Robert Ledbetter

“I have absolutely no pleasure in the stimulants in which I sometimes so madly indulge. It has not been in the pursuit of pleasure that I have periled life and reputation and reason. It has been the desperate attempt to escape from torturing memories, from a sense of insupportable loneliness and a dread of some strange impending doom.”
― Edgar Allan Poe

“The memory of their former freedom will not let them rest; so that the safest course is either to destroy them, or to go and live in them.”
― Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince

“For, in truth, there is no sure way of holding other than by destroying”
― Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince

“when they depend upon their own resources and can employ force, they seldom fail. Hence it comes that all armed Prophets have been victorious, and all unarmed Prophets have been destroyed.”
― Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince