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| 251 | Ninety-nine percent of everything that goes on in most Christian churches has nothing whatsoever to do with the actual religion. Intelligent people all notice this sooner or later, and they conclude that the entire one hundred percent is {+bullshit}, which is why atheism is connected with being intelligent in people's minds. | |
| 252 | No data yet.... It is a capital mistake to theorize before you have all the evidence. It biases the judgment. | |
| 253 | No man knew better than he the tricks that Destiny plays on a man, or how often the right man dies at the wrong time and place. A man never wore a gun without inviting trouble, he never stepped into a street and began the gunman's walk without the full knowledge that he might be a shade too slow, that some small thing might disturb him just long enough! | |
| 254 | No one ought to kill something... and not know it. | |
| 255 | No... he doesn't understand. Down here... a man is admired for daring to face another armed man with a pistol and for settling his quarrels bravely. It isn't a killing that is admired, it is the courage to fight for what you believe. You won't be admired as the man who killed Cullen Baker, you will be despised as someone who murdered a sleeping man.
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| 256 | Nothing but the truth could break me. What is harder than the truth? | |
| 257 | Nothing gained without cost is valued. I was reminded of that fact only today. She was the one we buried. Freedom has a cost, and all will bear it, so that all will value and preserve it. | |
| 258 | Nothing was more dangerous for the sanity of men than a woman with too much time on her hands. | |
| 259 | Now I hold by the Good Book, but in some ways I am closer to the Old Testament than the New. I believe in forgiving one's enemies, but keep your hand on your gun while you do it, mentally, at least. Because while you are forgiving him he may be studying ways to get at you. | |
| 260 | Now thou dost begin to comprehend. All folk must be allowed to speak their minds, whether thou dost think them wise or foolish - and thou must weigh what they do say, on chance that the most unlikely of them may be right. Therefore thou must needs see it enshrined in the highest Law of the Land.... If thou dost not, evil men may keep good folk from learning of their evil deeds. | |
| 261 | Now you do unconvince me. No need for all these flowers if you're sincere; only falsity needs poetry. | |
| 262 | Now, my personal role models might not be the ones you'd choose; but the point for you as a parent is to be one for your son - and get some others who will help you forge your son into the force he's been called to become. | |
| 263 | Odd thing, I'd never thought of my pa as a person. I expect a child rarely does think of his parents that way. They are a father and a mother, but a body rarely thinks of them as having hopes, dreams, ambitions and desires and loves. Yet day by day pa was now becoming more real to me than he had ever been, and got I to wandering if he ever doubted himself like I did, if he ever felt short of what he wished to be, if he ever longed for things beyond him that he couldn't quite put into words.
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| 264 | Old Laurent Moutier was gone, at the age of ninety, taking with him like everyone does a lifetime of unknown private hopes and dreams and fears and experiences, and leaving behind him like most people do a thin trace of himself in his living descendants. He had never had a clear idea of what would become of his beautiful mophaired daughter and his two handsome grandsons, nor did he really want one, but like every other twentieth-century male human in Europe he hoped they would live lives of peace, prosperity and plenty, while simultaneously knowing they almost certainly wouldn't. So he hoped they would bear their burdens with grace and good humour, and he was comforted in his final moments by the knowledge that so far they always had, and probably always would. | |
| 265 | Old stories are like old friends, she used to say. You have to visit them from time to time. | |
| 266 | Once liberty was surrendered to tyranny, it could be smothered for centuries before its flames again sprang to life and brightened the world. | |
| 267 | One cannot eliminate unhappiness any more than one can eliminate darkness. The goal of government, you see,... is to load the unhappiness onto those least able to make you suffer for it. | |
| 268 | One of the things that defines our character is how we handle our mistakes. | |
| 269 | One thing you’ll learn as you get older, Simon, is that when people tell you something unpleasant about themselves, it’s usually true. | |
| 270 | Only a fool humbles himself when the world is so full of men eager to do that job for him. | |
| 271 | Only in our dreams are we free. The rest of the time we need wages. | |
| 272 | Only those with evil intent would make someone swear an oath of truth over a secret ritual. They require oaths of secrecy to control the minds of the believers, to subjugate and place them into bondage. | |
| 273 | Only you can achieve self-worth for yourself. Any group offering it to you, or demanding it of you, comes bearing chains of slavery. | |
| 274 | Our officer cadre thinks that mercenaries have no honor, because they can be bought and sold. But honor is a luxury only a free man can afford. A good Imperial officer like me isn’t honor-bound, he’s just bound. | |
| 275 | Over the course of Uthen's illness, Lark came to realize something - that death can sometimes seem desirable in abstract, but look quite different when it's in your path, up close and personal. | |
| 276 | Paople who take up causes are not to be trusted, in my opinion. No matter which planet they're born on. | |
| 277 | Pattern, nothing is less funny than explaining humor... | |
| 278 | People on the bottom of systems always said they wanted equality, but did they, really? Or did they, deep down, yearn more to have the situation reversed? Did the oppressed really believe the ideals they espoused, or was that just rhetoric? Did they in fact really want to instead become the oppressors? | |
| 279 | People who hate don't usually recognize that vile taint within themselves. They spew their hatred as righteous. That corruption is what makes them so evil - and so dangerous. They are able to do the most despicable things and think themselves heroes for having done them. | |
| 280 | People who live in comfortable, settled towns with law-abiding citizens and a government to protect them, they never think of the men who came first, the ones who went through hell to build something. | |
| 281 | Politics ain't much different, Tyrel, than one of these iceburgs you hear tell of. Most of what goes on is beneath the surface. It doesn't make any difference how good a man is, or how good his ideas are, or even how honest he is unless he can put across a program, and that's politics. | |
| 282 | 'Profit' is a dirty word only to the leeches of the world. They want it seen as evil, so they can more easily snatch what they did not earn. | |
| 283 | Raising awareness for a cause is one thing, but to have a vocal minority impose its will onto the rest of us and then attempt to stifle dissent is outrageous... | |
| 284 | Rulers may be intelligent and shrewd, but they use their minds to gain power, not to try to understand the universe and our place in it. I think very few of them are really wise. | |
| 285 | She and her sister were dressed in purple, with gold buckles at their throats by way of brooches, and another gold buckle each at the end of hatpins which they wore through their grey hair in order apparently to match their brooches. Their faces, identical to the point of indecency, were quite expressionless, as though they were the preliminary lay-outs for faces and were waiting for sentience to be injected. | |
| 286 | She couldn't read them, of course; reading had been a lost art since people could hook into a computer for anything they wanted or needed. | |
| 287 | She said the cafeteria must follow state guidelines; otherwise their funding could be jeopardized. | |
| 288 | She understood, now, why life had seemed so empty, so pointless: she herself had rendered it so in refusing to think. Nicci had been a slave to everyone of need. She had given her masters their only real weapon against her; she had surrendered to their twisted lies by putting the crippling chains of guilt around her own neck for them, giving herself freely into slavery to the whims and wishes of others instead of living her life as she should have - for herself. She had never asked why it was right for her to be a slave to another’s desires, but not evil for them to enslave her. She was not contributing to the betterment of mankind, but was merely a servant to countless puling little tyrants. Evil was not one large entity, but a ceaseless torrent of small wrongs left unchallenged, until they festered into monsters. | |
| 289 | Slavery spreads, for if it is accepted to take a man's life for amusement, then how much wiser to take it for profit? | |
| 290 | So many vows... they make you swear and swear. Defend the king. Obey the king. Keep his secrets. Do his bidding. Your life for his. But obey your father. Love your sister. Protect the innocent. Defend the weak. Respect the gods. Obey the laws. It's too much. No matter what you do, you're forsaking one vow or the other. | |
| 291 | So yes. It had flaws, but what does that matter when it comes to matters of the heart? We love what we love. Reason does not enter into it. In many ways, unwise love is the truest love. Anyone can love a thing because. That's as easy as putting a penny in your pocket. But to love something despite. To know the flaws and love them too. That is rare and pure and perfect. | |
| 292 | So... if you spurned a miracle because it seemed to come too easily, would you ever get another? | |
| 293 | Soldiers seemed to care a great deal for flags. She had never understood that. You could not kill a man with one. You could not protect yourself with one. And yet men would die for flags. | |
| 294 | Some people charged toward the goal, running for all they had. Others stumbled. But it wasn’t the speed that mattered. It was the direction they were going. | |
| 295 | Some prices are just too high, no matter how much you may want the prize. The one thing you can’t trade for your heart’s desire is your heart. | |
| 296 | Some say that the hardest part about living and honorable life is never giving in to temptation. They are wrong. The hardest part is picking yourself up afgter you've failed, standing up, and resuming your place on the Wall. | |
| 297 | Sometimes all the choices are poor ones, Fool, and still a man must choose. | |
| 298 | Sometimes I wonder if anything is ever ended. The words a man speaks today live on in his thoughts or the memories of others, and the shot fired, the blow struck, the thing done today is like a stone tossed into a pool and the ripples keep widening out until they touch lives far from ours. | |
| 299 | Sometimes it is easier to pull a knife out of a man than to ask him to forget words you have uttered. | |
| 300 | Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space. | |