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“No army, no matter how clean its reputation, walked away from war untainted. And no leader, no matter how noble, could help but sink into the crem when he stepped into the game of conquest.”
― Brandon Sanderson, Rhythm of War

“In his own time, the Cid was a warrior of legendary stature among both Christians and Muslims of the peninsula, who praised or cursed him not according to their religious affiliation but according to whether he had appeared to them as a liberator or a scourge. This was a culture that glorified brutality in the pursuit of wealth and glory. Ballads extolling his feats, the medieval equivalent of today’s narco-corridas, which rhapsodize the exploits of modern frontier outlaws, were sung around countless campfires.”
― Brian Catlos, Kingdoms of Faith: A New History of Islamic Spain

“The khñum debt slavery scenario sounds brutal until you consider that most capitalist cultures in the West use a similar system. In the United States, it’s not unusual for people to graduate from college with so much debt that they have to work their whole lives to pay it off.”
― Annalee Newitz, Four Lost Cities: A Secret History of the Urban Age

“The spices and drugs that are increasingly visible in the sources as highly desirable luxury objects or as medical necessities were funded by large-scale human trafficking.”
― Peter Frankopan, The Silk Roads: A New History of the World