“the party that governed, restored an orderly nation. Success through merit alone. Economic rationalism. Prosperity through order.” He snickered. “Finally, a party that kept their campaign promises. Judges, politicians, leaders of any kind were jailed, intimidated, or paid off. Just about every major news service was bought out by Orderist supporters. What was left was mostly drowned out.”
― Julian North, quote from Age of Order
“Among the families I grew up with, and within my own, there is always the game. This competition to be more, have more, to seek position, status.”
― Julian North, quote from Age of Order
“Groups of highborn clustered in the halls like nests of roaches.”
― Julian North, quote from Age of Order
“I wrote that outsiders were often lonely, but they needed to be to change the world around them. And they understood loyalty far better than those blessed by the embrace of society.”
― Julian North, quote from Age of Order
“The highborn talk about merit, bettering yourself, democracy, but it’s all crap. A rich man’s got a vote allocation of a thousand, and Aba’s got one, because she pays less tax. They get their own streets, their own parks, their own police, their own special net. Then they complain about the burden of the low Aptitude Tiers of society.”
― Julian North, quote from Age of Order
“A woman with legs up to my chest emerged from one of the illustrious establishments. She was shaped like an hourglass, but had the shrunken face of a mummy.”
― Julian North, quote from Age of Order
“The uproar among the masses would be suppressed, then the information discredited and forgotten.”
― Julian North, quote from Age of Order
“Faithful: When will you learn to leave well enough alone?
Alanna sighed. "When I want to stop learning, I guess.”
― Tamora Pierce, quote from Lioness Rampant
“Valdivia's actions symbolize man's indefatigable thirst to take control of a place where he can exercise total authority. That phrase, attributed to Caesar, proclaiming he would rather be first-in-command in some humble Alpine village than second-in-command in Rome, is repeated less pompously, but no less effectively, in the epic campaign that is the conquest of Chile. If, in the moment the conquistador was facing death at the hands of tht invincible Araucanian Caupolican, he had not been overwhelmed with fury, like a hunted animal, I do not doubt that judging his life, Valdivia would have felt death was fully justified. He belonged to that special class of men the species produces every so often, in whom a craving for limitless power is so extreme that any suffering to achieve it seems natural, and he had become the omnipotent ruler of a warrior nation.”
― Ernesto Che Guevara, quote from The Motorcycle Diaries: Notes on a Latin American Journey
“Words had to change their ordinary meaning and to take that which was now given them. Reckless audacity came to be considered the courage of a loyal supporter; prudent hesitation, specious cowardice; moderation was held to be a cloak for unmanliness; ability to see all sides of a question incapacity to act on any. Frantic violence became the attribute of manliness; cautious plotting a justifiable means of self-defense. [5] The advocate of extreme measures was always trustworthy; his opponent a man to be suspected. To succeed in a plot was to have a shrewd head, to divine a plot a still shrewder; but to try to provide against having to do either was to break up your party and to be afraid of your adversaries. In short, to forestall an intending criminal, or to suggest the idea of a crime where it was lacking was equally commended, [6] until even blood became a weaker tie than party, from the superior readiness of those united by the latter to dare everything without reserve; for such associations sought not the blessings derivable from established institutions but were formed by ambition to overthrow them; and the confidence of their members in each other rested less on any religious sanction than upon complicity in crime.”
― Thucydides, quote from History of the Peloponnesian War
“To stop us reading forbidden books they will have to burn every manuscript. But to stop us thinking forbidden thoughts they will have to cut off our heads.”
― Philippa Gregory, quote from The Queen's Fool
“So that's what--one "yes," one "not sure," and one "I had had a dream about a bug.”
― Tad Williams, quote from City of Golden Shadow
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