Creedl

“Imagine it for a moment. To die, to be permanently, irretrievably killed, the balance of your life spent in one painful instant, for the sake of a length of soil. For the stroke of the cartographer’s pen. For the fleeting satisfaction of a carousel of general staff. For the mutable appreciation of some distant king. Imagine participating in such a scheme willingly. Imagine it.”
― Richard Swan, Grave Empire

“You been mud wrestling, General?” “Only with my conscience.” “Really? Who won?” “Well, it was one of those rare occasions when violence really doesn’t solve anything.”
― Iain M. Banks, Use of Weapons

“The Earth has more than enough to feed all its inhabitants every day already! A truth so seemingly world-shattering one wonders that the oppressed of Earth don’t rise up in flames and anger yesterday! But they don’t, because they are so infected with the myth of self-interested advancement, or the poison of religious acceptance, they either only want to make their own way up the pile so they can shit upon everybody else, or actually feel grateful for the attention when their so-called betters shit on them!”
― Iain M. Banks, The State of the Art

“There were few better ways of knocking the fight out of people than by convincing them that life was a joke, a contrivance under somebody else’s ultimate control, and nothing of what they thought or did really mattered.”
― Iain M. Banks, Surface Detail