In the end, people believed what they wanted to believe. The truth had very little to do with it.
Such beliefs were born in man’s willful refusal to use his mind, in his lust for the unearned, his wish for success without effort. Such beliefs were the embodiment of hatred for all that was good, hatred for virtue, hatred for value. It was ultimately a hatred of themselves, of life, of existence. It was that hate, that dedication to death, that was the true manifestation of evil.
Your loveliness is not a mask, layered over a rotten core. It blossoms from the beauty inside.
Like all power, it simply exists. It’s the user who determines what use it will be put to.
I’m going to do the worst possible thing I could do to you and your people – what my grandfather would have done to you. “I’m going to leave you all to suffer the consequences of your own actions.
Don’t try to fix the past, dear one – it can’t be done.
I have found that people do not often want to believe the truth. It is of little value to them.
This was life as it should be lived – proud, reasoned, and a slave to no other man. This was the rightful exaltation of the individual, the nobility of the human spirit.
She understood, now, why life had seemed so empty, so pointless: she herself had rendered it so in refusing to think.
She had never asked why it was right for her to be a slave to another’s desires, but not evil for them to enslave her. She was not contributing to the betterment of mankind, but was merely a servant to countless puling little tyrants. Evil was not one large entity, but a ceaseless torrent of small wrongs left unchallenged, until they festered into monsters.
Your only chance is to let the truth escape.
Life was not fair, it simply existed. If you accidentally stepped on a poison snake, you got bitten. Intentions were irrelevant.
The truth can seem awfully small and insignificant when compared to a mountain of lies.
How can you be alive, now, if you were dead?” “Well, death isn’t what it used to be.
Because, Richard, many people must be ruled to thrive. In their selfishness and greed, they see free people as their oppressors.
As long as we have choices in life and use our heads, there is always the possibility of turning around the worst situation.
The good in life is what quenches hatred in normal people, the way a smile can calm a quarrel. But in those people who carry this flaw, their hatred burns so hot they come to hate what is good in life specifically because they don’t want to stop hating. Hatred becomes the driving purpose of their lives. They live to hate.
Not all choices in life are ones you would like, but those are all that are presented to you. Sometimes you must choose what is better for the ones you love than yourself.
There seemed to be some inner need in many people to believe that the world would end in some cataclysmic event. Usually in the very near future.
Oftentimes it’s easier for lunatics to attract impassioned followers than it is for sensible people to get people to listen to reason. People are often more willing to believe lies than the truth. Lies can be made to sound pleasant. The truth, by its very nature, isn’t always so attractive.