“Make no choice, and you have chosen. Failure to decide, because you lack the right, is itself a decision, First Councilor. In abstaining, you vote.”
― George R.R. Martin, quote from Tuf Voyaging
“The sad truth of history has always been that the unreasoning masses follow the powerful, and not the wise.”
― George R.R. Martin, quote from Tuf Voyaging
“Monsters are entirely mythological, sir, like spirits, werebeasts, and competent bureaucrats.”
― George R.R. Martin, quote from Tuf Voyaging
“A culture with cats is richer and more humane than one deprived of their unique companionship.”
― George R.R. Martin, quote from Tuf Voyaging
“La historia ha confirmado la triste verdad de que las masas irracionales siempre se han alineado detrás del poderoso y no del sabio.”
― George R.R. Martin, quote from Tuf Voyaging
“-Te llamaré Sospecha... tus compañeros de camada serán Duda, Hostilidad, Ingratitud y Estupidez.”
― George R.R. Martin, quote from Tuf Voyaging
“I wait with sullen resignation,” said Tuf, unmoving.”
― George R.R. Martin, quote from Tuf Voyaging
“Se comete un gran error creyendo que los seres humanos son capaces de alcanzar tarde o temprano los límites de su satisfacción.”
― George R.R. Martin, quote from Tuf Voyaging
“Her name was Tolly Mune, but in the stories they call her all sorts of things.”
― George R.R. Martin, quote from Tuf Voyaging
“Equity is often difficult to judge, and still more difficult to achieve,”
― George R.R. Martin, quote from Tuf Voyaging
“It fits,” said Tolly Mune. “Sometimes I feel this ship is haunted.” “This suggests why it is wiser to rely upon intellect rather than feelings, Portmaster.”
― George R.R. Martin, quote from Tuf Voyaging
“No sooner had the Flowering taken root, so to speak, than your people rushed back to their private chambers, unleashed their carnal lusts and parental urges, and began reproducing faster than ever. Mean family size is greater now than five years ago, by .0072 persons, and your average citizen becomes a parent sooner by .0102 years.”
― George R.R. Martin, quote from Tuf Voyaging
“Weight, sir, is entirely a function of gravity, and is therefore most malleable. Moreover, I am unwilling to concede you the authority to judge my weight over, under, or just right, these being subjective criteria. Aesthetics vary from world to world, as do genotypes and hereditary predisposition. I am quite satisfied with my present mass, sir.”
― George R.R. Martin, quote from Tuf Voyaging
“If," said Haviland Tuf. "A most difficult word. So short, and so often fraught with disappointment and frustration.”
― George R.R. Martin, quote from Tuf Voyaging
“Such are the vicissitudes of life," Tuf said, "that each of us must sometimes accept that which he does not like.”
― George R.R. Martin, quote from Tuf Voyaging
“when we hope to be a You, being treated like an It, as though we do not matter, carries a particularly harsh sting.”
― Daniel Goleman, quote from Social Intelligence: The New Science of Human Relationships
“He was half a politician, and like most of his kind he was an insecure man.”
― Ross Macdonald, quote from The Chill
“My last chance had vanished into itself like a snail coiling up into his shell.
Insidiously I had lost my grip, and now this was it. I thought all this without much emotion. I really didn't care anymore. I couldn't hang on anymore. I didn't have the guts to kill myself, but I didn't want it to continue. I walked a couple of blocks, empty, listless, and wished I could cry.
...The diabolic hope, the purposeful pulsing of blood, the flight into coherence allowed for some rationalizing an afterlife. A new theology was evolving, one that had a faith-in-death clause. It was evolved when I kicked a dead waterbug on the pavement. It was dried out, hollowed, emptied, like some kind of shell. Maybe, I thought, its body is a shell, maybe all bodies are shells. We hatch and die. Our spirit or something like that is the yoke: it lives the real life, the true life.
It wasn't comforting.”
― Arthur Nersesian, quote from The Fuck-Up
“I could not help being struck with the foolishness of that institution which treated me as if I were mere flesh and blood and bones, to be locked up.”
― Henry David Thoreau, quote from Civil Disobedience and Other Essays
“No, no- the sky will grow dark, cold rain will fall and all trace of the right way will be blotted out. You will be all alone. And still you will have to go on. There will be ghosts in the dark and voices in the air, disgusting prophecies coming true I wouldn’t wonder and absent faces present on every side, as the man said. And still you will have to go on. The last bridge will fall behind you and the last lights will go out, followed by the sun, the moon and the stars; and still you will have to go on. You will come to regions more desolate and wretched than you ever dreamed could exist, places of sorrow created entirely by that mean superstition which you yourself have put about for so long. But still you will have to go on”
― Richard Adams, quote from Shardik
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.