Robert Bertrand

“Poets always hate those in power. To them perfection is always just behind the last corner, or beyond the next. They escape the present in dreams of the past and future. Rinaldo is a flaming torch of idealism, rising, as he thinks, to overthrow a tyrant and liberate the people. As for me—well, a few months ago I had lost all ambition but to raid the caravans for the rest of my life; now old dreams stir. Conan will die; Dion will mount the throne. Then he, too, will die. One by one, all who oppose me will die—by fire, or steel, or those deadly wines you know so well how to brew. Ascalante, king of Aquilonia! How like you the sound of it?”
― Robert E. Howard, Conan The Barbarian: The Complete Collection (Bauer Classics)

“What you inherited without lifting a finger—except to poison a few brothers—I fought for.”
― Robert E. Howard, Conan The Barbarian: The Complete Collection (Bauer Classics)

“In Venice and the French city of Verdun ‘castration houses’ were set up to produce eunuchs for export to Egypt and other Muslim countries. The majority of the young boys were Slavs taken prisoner by the Vikings and then sold on to slavers. The Slavs, from whose name is derived the modern word ‘slave’, are an ethnic group which originated in what is today western Russia. By the sixth or seventh century AD, they had spread south into the Balkans, almost as far as Greece, and west into what is now Poland.”
― (Historian) Simon Webb, The Forgotten Slave Trade: The White European Slaves of Islam

“Violence, naked force, has settled more issues in history than has any other factor.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, Starship Troopers