John

“To sum up, for I've been speaking far too long," Sindermann was saying, "this recent episode allows us to observe genuine blood and sinew beneath the wordy skin of our philosophy. The truth we convey is the truth, because we say it is the truth. Is that enough?"

He shrugged.

"I don't believe so. ‘My truth is better than your truth’ is a school-yard squabble, not the basis of a culture. ‘I'm right, so you are wrong’ is a syllogism that collapses as soon as one applies any a number of fundamental ethical tools. I am right, ergo, you are wrong. We can't construct a constitution on that, and we cannot, should not, will not be persuaded to iterate on its basis. It would make us what?"

He looked out across his audience. A number of hands were raised.

"There?"

"Liars."

Sindermann smiled. His words were being amplified by the array of vox mics set around his podium, and his face magnified by picter onto the hololithic wall behind him. On the wall, his smile was three meters wide.

"I was thinking bullies, or demagogues, Memed, but ‘liars’ is apt. In fact, it cuts deeper than my suggestions. Well done. Liars. That is the one thing we iterators can never allow ourselves to become.”
― Dan Abnett, Horus Rising

“You are walking along the shores of a lake,’ Sindermann said. ‘A boy is drowning. Do you let him drown because he was foolish enough to fall into the water before he had learned to swim? Or do you fish him out, and teach him how to swim?’
Loken shrugged. ‘The latter.’
‘What if he fights you off as you attempt to save him, because he is afraid of you? Because he doesn’t want to learn how to swim?’
‘I save him anyway.”
― Dan Abnett, Horus Rising

“Nothing blinks out, nothing ends. Everything exists, always exists. Life is but a dream, Shannon. Self is the only illusion.”
― Tom Sweterlitsch, The Gone World

“But I don't want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness. I want sin.”
― Aldous Huxley, Brave New World