3
" Greatness means that you won’t try and please anyone, that you won’t deceive anyone, that you will discern the true ideal for the country, that you will strive for it, that everyone will turn against you and will try to make you change your course. You will have no means to resist. They will pile up endless obstacles in your path and you will surmount them, knowing all the time that you are not great, but little, weak, resourceless, a mere nothing, and that no one will come to your aid. And if after that they call you great, you’ll laugh at them.65 "
― Andrew Mango , Atatürk: The Biography of the Founder of Modern Turkey
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" Another lesson, which Mustafa Kemal was to remember vividly, was given by Lieutenant-Colonel Nuri. It concerned guerrilla warfare, a subject made topical by risings in the Ottoman state. ‘It is difficult to wage guerrilla war,’ Nuri declared, ‘but it is equally difficult to suppress it.’ He set the students a task based on a rising on the outskirts of the capital, saying, ‘In practical work one must aim at maximum verisimilitude. A rising can come from inside, as well as outside.’ It was a daring suggestion, which drew from Mustafa Kemal the question: ‘Can such guerrilla war come to pass?’ ‘It may,’ replied Nuri; ‘but enough said.’40 "
― Andrew Mango , Atatürk: The Biography of the Founder of Modern Turkey
10
" The new secular republic reflected Mustafa Kemal’s personal philosophy. In a book published in 1928, Grace Ellison quotes him as saying to her, presumably in 1926–7: I have no religion, and at times I wish all religions at the bottom of the sea. He is a weak ruler who needs religion to uphold his government; it is as if he would catch his people in a trap. My people are going to learn the principles of democracy, the dictates of truth and the teachings of science. Superstition must go. Let them worship as they will; every man can follow his own conscience, provided it does not interfere with sane reason or bid him act against the liberty of his fellow-men.31 Yet, like many rationalists, Mustafa Kemal was himself superstitious and sought omens in dreams.32 When he inspected the front in March 1922, during the War of Independence, he had portions of the Koran recited during evening gatherings with commanders.33 But now he was out of the wood. "
― Andrew Mango , Atatürk: The Biography of the Founder of Modern Turkey
