Quotes from Naked Empire

Terry Goodkind ·  736 pages

Rating: (43.7K votes)


“If you are unwilling to defend your right to your own lives,
then you are merely like mice trying to argue with owls.
You think their ways are wrong.
They think you are dinner.”
― Terry Goodkind, quote from Naked Empire


“People use democracy as a free-floating abstraction disconnected from reality. Democracy in and of itself is not necessarily good. Gang rape, after all, is democracy in action.

All men have the right to live their own life. Democracy must be rooted in a rational philosophy that first and foremost recognizes the right of an individual. A few million Imperial Order men screaming for the lives of a much smaller number of people in the New World may win a democratic vote, but it does not give them the right to those lives, or make their calls for such killing right.

Democracy is not a synonym for justice or for freedom. Democracy is not a sacred right sanctifying mob rule. Democracy is a principle that is subordinate to the inalienable rights of the individual.”
― Terry Goodkind, quote from Naked Empire


“Right and wrong are not the product of census.”
― Terry Goodkind, quote from Naked Empire


“If something is wrong, it matters not if a thousand men are for it; you must still oppose it. If something is just, no amount of popular outcry should stay you from your course.”
― Terry Goodkind, quote from Naked Empire


“Everyone makes mistakes. How a person deals with their mistakes is a mark of their character.”
― Terry Goodkind, quote from Naked Empire



“Only you can achieve self-worth for yourself. Any group offering it to you, or demanding it of you, comes bearing chains of slavery.”
― Terry Goodkind, quote from Naked Empire


“Worse, she already knew that there were bitter people devoted to the morbid ideal of the presutural cannibalism of appeasement that they defined as peace”
― Terry Goodkind, quote from Naked Empire


“The way they were treated should make you angry,” Richard said as he started away, “but not because you share an attribute with them.” Taken aback by his words, even looking a little hurt, Jennsen didn’t move. “What do you mean?” Richard paused and turned back to her. “That’s how the Imperial Order thinks. That’s how Owen’s people think. It’s a belief in granting disembodied prestige, or the mantle of guilt, to all those who share some specific trait or attribute. “The Imperial Order would like you to believe that your virtue, your ultimate value, or even your wickedness, arises entirely from being born a member of a given group, that free will itself is either impotent or nonexistent. They want you to believe that all people are merely interchangeable members of groups that share fixed, preordained characteristics, and they are predestined to live through a collective identity, the group will, unable to rise on individual merit because there can be no such thing as independent, individual merit, only group merit. “They believe that people can only rise above their station in life when selected to be awarded recognition because their group is due an indulgence, and so a representative, a stand-in for the group, must be selected to be awarded the badge of self-worth. Only the reflected light off this badge, they believe, can bring the radiance of self-worth to others of their group. “But those granted this badge live with the uneasy knowledge that it’s only an illusion of competence. It never brings any sincere self-respect because you can’t fool yourself. Ultimately, because it is counterfeit, the sham of esteem granted because of a connection with a group can only be propped up by force. “This belittling of mankind, the Order’s condemnation of everyone and everything human, is their transcendent judgment of man’s inadequacy. “When you direct your anger at me for having a trait borne by someone else, you pronounce me guilty for their crimes. That’s what happens when people say I’m a monster because our father was a monster. If you admire someone simply because you believe their group is deserving, then you embrace the same corrupt ethics. “The Imperial Order says that no individual should have the right to achieve something on his own, to accomplish what someone else cannot, and so magic must be stripped from mankind. They say that accomplishment is corrupt because it is rooted in the evil of self-interest, therefore the fruits of that accomplishment are tainted by its evil. This is why they preach that any gain must be sacrificed to those who have not earned it. They hold that only through such sacrifice can those fruits be purified and made good. “We believe, on the other hand, that your own individual life is the value and its own end, and what you achieve is yours. “Only you can achieve self-worth for yourself. Any group offering it to you, or demanding it of you, comes bearing chains of slavery.”
― Terry Goodkind, quote from Naked Empire


“You can't reason with a nightmare”
― Terry Goodkind, quote from Naked Empire


“Their conscious, deliberate act of murder takes the irreplaceable value of life from another. A murderer, by his own choice to kill, forfeits the right to his own life.”
― Terry Goodkind, quote from Naked Empire



“There are times when there is no choice but to act immediately; even then it must be with your best judgment, using all your experience and everything you do know.”
― Terry Goodkind, quote from Naked Empire


“Evil grants no mercy, and to attempt to appease it is nothing more than a piecemeal surrender to it. Surrender to evil is slavery at best, death at worse. -Richard Rahl”
― Terry Goodkind, quote from Naked Empire


“Rational moral choices are based on the value of life, not a consensus. A consensus can’t make the sun rise at midnight, nor can it change a wrong into a right, or the other way around. If something is wrong, it matters not if a thousand other men are for it; you must still oppose it. If something is just, no amount of popular outcry should stay you from your course.”
― Terry Goodkind, quote from Naked Empire


“your own individual life is the value and its own end, and what you achieve is yours. “Only you can achieve self-worth for yourself. Any group offering it to you, or demanding it of you, comes bearing chains of slavery.”
― Terry Goodkind, quote from Naked Empire


“Moral compromise rejects the concept of right and wrong. It says that everyone is equal, all desires are equally valid, all action is equally valid, so everyone should compromise to get along.”
― Terry Goodkind, quote from Naked Empire



“Ein Moment unfassbarer Gewalt - ebenso unverfälscht schön und köstlich wie grausam.”
― Terry Goodkind, quote from Naked Empire


“Your actions, not your feelings, speak the truth of your intent.” Richard”
― Terry Goodkind, quote from Naked Empire


About the author

Terry Goodkind
Born place: in Omaha, Nebraska, The United States
See more on GoodReads

Popular quotes

“Lo que más odio de escribir en la era digital es que todo acaba por desaparecer.
Es como escribir cartas que se evaporan en el aire después de que uno las lea.
Por eso hago copias.
El papel dura siempre.”
― Patrick Carman, quote from Skeleton Creek


“There is a fine line between friendship and parenting, and when that line is crossed, the result is often disastrous. A parent who strives to make a true friend of his or her child may well sacrifice authority, and though the parent may be comfortable with surrendering the dominant position, the unintentional result will be to steal from that child the necessary guidance and, more importantly, the sense of security the parent is supposed to impart. On the opposite side, a friend who takes a role as parents forgets the most important ingredient of friendship: respect.

For respect is the guiding principle of friendship, the lighthouse beacon that directs the course of any true friendship. And respect demands trust.”
― R.A. Salvatore, quote from The Silent Blade


“I was angry, but I was also tired and devastated by the idea that I would have to spend another four hours trying to reassemble some obnoxious feel-good movie that had done nothing but make me feel bad. I did what any tough, self-reliant, overburdened, sleep-deprived, seasoned investigator would do: I cried.”
― Lisa Lutz, quote from The Spellmans Strike Again


“By the same token, I think it's time that we allow ourselves to experience real anger as women. And I don't mean that passive aggressive dance that we've employed for too many years. It's not real anger if it is implied or a few degrees removed, if it takes the form of whispering, or cold shoulders, or silent treatment. Real anger is what popular culture would have us be afraid of, based on the fact that it is not courteous, elegant, or feminine.”
― Koren Zailckas, quote from Smashed: Story of a Drunken Girlhood


“But unlike human children, dogs don’t dream about or obsess over past experiences the way we do. They live in the moment. Kane wasn’t spending his days worrying about shiny floors, and he naturally reacted to protect himself when the original accident happened. But since his owner intensified the traumatic experience with her overly excited, emotional energy, then nurtured that fear by giving him affection every time he got near a shiny floor, Kane now saw shiny floors as a very big deal indeed. Whenever an animal isn’t allowed to move through its fear, that fear can become a phobia. What Kane needed was a calm-assertive pack leader to recondition him and show him that”
― Cesar Millan, quote from Cesar's Way: The Natural, Everyday Guide to Understanding and Correcting Common Dog Problems


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