Elijah Smith

“Do not seek to find hope among your leaders. They are the repositories of poison. Their interest in you extends only so far as their ability to control you. From you, they seek duty and obedience, and they will ply you with the language of stirring faith. They seek followers, and woe to those who question, or voice challenge. ‘Civilization after civilization, it is the same. The world falls to tyranny with a whisper. The frightened are ever keen to bow to a perceived necessity, in the belief that necessity forces conformity, and conformity a certain stability. In a world shaped into conformity, dissidents stand out, are easily branded and dealt with. There is no multitude of perspectives, no dialogue. The victim assumes the face of the tyrant, self-righteous and intransigent, and wars breed like vermin. And people die.”
― Steven Erikson, Midnight Tides

“No tyrant could thrive where every subject said no. The tyrant thrives when the first fucking fool salutes.”
― Steven Erikson, Toll the Hounds

“money’s just an idea, it has power. Only it’s not real power. Just the promise of power. But that promise is enough so long as everyone keeps pretending it’s real. Stop pretending and it all falls apart.”
― Steven Erikson, Midnight Tides

“We have a talent for disguising greed under the cloak of freedom. As for past acts of depravity, we prefer to ignore those. Progress, after all, means to look ever forward, and whatever we have trampled in our wake is best forgotten.”
― Steven Erikson, Midnight Tides