It was hoped that these ['lavish gifts, including guns and furs, watches and European porcelain'] would create an appetite among rich Bokharans for more such goods. For the Russian factories...were becoming desperate for new markets. The home market was too small and impoverished to absorb the rapidly growing volume of goods being produced, while their British rivals, using more sophisticated machinery, were able to undercut them in both Europe and America." - 102
• "To St. Petersburg the Great Game was as much about commercial penetration as about political and military expansion" - 102

Chapter 9: The Barometer Falls

• "Both Tsar and Shah had looked upon the Treaty of Gulistan, which the British had negotiated between them in 1813, as no more than a temporary expedient which would allow them to strengthen their forces prior to the next round." - 109
• November 1825: Governor-General Yermolov sends troops to occupy a disputed territory between Erivan and Lake Sevan that was not addressed in the Treaty of Gulistan - 109
• "Not only was St. Petersburg embroiled on the side of the Greeks in their struggle for independence against the Turks, but at home, especially within the army, it was facing serious disorders following the sudden death of Tsar Alexander in December 1825....Abbas Mirza decided to strike the Russians while they were off their guard. Suddenly and without warning a 30,000-strong Persian force crossed the Russian frontier" - 110
• "The original purpose of the pact between London and Teheran had, so far as the British were concerned, been the protection of India from attack by an intruder marching across Persia...the pact contained an escape clause....they were only obliged to go to the Shah's assistance if he were attacked, and not if they were the aggressor....Thus was Britain able to wriggle off the hook, for the second time in twenty-two years." - 111
• "Under the terms of the peace treaty it had been agreed that Armenians living in Persia might, if they so wished, return to their homeland now that it had become part of the Russian Empire, and was therefore under Christian rule." - 112
• "If the Ottoman Empire were to break up, with Russia occupying Constantinople and commanding the straits, a scramble would follow among the major European powers, including Britain, France and Austria, for what was left. Not only might a general European war result, but with British and French bases in the eastern Mediterranean, Russia's flank would be permanently threatened. It would be altogether safer to let the Sultan keep his ramshackle empire intact, even if he were to be made to pay for the privilege." - 115

The Great Game: The Struggle for Empire in Central Asia by Peter Hopkirk - Chs. 3,4

Chapter 3: Rehearsal for the Great Game

• see Captain Charles Christie's Mission to Herat and Lieutenant Henry Pottinger's observations of Baluchistan and Kerman
• "Early in 1812, to the immense relief of London and Calcutta, the alarming partnership between Napoleon and Alexander had broken up. In June of that year Napoleon attacked, not India, but Russia, and to the astonishment of the world suffered the most catastrophic reverse in history. The threat to India had been lifted. Or so it seemed to a wildly rejoicing Britain." - 56

Chapter 4: The Russian Bogy

• March 30, 1814: "Alexander, convinced now that he had been ordained by the Almighty to rid the world of Napoleon, was not content simply to drive them back beyond his own frontiers. He pursued the French half-way across Europe to Paris, entering it in triumph" - 58
• "If one man could be said to be responsible for the creation of the Russian bogy, it was a much-decorated British general named Sir Robert Wilson....It was on his return [from Russia as the official British observer] to London that Wilson drew official wrath upon himself by launching a one-man campaign against the Russians." - 59
• 1817: Wilson publishes A Sketch of the Military and Political Power of Russia; "In it he claimed that the Russians, emboldened by their sudden rise to power, were planning to carry out Peter the Great's supposed death-bed command that they conquer the world." - 60
• "Although Wilson had no lack of supporters among the intelligentsia and the liberals, who abhorred Alexander's authoritarian rule, and from newspapers and journals of like view, he was largely shouted down. Nonetheless his book, much of which was based on false assumptions, gave birth to a debate on Russia's every move which would continue for a hundred years or more....The first seeds of Russophobia had been sown." - 61
• 1813: Treaty of Gulistan, "the Shah was obliged to surrender almost all his claims to Georgia and Baku, as well as renouncing all naval rights on the Caspian Sea....All that the Shah got in return, apart from an end to hostilities, was an undertaking from the Tsar that he would support the claim of Abbas Mirza, his son and heir apparent....the Shah had no intention of honouring this treaty which had been forced upon him by his aggressive neighbours" - 66

The Great Game: The Struggle for Empire in Central Asia by Peter Hopkirk - Ch.2

Chapter 2: Napoleonic Nightmare

• "There were two schools of thought. One argued that he would advance overland through Syria or Turkey, and attack India from Afghanistan or Baluchistan, while the other was convinced that he would come by sea, setting sail from somewhere on Egypt's Red Sea coast." - 24-5
• the East India Company "had found itself drawn reluctantly and expensively into the vacuum created by the disintegration of Mogul rule in India, and therefore increasingly involved in government and administration." - 25
• August 1, 1798: Admiral Horatio Nelson finds the French Armada of 40,000 soldiers east of Alexandria, Egypt, traps the fleet, and destroys all but two ships (26)
• January 24, 1801: after failing to convince Napoleon to join him, Tsar Paul I orders the Don Cossacks to attempt an overland invasion of India, through mainly unknown terrain; Paul told the Cossack leader, "You are to offer peace to all who are against the British....All the wealth of the Indies shall be your reward." - 28
• March 23, 1801: Tsar Paul I is assassinated and his son Alexander soon sends a messenger to stop the Don Cossacks - 29-30
• September 1801: Tsar Alexander annexes the independent kingdom of Georgia; "although Persian feelings ran high, actual hostilities did not break out between the two powers until June 1804, when the Russians thrust even further south, laying siege to Erivan, the capital of Armenia, a Christian possession of the Shah's." - 32
• "Early in 1804, informed of what happened [involving the British neglecting to assist Persia against Russian incursions]..., Napoleon approached the Shah, offering to help him drive back the Russians in return for the use of Persia as a land-bridge for a French invasion of India." - 33
• May 4, 1807: the Shah of Persia "signed a treaty with Napoleon...in which he agreed to sever all political and commercial relations with Britain, declare war on her, and allow French troops the right of passage" - 33
• "Fears of a Franco-Russian attack on India had brought home to those responsible for its defence how little they knew about the territories through which an invading army would have to march. Something had to be done quickly to remedy this, for all the treaties in the world would not stop a determined aggressor like Napoleon." - 36

The Great Game: The Struggle for Empire in Central Asia by Peter Hopkirk - Forward to Ch.1

Foreword

• "a succession of ambitious Tsars and ruthless generals crushed the Muslim peoples of Central Asia and occupied their lands. Fearing that the Russians would not stop until India too was theirs, the British sent young officers northwards through the passes to spy on them. At times the Great Game spilled over into Afghanistan, Persia, China and Tibet" - xv

Prologue

• 1807: "intelligence reached London which was to cause considerable alarm to both the British government and the [East India] Company's directors. Napoleon Bonaparte, emboldened by his run of brilliant victories in Europe, had put it to Paul's successor, Tsar Alexander I, that they should together invade India and wrest it from British domination" - 2-3
• "diplomatic missions were dispatched [by the British] to the Shah of Persia and the Emir of Afghanistan, through whose domains the aggressor [Russia] would have to pass, in the hope of discouraging them from entering into any liaisons with the foe." - 3
• "Indian hill men of exceptional intelligence and resource, specially trained in clandestine surveying techniques, were dispatched across the frontier disguised as Muslim holy men or Buddhist pilgrims. In this way, often at great risk to their lives, they secretly mapped thousands of square miles of previously unexplored terrain with remarkable accuracy. For their part, the Russians used Mongolian Buddhists to penetrate regions considered too dangerous for Europeans." - 5
• "The Afghans, Moscow found too late, were an unbeatable foe." - 7

Chapter 1: The Yellow Peril

• 1206: "The dreadful Mongol whirlwind had been unleashed on the world...by an illiterate military genius named Teumjin, formerly the unknown chief of a minority tribe, whose fame was destined shortly to eclipse even that of Alexander the Great. It was the dream of Genghis Khan, as he was to become known, to conquer the earth, a task which he believed he had been chosen by God to carry out. During the next thirty years, he and his successors almost achieved this. At the height of their power their empire was to stretch from the Pacific coast to the Polish frontier. It embraced the whole of China, Persia, Afghanistan, present-day Central Asia, and parts of northern India and the Caucasus. But more important still, and particularly to our narrative, it included vast tracts of Russia and Siberia." - 12
• "taking advantage of its reduced circumstances and military weakness, Russia's European neighbors began to help themselves freely to its territory. The German principalities, Lithuania, Poland and Sweden all joined in....Crushed thus between their European foes to the west and the Mongols to the east, the Russians were to develop a paranoid dread of invasion and encirclement which has bedeviled their foreign relations ever since." - 13
• "If Catherine [the Great] failed to add either India or Constantinople to her domains, she nonetheless took a number of steps in that direction. Not only did she win back from the Persians the Caucasian territories which Anne had restored to them, but she also took possession of the Crimea, that last surviving stronghold of the Mongol empire." - 21
• "To conquer India we must first make ourselves masters of Egypt." - 22, Napoleon Bonaparte

Racial Theory in The Book of Mormon

Alma 3:6-27

6 And the skins of the Lamanites were dark, according to the mark which was set upon their fathers, which was a curse upon them because of their transgression and their rebellion against their brethren, who consisted of Nephi, Jacob, and Joseph, and Sam, who were just and holy men.

7 And their brethren sought to destroy them, therefore they were cursed, and the Lord God set a mark upon them, yea, upon Laman and Lemuel, and also the sons of Ishmael, and Ishmaelitish women.

8 And this was done that their seed might be distinguished from the seed of their brethren, that thereby the Lord God might preserve his people, that they might serve his people, that they might not mix and believe in incorrect traditions which would prove their destruction.

9 And it came to pass that whosoever did mingle his seed with that of the Lamanites did bring the same curse upon his seed.

10 Therefore, whosoever suffered himself to be led away by the Lamanites was called under that head, and there was a mark set upon him.

11 And it came to pass that whosoever would not believe in the traditions of the Lamanites, but believed those records which were brought out of the land of Jerusalem, and also in the tradition of their fathers, which were correct, who believed in the commandments of God and kept them, were called the Nephites, or the people of Nephi, from that time forth --

12 And it is they who have kept the records which are true of their people, and also of the people of the Lamanites.

13 Now we will return again to the Amlicites, for they also had a mark set upon them; yea, they set the mark upon themselves, yea, even a mark of red upon their foreheads.

14 Thus the word of God is fulfilled, for these are the words which he said to Nephi: Behold, the Lamanites have I cursed, and I will set a mark on them that they and their seed may be separated from thee and thy seed, from this time henceforth and forever, except they repent of their wickedness and turn to me that I may have mercy upon them.

15 And again: I will set a mark upon him that mingleth his seed with they brethren, that they may be cursed also.

16 And again: I will set a mark upon him that fighteth against thee and they seed.

17 And again, I say that he that departeth from thee shall no more be called thy seed, and I will bless thee, and whomsoever shall be called they seed, henceforth and forever; and these were the promises of the Lord unto Nephi and to his seed.

18 Now the Amlicites knew not that they were fulfilling the words of God when they began to mark themselves in their foreheads; nevertheless they had come out in open rebellion against God; therefore it was expedient that the curse should fall upon them.

19 Now I would that ye should see that they brought upon themselves the curse; and even so doth every man that is cursed brings upon himself his own condemnation.

20 Now it came to pass that not many days after the battle which was fought in the land of Zarahemla, by the Lamanites and the Amlicites, that there was another army of Lamanites came in upon the people of Nephi, in the same place where the first army met the Amlicites.

21 And it came to pass that there was an army sent to drive them out of their land.

22 Now Alma himself being afflicted with a wound did not go up to battle at this time against the Lamanites;

23 But he sent up a numerous army against them; and they went up and slew many of the Lamanites. and drove the remainder of them out of the borders of their land.

24 And then they returned again and began to establish peace in the land, being troubled no more for a time with their enemies.

25 Now all these things were done, yea, all these wars and contentions commenced and ended in the fifth year of the reign of the judges.

26 And in one year were thousands and tens of thousands of souls sent to the eternal world, that they might reap their rewards according to their works, whether they were good or whether they were bad, to reap eternal happiness or eternal misery, according to the spirit which they listed to obey, whether it be a good spirit or a bad one.

27 For every man receiveth wages of him whom he listeth to obey, and this according to the words of the spirit of prophecy; therefore let it be according to the truth. And thus endeth the fifth year of the reign of the judges.

Empire of the Mind: A History of Iran by Michael Axworthy

Chapter 9: From Khatami to Ahmadinejad, and the Iranian Predicament

• "Iran gave significant help to the coalition forces against the Taliban later in 2001, helping to persuade the Northern Alliance to accept democratic arrangements for post-Taliban Afghanistan. In 2002 Iranians were rewarded with President George W. Bush's 'Axis of Evil' speech, which lumped Iran with Iraq and North Korea." - 284
• "One theory of Iranian history, advanced by Homa Katouzian and others, is that Iran lurches from chaos to arbitrary autocracy and back again." - 287
• "The Iranian regime, as pragmatism would suggest, has always insisted on its desire for stability in both Iraq and Afghanistan." - 289
• "This is the problem: civil uranium enrichment is a legitimate activity under the NPT [Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty]. But once the enrichment process has begun, the difference between enrichment to levels consistent with civil use and the levels necessary for weapons is difficult to verify from outside." - 292
• "the declaration by Iranian religious leaders against ownership of nuclear weapons should be given some credence." - 292

Empire of the Mind: A History of Iran by Michael Axworthy

Chapter 8: Iran Since the Revolution: Islamic Revival, War, and Confrontation

• "The revolution of 1979 was not solely -- and perhaps not even primarily -- a religious revolution. Economic slump and middle-class disillusionment with the corruption and oppression of a regime many had previously supported were important factors, as was a nationalistic dislike of the unequal relationship with the United States. But the revolution drew great strength from its Shi'a form, which lent cohesion and a sense of common purpose to disparate elements" - 261
• May 1979: "Khomeini established the Revolutionary Guard Corps (Sepah-e Pasdaran) as a reliable military force to balance the army and to supplement the gangs of street fighters that became known as Hezbollah -- the party of God" - 263
• "The constitution set up an elected presidency, an elected Majles, and elected municipal councils, but it also established a Council of Guardians (twelve clerics and jurists) to vet and approve candidates before they could run for election, and to approve or veto legislation passed by the Majles." - 264
• September 1980: "Saddam Hussein's forces invaded Iran" - 267
• "The arsenal supplied to Iraq [by 'Western nations'] included chemical weapon technology that was used against Iranian soldiers as well as Kurdish civilians in the north of Iraq, whom Saddam treated as rebels" - 268
• 1984: Saddam begins attacking Iranian ships in the Persian Gulf transporting oil - 268
• July 1988: the "disastrously gung-ho commander" of the U.S. warship called USS Vincennes "shot down an Iranian civilian airliner...killing 290" while in pursuit of Iranian gunboats - 268
• June 3, 1989: Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini died - 269
• "the economy remained heavily dependent on oil, the oil industry remained inefficient for lack of international help to secure the most up-to-date technology, and that help was further blocked by U.S. economic sanctions, which sharpened through the 1990s as part of the policy of dual containment applied to both Iran and Iraq." - 275
• May 1997: President Khatami elected and "called for proper constitutional government and for a halt of extra-judicial violence....But his reforms were blocked" - 277