Mike Layton

“It occurred to her that mercy was the ability to stop, if only for a moment. There was no mercy where there could be no stopping.”
― Frank Herbert, Dune

“The old woman was a mistake perhaps, but she’s not the point! The old woman was merely a sickness . . . I was in a hurry to step over . . . it wasn’t a human being I killed, it was a principle! So I killed the principal, but I didn’t step over, I stayed on this side . . . All I managed to do was kill.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment

“I know. But that is all the more reason for severity. His intellectual eminence carries with it corresponding moral responsibilities. The greater a man's talents, the greater his power to lead astray. It is better that one should suffer than that many should be corrupted. Consider the matter dispassionately, Mr. Foster, and you will see that no offence is so heinous as unorthodoxy of behaviour. Murder kills only the individual-- and, after all, what is an individual?”
― Aldous Huxley, Brave New World

“The task of the modern educator is not to cut down jungles but to irrigate deserts. The right defense against false sentiments is to inculcate just sentiments. By starving the sensibility of our pupils we only make them easier prey to the propagandist when he comes. For famished nature will be avenged and a hard heart is no infallible protection against a soft head.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man