Vishesh Kumar

“You couldn't changed history. But you could get it right to start with. Do something differently the FIRST time around.
This whole business with seeking Slytherin's secrets... seemed an awful lot like the sort of thing where, years later, you would look back and say, 'And THAT was where it all started to go wrong.'
And he would wish desperately for the ability to fall back through time and make a different choice.
Wish granted. Now what?”
― Eliezer Yudkowsky, Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality

“Nately was instantly up in arms again. "There is nothing so absurd about risking your life for your country!" he declared.

"Isn't there?" asked the old man. "What is a country? A country is a piece of land surrounded on all sides by boundaries, usually unnatural. Englishmen are dying for England, Americans are dying for America, Germans are dying for Germany, Russians are dying for Russia. There are now fifty or sixty countries fighting in this war. Surely so many countries can't all be worth dying for."

"Anything worth living for," said Nately, "is worth dying for."

"And anything worth dying for," answered the sacrilegious old man, "is certainly worth living for.”
― Joseph Heller, Catch-22

“I used to think she was quite intelligent , in my stupidity. The reason I did was because she knew quite a lot about the theater and plays and literature and all that stuff. If somebody knows quite a lot about all those things, it takes you quite a while to find out whether they're really stupid or not.”
― J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

“I only want power so I can get books.”
― Eliezer Yudkowsky, Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality