Vincent > Vincent's Quotes

“Scratch a conservative and you find someone who prefers the past over any future. Scratch a liberal and find a closet aristocrat. It’s true! Liberal governments always develop into aristocracies. The bureaucracies betray the true intent of people who form such governments. Right from the first, the little people who formed the governments which promised to equalize the social burdens found themselves suddenly in the hands of bureaucratic aristocracies. Of course, all bureaucracies follow this pattern, but what a hypocrisy to find this even under a communized banner. Ahhh, well, if patterns teach me anything it’s that patterns are repeated. My oppressions, by and large, are no worse than any of the others and, at least, I teach a new lesson.   —”
― Frank Herbert, God Emperor of Dune

“We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory will swell when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.”
― Abraham Lincoln, Great Speeches / Abraham Lincoln: with Historical Notes by John Grafton

“We sleep soundly in our beds, because rough men stand ready in the night to do violence on those who would harm us"
Orwell cited Kipling's phrase "making mock of uniforms that guard you while you sleep" (Kipling, Tommy), and further noted that Kipling's "grasp of function, of who protects whom, is very sound. He sees clearly that men can be highly civilized only while other men, inevitably less civilized, are there to guard and feed them." (1942)”
― George Orwell

“In the information society, nobody thinks. We expected to banish paper, but we actually banished thought.”
― Michael Crichton, Jurassic Park

“All major changes are like death. You can't see to the other side until you are there.”
― Michael Crichton, Jurassic Park

“WITHOUT LAUGHTER, WHAT MAN of sense could endure either politics or war?”
― Mary Renault, The Last of the Wine

“If the Gods are fucking you, you find a way to fuck them back. It's Baltimore, gentlemen; the Gods will not save you”
― Ervin H. Burrell

“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth. This very kindness stings with intolerable insult. To be "cured" against one's will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level of those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals.”
― C.S. Lewis, God in the Dock: Essays on Theology (Making of Modern Theology)

“Pain is an illusion of the senses, despair an illusion of the mind.”
― Officio Assassinorum Proverb

“Victory was for those willing to fight and die. Intellectuals could theorize until they sucked their thumbs right off their hands, but in the real world, power still flowed from the barrel of a gun.”
― Mark Bowden, Black Hawk Down: A Story of Modern War

“(Somalia) was a watershed," said one State Department official, "The idea used to be that terrible countries were terrible because good, decent, innocent people were being oppressed by evil, thuggish leaders. Somalia changed that. Here you have a country where just about everybody is caught up in hatred and fighting. You stop an old lady on the street and ask her if she wants peace, and she’ll say, yes, of course, I pray for it daily. All the things you’d expect her to say. Then ask her if she would be willing for her clan to share power with another in order to have that peace, and she’ll say, 'With those murderers and thieves? I’d die first.' People in these countries - Bosnia is a more recent example - don’t want peace. They want victory. They want power. Men, women, old and young. Somalia was the experience that taught us that people in these places bear much of the responsibility for things being the way they are. The hatred and the killing continues because they want it to. Or because they don’t want peace enough to stop it." (pg 334-335)”
― Mark Bowden, Black Hawk Down: A Story of Modern War

“It makes no difference what men think of war, said the judge. War endures. As well ask men what they think of stone. War was always here. Before man was, war waited for him. The ultimate trade awaiting its ultimate practitioner. That is the way it was and will be. That way and not some other way.”
― Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian, or, the Evening Redness in the West

“You get to choose who you are. Legacy, memories of the past, can serve us well. But we cannot let them define us. When heritage becomes a box instead of an inspiration, it has gone too far.”
― Brandon Sanderson, Skyward

“It has always seemed to me that a coward is a person who cares more about what people say than about what is right. Bravery isn't about what people call you, Spensa. It's about who you know yourself to be.”
― Brandon Sanderson, Skyward

“It does not matter whether the war is actually happening, and, since no decisive victory is possible, it does not matter whether the war is going well or badly. All that is needed is that a state of war should exist.”
― George Orwell, Animal Farm and 1984

“We regard our own memories as truths, when they are often just the stories we have told ourselves over time. They become the truth we live by, or with. They become our lives.”
― Guy Gavriel Kay, Written on the Dark

“It seems to me that most moments in a life can be called interludes: following something, preceding something. Carrying us forward, with our needs and nature and desires, as we move through our time.”
― Guy Gavriel Kay, Written on the Dark

“You didn't listen to me," Lan whispered. One last lesson. The hardest. Demandred struck, and Lan saw his opening. Lan lunged forward placing Demandred's sword point against his own side and ramming himself forward onto it.
"I did not come here to win," Lan whispered, smiling. "I came here to kill you. Death is lighter than a feather."
Demandred's eyes opened wide, and he tried to pull back. Too late. Lan's sword took him straight though the throat.”
― Robert Jordan, A Memory of Light

“Mercy to the guilty is cruelty to the innocent.”
― Adam Smith

“One of the sad signs of our times is that we have demonized those who produce, subsidized those who refuse to produce, and canonized those who complain.”
― Thomas Sowell, The Vision of the Anointed: Self-Congratulation as a Basis for Social Policy

“To believe in personal responsibility would be to destroy the whole special role of the anointed, whose vision casts them in the role of rescuers of people treated unfairly by “society”.”
― Thomas Sowell, The Vision of the Anointed: Self-Congratulation as a Basis for Social Policy

“Systemic processes tend to reward people for making decisions that turn out to be right—creating great resentment among the anointed, who feel themselves entitled to rewards for being articulate, politically active, and morally fervent.”
― Thomas Sowell, The Vision of the Anointed: Self-Congratulation as a Basis for Social Policy

“You came to me asking how my faith survived the Day of Judgement. I will tell you a secret. When the stars fell, when the seas boiled and the earth burned, my faith didn’t die. That is when I began to believe.

God was real, and he hated us.”
― Aaron Dembski-Bowden, The First Heretic

“The Night Haunter’s growl was a wet, burbling thing at the back of his throat. He loathed begging,
principally because he didn’t understand it. They knew they were guilty, and justice had come for them.
They deserved this. Their actions made it necessary. So why beg? Why seek to flee from the
consequences of their own actions? Why sin at all if the price was too high to pay?”
― Aaron Dembski-Bowden, Prince of Crows

“Why would the off-world colonists want troublesome, humanlike slaves rather than nice, efficient machines? It's simple. Machines don't suffer. They aren't capable of it. A machine doesn't know when it's being raped.
There's no power relationship between you and a machine. That's been the U.N.'s whole pitch about the attractions of the off-world colonies all along. The big human thrill. For a replicant to suffer, to give its owners that whole master-slave energy, it has to have emotions.”
― K.W. Jeter, Blade Runner 2: The Edge of Human

“So I fight for a Father who I never loved, against a brother that I did. I defend an empire that never wanted me against an army that would have taken me in a heartbeat.”
― Chris Wraight, The Path of Heaven

“Do you know the difference between an error and a mistake, Ensign?" 'No, sir.' "Anyone can make an error, Ensign. But that error doesn't become a mistake until you refuse to correct it.”
― Grand Admiral Thrawn

“I do not love the bright sword for its sharpness, nor the arrow for its swiftness, nor the warrior for his glory. I love only that which they defend.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Two Towers

“Everything is change; and you cannot step twice into the same river.”
― Mary Renault, The Last of the Wine

“There is a labyrinth,' he said, 'in the heart of every man; and to each comes the day when he must reach the center, and meet the Minotaur.”
― Mary Renault, The Last of the Wine