Arthur

“In the Middle East, the United States could do worse than to adopt the Hippocratic oath and try above all to do no further harm. The gap between U.S. ambitions and U.S. actions needs to be narrowed, and it will normally make more sense to reduce the former than increase the latter. The unfortunate reality is that democratic transformations of other societies are often beyond the means of outsiders to achieve. Not all societies are equally well positioned to become democratic at any given moment.”
― Anonymous

“Because,” said Sparrow, massaging her side, where she’d been injured, “I can’t fight like this.” “You shouldn’t have to. Besides, we’ve got the UMC with us.” Sparrow snorted. “You grow up on a colony or what?” “Yeah. What’s that got to do with it?” “Then you ought to know you can’t offload responsibility on someone else. You have to be able to take care of yourself when shit goes down.”
― Christopher Paolini, To Sleep in a Sea of Stars

“There’s sensor data already? I mean, I figured there’d be a few hours at least before they gathered enough to have a meeting about.” “When people don’t know anything,” Amos said, “they love having meetings to talk about it.”
― James S.A. Corey, Leviathan Falls

“He was older, thinner, more worn around the edges than the man she’d met decades before on the Canterbury, but the openness she remembered was there too. The vulnerability. The almost genetic inability to believe that things wouldn’t work out for the best if he just followed his heart. “I’m sorry,” he said. “Really? I haven’t watched you try to kill yourself enough times? Now you make me watch you succeed in slow motion. But you’re sorry.” “Yeah. That part is pretty shitty.”
― James S.A. Corey, Leviathan Falls