Rick Stonier

“Paradise,’ he began, and the p meant a spray. ‘The old legend about Paradise—that was about us, about right now. Yes! Just think about it. Those two in Paradise, they were offered a choice: happiness without freedom, or freedom without happiness, nothing else. Those idiots chose freedom. And then what? Then for centuries they were homesick for the chains. That’s why the world was so miserable, see? They missed the chains. For ages! And we were the first to hit on the way to get back to happiness. No, wait ... listen to me. The ancient God and us, side by side, at the same table. Yes! We helped God finally overcome the Devil—because that’s who it was that pushed people to break the commandment and taste freedom and be ruined. It was him, the wily serpent. But we gave him a boot to the head! Crack! And it was all over: Paradise was back. And we’re simple and innocent again, like Adam and Eve. None of those complications about good and evil: Everything is very simple, childishly simple —Paradise! The Benefactor, the Machine, the Cube, the Gas Bell, the Guardians: All those things represent good, all that is sublime, splendid, noble, elevated, crystal pure. Because that is what protects our nonfreedom, which is to say, our happiness.”
― Yevgeny Zamyatin

“We must ask ourselves these questions as often as we dare. How will the world change if we do not question it?"

"The world cannot be changed," said Gloria. "The world is what the world is and has forever been."

"No," said Leo Matienne softly, "I will not believe that. For here is Peter standing before us, asking us to make it something different.”
― Kate DiCamillo, The Magician's Elephant

“Tiger! Tiger!" What of the hunting, hunter bold? Brother, the watch was long and cold. What of the quarry ye went to kill? Brother, he crops in the jungle still. Where is the power that made your pride? Brother, it ebbs from my flank and side. Where is the haste that ye hurry by? Brother, I go to my lair—to die.”
― Rudyard Kipling, The Jungle Book

“Our world - ruled by the Goddess and the Horned One, her consort, the world you know, the world of many truths - is being forced away from the mainstream course of time.”
― Marion Zimmer Bradley, The Mists of Avalon