Alexander Gonzalez

“And why does Earth fail to learn its lesson?” Lem said. “Why do we persist in this divided idiocy? Because the world is full of prideful bastards, that’s why. Everyone believes they’re smarter than everyone else, more capable than everyone else, more justified than everyone else. Humility went extinct a long time ago.”
― Orson Scott Card, The First Formic War

“Priest”
― James Clavell, Shōgun, Part 1

“But I saved the rations my soldiers need. I fed you. I kept you alive. Was I wrong?” “There is no right and wrong,” said Bingwen. “You decided. You acted. You won. Now we clear the track and get the train moving again.” Li nodded and holstered his weapon. “I see that you understand war.” What I understand is you, thought Bingwen. Power without honor, order without civilization. He was not going to run away, he decided. He would go to this school. He would become a soldier. But he would not become the monster of war they hoped to make him. He would not become Lieutenant Li. He would become what the world needed. A Mazer Rackham. Decisive, yet kind. Lethal, yet gentle. Otherwise, the Lis of the world would run the military, and it would make no difference if we won or lost this war.”
― Orson Scott Card, The First Formic War

“Nevertheless the sun hides not Virginia's Dismal Swamp, nor Rome's accursed Campagna, nor wide Sahara, nor all the millions of miles of deserts and of griefs beneath the moon. The sun hides not the ocean, which is the dark side of this earth, and which is two thirds of this earth. So, therefore, that mortal man who hath more of joy than sorrow in him, that mortal man cannot be true—not true, or undeveloped.”
― Herman Melville, Moby Dick: or, the White Whale