Sparks: Life in Donbas: 'If we give up, there will be nothing left'

From this desk where I draft letters I know will be ignored, I observe that courage is not the absence of fear but the judgment that something else is more important than fear.

The swerve of atoms that creates free will is the same unpredictable motion that makes one man stand his ground while another flees the advancing storm.

Given these surprising facts of continued resistance against overwhelming force, the abductive hypothesis must be that some principle operates here beyond mere calculation of advantage.

Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered, yet we have this consolation - that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph.

If one world's center cannot hold against the infinite pressure of the void, then neither can any temporary authority claim ultimate dominion over those who inhabit it.

Whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government.

The habit of self-government, once established in a people, proves more durable than any foreign imposition however militarily superior.

That same self-interest which drives the merchant's calculation also drives the defender's resolve when they have more to lose by submission than by resistance.

Among hateful things: the taste of dust from roads churned by advancing armies, yet more hateful still would be the silence of abandoned homes.

When coercion fails to manufacture consent, the ruling class reveals itself as merely powerful rather than legitimately authoritative.

A modest proposal: that any population refusing to acknowledge its own conquest should be considered statistically insignificant and thus omitted from the victory reports.