Karl

“A field of scarlet with nine hanged men in black and six yellow daggers in the upper left and lower right quadrants, respectively, while the upper right quandrant featured a shattered skull and the lower left boasted a bird astride a severed head. It might have been a raven. Or an eagle.”
― Glen Cook, The Many Deaths of the Black Company

“You didn’t ask us about whether it was safe to take your troops out of the locial. You told us that was what you were doing. Your assumption was that Old Earth is perfectly safe unless you’re warned. Is deep space safe? Would you drop into the sun’s photosphere because no one warned you it would incinerate you? Nothing is perfectly safe. We don’t provide warning signs to protect you from yourselves. Try to remember that.”
― L.E. Modesitt Jr., Adiamante

“Power cannot be maintained and effectively exercised without a moral structure accepted and practiced by all because power attracts the corruptible and because corruption destroys consensus.”
― L.E. Modesitt Jr., Adiamante

“We should have suspected that nonhumans were involved right from the start when the activation process didn’t involve a lot of arcane commands that had to be done in just the right order, and the destination was displayed as a name rather than using some counterintuitive code. No human software engineer would produce a device that easy to use.”
― Jack Campbell, Victorious