The Imperial Service could win a war without coffee, but would prefer not to have to.
Your father calls you to his court. You need not pack. You go garbed in glorious raiment. He waits eagerly by his palace doors to welcome you, and has prepared a place at the high table, by his side, in the company of the great-souled, honored, and best-beloved.
I take it as a man’s duty to restrain himself.
I do think, half of what we call madness is just some poor slob dealing with pain by a strategy that annoys the people around him.
It was never what I wanted to buy that held my heart’s hope. It was what I wanted to be.
Ignorance is not stupidity, but it might as well be. And I do not like feeling stupid.
When you choose an action, you choose the consequences of that action.
I have a catch-phrase to describe my plot-generation technique – ‘What’s the worst possible thing I can do to these people?’
Any communitys arm of force – military, police, security – needs people in it who can do necessary evil, and yet not be made evil by it. To do only the necessary and no more. To constantly question the assumptions, to stop the slide into atrocity.
Endure pain, find joy, and make your own meaning, because the universe certainly isn’t going to supply it.
There was no limit to what one man might do, if he gave all, and held back nothing.
Suicidal glory is the luxury of the irresponsible.
If the truth doesn’t save us, what does that say about us?
On the sixth day God saw He couldn’t do it all, so He created ENGINEERS.
If power was an illusion, wasn’t weakness necessarily one also?
Children might or might not be a blessing, but to create them and then fail them was surely damnation.
A true Vor, Miles told himself severely, does not bury his face in his liegewoman’s breasts and cry – even if he is at a convenient height for it.
War is not its own end, except in some catastrophic slide into absolute damnation. It’s peace that’s wanted. Some better peace than the one you started with.
When the time comes to leap in faith whether you have your eyes open or closed or scream all the way down or not makes no practical difference.
All the geniuses I ever met were so just part of the time. To qualify, you only have to be great once, you know. Once when it matters.
Never do yourself, what you can con professionals into doing for you.