Nicole

“Cognitive dissonance, yes. It’s not enough to be able to do a thing. People, human people, want to be able to believe it’s right to do so. The first thing those in authority do, after they’ve used main force and brutality to take over, is paper over everything with reasons why they were right to do it. Both because it helps you keep people in line if you can get them to believe it, and because it makes it easier to enjoy the spoils of your brutality if you convince yourself you’ve earned it. Human history is full of social conventions designed to salve the consciences of the mighty and curb the ambitions of the small. There’s something in the way humans are wired that means we want to be right by some external measure. So we invent philosophies to tell us we were right to do what we did and we’re allowed to do what we want. You find a god, basically, who tells you you’re okay.”
― Adrian Tchaikovsky, Alien Clay

“A people without hope, what will they do? One of two things: nothing, or everything.”
― Adrian Tchaikovsky, Alien Clay

“the hardest thing about sacrifice is not knowing if it’ll be worth it. What’s the point in taking the bullet if the person behind you in the charge loses heart, dithers, runs away? You may as well have stayed at home. You only have one life after all. It can be very hard to know when to throw it away.”
― Adrian Tchaikovsky, Alien Clay

“But then the Mandate was all about those neat boxes, those false binaries. Orthodox and unorthodox; his and hers; us and them.”
― Adrian Tchaikovsky, Alien Clay