Quotes from Armor

“You are
What you do
When it counts"
- The Masao”
― John Steakley, quote from Armor

“Because it was the right thing?"
"Oh shit, I hope not."
"Afraid of becoming noble?" he asked, his eyes twinkling.
"That too. But basically, that's the worst reason I can think of for killing. 'That its the right thing to do'. You kill out of outrage or fury or to keep from dying or something like it, that's fine. Hell, kill them rather than bother with them - or be bothered by them. But if you're killing them because 'its the right thing to do', its only the right thing because you've done so many wrong things up until then to make that spot. It's not the right thing to do. It's the best of the last of your choices."
"That's the longest I've ever heard you talk at one time."
"That's because you never ask me about my hair.”
― John Steakley, quote from Armor

“Can no one imagine an incompetent Legend?”
― John Steakley, quote from Armor

“You are what you do when it counts”
― John Steakley, quote from Armor

“The skin was not skin at all, but bone. Ectoskeleton.”
― John Steakley, quote from Armor

“Are you there, Felix? Are you there?”
― John Steakley, quote from Armor

“He's the best of us," said Felix, reciting. "The best of our best, the best that each of us will ever build or ever love. So pray for this Guardian of our growth and choose him well, for if he be not truly blessed, then our designs are surely frivolous and our future but a tragic waste of hope. Bless our best and adore for he doth bear our measure to the Cosmos.”
― John Steakley, quote from Armor

“Because it was the right thing?"
"Oh shit, I hope not."
"Afraid of becoming noble?" he asked, his eyes twinkling.
"That too. But basically, that's the worst reason I can think of for killing. 'That its the right thing to do'. You kill out of outrage or fury or to keep from dying or something like it, that's fine. Hell, kill them rather than bother with them - or be bothered by them. But if you're killing them because 'its the right thing to do', its only the right thing because you've done so many wrong things up until then to make that spot. It's not the right thing to do. It's the best of the last of your choices."
"That's the longest I've ever heard you talk at one time."
"That's because you never ask me about my hair.”
― John Steakley, quote from Armor

“You are What you do When it counts.”
― John Steakley, quote from Armor

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Popular quotes

“It will be agreed that you can’t divide a cake up into its component crumbs and say ‘This crumb corresponds to the first word in the recipe, this crumb corresponds to the second word in the recipe’, etc. In this sense it will be agreed that the whole recipe maps onto the whole cake. But now suppose we change one word in the recipe; for instance, suppose ‘baking-powder’ is deleted or is changed to ‘yeast’. We bake 100 cakes according to the new version of the recipe, and 100 cakes according to the old version of the recipe. There is a key difference between the two sets of 100 cakes, and this difference is due to a one-word difference in the recipes. Although there is no one-to-one mapping from word to crumb of cake, there is one-to-one mapping from word difference to whole-cake difference. ‘Baking-powder’ does not correspond to any particular part of the cake: its influence affects the rising, and hence the final shape, of the whole cake. If ‘baking-powder’ is deleted, or replaced by ‘flour’, the cake will not rise. If it is replaced by ‘yeast’, the “cake will rise but it will taste more like bread. There will be a reliable, identifiable difference between cakes baked according to the original versoin and the ‘mutated’ versions of the recipe, even though there is no particular ‘bit’ of any cake that corresponds to the words in question. This is a good analogy for what happens when a gene mutates.”
― Richard Dawkins, quote from The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe Without Design

“I wonder if our names determine our destiny, or if destiny leads us to choose certain names.”
― Michelle Moran, quote from Nefertiti

“If we say that we have no sin,
We deceive ourselves, and there's no truth in us.
Why then belike we must sin,
And so consequently die.
Ay, we must die an everlasting death.”
― Christopher Marlowe, quote from Dr. Faustus

“It's a shame you know," he called over his shoulder.
"What's a shame?" Duncan asked.
"That I didn't capture her first."
Duncan smiled. "Nay, Edmond, it was a blessing. God's truth, I would have taken her from you.”
― Julie Garwood, quote from Honor's Splendour

“He could not believe that ordinary people in the Culture really wanted the war, no matter how they had voted. They had their communist Utopia. They were soft and pampered and indulged, and the Contact section’s evangelical materialism provided their conscience-salving good works. What more could they want? The war had to be the Mind’s idea; it was part of their clinical drive to clean up the galaxy, make it run on nice, efficient lines, without waste, injustice or suffering. The fools in the Culture couldn’t see that one day the Minds would start thinking how wasteful and inefficient the humans in the Culture themselves were.”
― Iain M. Banks, quote from Consider Phlebas

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BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.

We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.

Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.