“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
Terry Goodkind
Born place: in Omaha, Nebraska, The United States
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“It was strange to stand there in front of the mirror and see myself like I was my own best friend, a kid wanted to hang with forever. This was a boy I could travel to the seacoasts with, a boy I'd like to meet up with in foreign cities like Calcutta and London and Brazil, a boy I could trust who also had a good sense of humor and liked smoked oysters from a can and good weed and the occasional 40 ounces of malt. If I was going to be alone for the rest of my life this was the person I wanted to be alone with.”
― Russell Banks, quote from Rule of the Bone
“En dan is er nog iets met dat licht. Iemand die van iemand anders houdt, zegt altijd dat dat komt doordat die ander zo mooi is, op een of ander manier, van buiten of van binnen, of allebei, terwijl andere mensen daar vaak niets van zien, en meestal is het ook niet zo. Maar wie altijd mooi is, is degene die liefheeft, want hij heeft lief en wordt bestraald door dat licht. Er is een man die van mij houdt en die mij op een bepaalde manier ontzettend mooi vindt, maar dat ben ik helemaal niet. Hij is mooi, al is hij op allerlei manieren ontzettend lelijk. En ik ben ook mooi, maar alleen omdat ik ook van hem houd – al weet hij dat niet. Hij denkt van niet, maar ik houd van hem.”
― Harry Mulisch, quote from The Assault
“Why were there so many barriers between us, always? Barriers of clothing, of etiquette, of time and age and reason.”
― Melanie Benjamin, quote from Alice I Have Been
“I was born the son of a humble mechanic. A quantum mechanic.”
― Mark Oliver Everett, quote from Things The Grandchildren Should Know
“That death, so full of suffering for us both, suffering that still overwhelmed my life, was yet a severe mercy. A mercy as severe as death, a severity as merciful as love.”
― Sheldon Vanauken, quote from A Severe Mercy: A Story of Faith, Tragedy and Triumph
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The Closing of the A...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.
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