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| 301 | The monsters that rose from the dead, they are nothing compared to the ones we carry in our hearts. | |
| 302 | The notion that some people routinely get up at four o'clock in the morning is enough to give me shivers. I mean, that's usually maybe two hours after I've gone to bed! Maybe no hours at all, some night. | |
| 303 | The only part of an argument that really matters is what we think of the people arguing. X claims a, Y claims b. They make arguments to support their claims, with any number of points. But when their listeners remember the discussion, what matters is simply that X believes a and Y believes b. People then form their judgment on what they think of X and Y. | |
| 304 | The only sovereign I can allow to rule me is reason. The first law of reason is this: what exists, exists; what is, is. From this irreducible, bedrock principle, all knowledge is built. This is the foundation from which life is embraced. Reason is a choice. Wishes and whims are not facts, nor are they a means to discovering them. Reason is our only way of grasping reality - it's our basic tool of survival. We are free to evade the effort of thinking, to reject reason, but we are not free to avoid the penalty of the abyss we refuse to see. | |
| 305 | The point is taken.... Yes - if the words of the song justify the behavior they wish to practice but have been taught not to, they will wish to believe those words. From there, it is only a very small step to persuade oneself that they are true.
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| 306 | The problem with Huck is that she's right just often enough to let her think it's a law of nature. | |
| 307 | The purpose of a storyteller is not to tell you how to think, but to give you questions to think upon. | |
| 308 | The shape of the government they made reflects the distrust these groups had for each other. | |
| 309 | The teacher who does not learn from his students does not teach. The student who sneers at his teacher's true knowledge is like one who chooses unripe grapes and scorns the sweet fruit of the vine which has been allowed to ripen in it's own time. | |
| 310 | The temptation to form premature theories upon insufficient data is the bane of our profession. | |
| 311 | The thought of death held no terror for Kisada. Novice warriors lost nerve in battle for fear of life and limb. They came ready to kill, but never considered that they might die. Overcautious, they often lost their lives, dying because they were not willing to risk themselves completely. | |
| 312 | The truth is, it's easier to see the justice in people you deem to be like you, and far easier to find the wrong in those who differ. | |
| 313 | The truth of a situation most often turns out to be that one with the simplest explanation. | |
| 314 | The tyrant fears the laugh more than the assassin’s bullet. | |
| 315 | The voluntary consent of the human subject is absolutely essential. This means that the person involved should have legal capacity to give consent; should be so situated as to be able to exercise free power of choice, without the intervention of any element of force, fraud, deceit, duress, overreaching, or other ulterior form of constraint or coercion; and should have sufficient knowledge and comprehension of the elements of the subject matter involved as to enable him to make an understanding and enlightened decision. This latter element requires that before the acceptance of an affirmative decision by the experimental subject there should be made known to him the nature, duration, and purpose of the experiment; the method and means by which it is to be conducted; all inconveniences and hazards reasonably to be expected; and the effects upon his health or person which may possibly come from his participation in the experiment. | |
| 316 | The Wizard's Fourth Rule, he called it. He said that there was magic in forgiveness, in the Fourth Rule. Magic to heal. In the forgiveness you grant, and more so in the forgiveness you receive. | |
| 317 | The world is full of obvious things which nobody by any chance ever observes. | |
| 318 | The young idiots of today often rely too heavily on TV for diversionary info and enjoyment instead of reading. But if we want to change our world, we're going to have to take a tip from the Cable Guy: Kill that baby sitter and then pick up a good book. | |
| 319 | There are more miracles than we realize, then, for they are all about us, and need not be great and mighty. Grace comes to all who are open to it; miracles hap in places far removed from fame. 'Tis only the few that catch the eye of mighty folk that do astound us all.
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| 320 | There can be many opinions on a thing, but there is only one truth. | |
| 321 | There is no greater value than life - and that's what you partially recognize by your confused notion of granting mercy. 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. Mercy for such evil is nothing short of excusing it and thus allowing evil to prevail - it codifies the taking of innocent life by not making the murderer forfeit their own guilty life. | |
| 322 | There is no law that cannot be twisted against its original purpose... no law that the powerful cannot corrupt to misuse - but that corruption can be purged, the twists unwound. Without the law, everyone is a victim sooner or later. If we defend the law; it will protect the weak more often than not. | |
| 323 | There was an interesting thing about stories, he had realized. Tell people a truth in plain words, and they were more than likely to forget it amidst the thoughts and cares of their daily lives. But clothing that same truth in a story allowed people to uncover it for themselves, and having done so, they might keep it in their hearts. | |
| 324 | There was something here, he thought, that nearly belonged to the gods. Humans had built a world inside the world, which reflected it in pretty much the same way as a drop of water reflects the landscape. And yet... and yet.
Inside this little world they had taken pains to put all the things you might think they would want to escape from - hatred, fear, tyranny, and so forth. Death was intrigued. They thought they wanted to be taken out of themselves, and every art humans dreampt up took them further in. He was fascinated. | |
| 325 | There will be people like this in any culture, for every society is made of individuals. You must learn this. Do not let your assumptions about a culture block your ability to perceive the individual, or you will fail. | |
| 326 | There would be trouble enough, but a man is born to trouble, and it is best to meet it when it comes and not lose sleep until it does. | |
| 327 | There’s a difference between thinking an action is wise and doing it. | |
| 328 | Therefore, parent of he that liveth in the God-blessed testosterone fog, train your son that he is not free to use, abuse, abandon, desert, ignore, overlook, disregard, forget, avoid, mistreat or neglect that which gets placed under his care; and if, if he does, he is to have his backside whupped. | |
| 329 | There's a saying that when guns are outlawed, only the outlaws will have guns. | |
| 330 | There's more to being a woman than what happens with a man in bed, believe me. You should learn that. What you can give a man in bed he can get from any street woman, what he wants from a wife is that, but much more. He wants tenderness, understanding, the feeling of working together for something.
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| 331 | There's no job so simple it can't get messy if you don't pay attention to it. | |
| 332 | There's nothing quite so invigorating, so freeing, as piloting a gasoline-powered vehicle along an open road. Years from now, when all the vehicles are electric, when tens of millions of acres of Earth’s surface have been destroyed by open-pit mining for the enormous quantities of lithium and cobalt and nickel and copper required for EVs, when thousands of new landfills have been crammed full of batteries that can't be recycled and are leaking horrifying toxins into the water table, when thousands of square miles of windmills have made extinct hundreds of species of birds with disastrous environmental effects, I will still - always, always - remember this special and exhilarating night... | |
| 333 | These headlines are written often at the insistence of uneducated circulation managers, who know nothing except how to husle sheets, and insist on a bigger headline and a more startling shock than the opposition has. | |
| 334 | They are fools that think that wealth or women or strong drink or even drugs can buy the most in effort out of the soul of a man. These things offer pale pleasures compared to that which is greatest of them all, that task which demands from him more than his utmost strength, that absorbs him, bone and sinew and brain and hope and fear and dreams - and still calls for more. | |
| 335 | They gave me a terrible handicap with my peers. At least when I was a teenager. I don't mean the name. They deprived me of the definitive adolescent experience - thinking my parents didn't love me. Believing they didn't understand me. | |
| 336 | They judge a man out here by his honesty and his courage, and it's right they should. Most ways a man can go in this country he goes into danger, so you want a man alongside you who has guts. You don't want to start a wagon across the trails with a coward who'll quit the first time you run into trouble... he'll get you killed.
And if you're doing business out here, a man's word has to be good. We don't have lawyers and courts to decide, and we don't have a lot of legal nonsense to go through. If I buy cattle from a man and he tells me he's got ten thousand head, there'd better be ten thousand head... but there will be. No need to count 'em.
That's why if a man is called a coward or a liar it's a shooting matter. Nobody wants to associate or do business with either. Man can't afford to let folks call him either one. | |
| 337 | They never experienced disappointment. They have just had a wonderfully smooth life. What you've done, you have handicapped that boy for the rest of his life. He will be a weak, soft, ineffective man. | |
| 338 | They're all actors, you see, and can never quite remember when they're offstage. There's an audience available, so every one of them must have his or her say. | |
| 339 | Things are always changing in your world. Your lives are so short there is no continuity. Just as soon as one of you begins to accomplish a measurable task, he dies, and the next generation undoes all he worked for. Or, worse, they ignore the lessons he learned and make the same mistakes over again. I am not afraid that the world will pass me by while I sit here in this prison your shugenja conjured.... I know that in a thousand years, when this spell finally fades away, you humans will still be making the same mistakes you are today, guarding the same wall and fighting the same feuds. | |
| 340 | Thinking is not always… comforting. It is always good, but not always comforting. | |
| 341 | This coin is worth more than the others because people think it is. They expect it to be. The most important things in the world are worth only what people will pay for them. If you can raise someone’s expectation… if you can make them need something… that is the source of wealth. Owning things of value is secondary to creating things of value where none once existed. | |
| 342 | This is a sad, sad reflection on our times, when people must feed off the carcasses of beloved stories from their youths - just because they can't think of an original idea of their own... | |
| 343 | Those who are far from insane often act in an irrational manner. Don't excuse such conscious and deliberate actions with so convenient an explanation as insanity. | |
| 344 | To have killed men is not a thing of which one can be proud. A man uses a gun when necessary, and not too often, or carelessly. | |
| 345 | Trouble rather the tiger in his lair than the sage among his books. For to you kingdoms and their armies are things mighty and enduring, but to him they are but toys of the moment, to be overturned with the flick of a finger. | |
| 346 | Truly, pride is a foolish item in a man's baggage! | |
| 347 | Truth didn't wear a tongue smooth; lies did. | |
| 348 | Under the direction of the brothers, the collective of the Order, like any autocratic ruler, ultimately ruled only by the acquiesce of the people, who were controlled either by moral intimidation, or by physical threat, or by both. Tyranny required constant tending, lest the illusion of righteous authority evaporate in the light of its grim toll, and the brutes be overpowered by the people who greatly outnumbered them. | |
| 349 | Unfortunately, my mind was also in part formed by the apocalyptic, death-obsessed culture of the past several decades. Tens of millions were supposed to have died in an ice age back in the 1980s, just as predicted in 1969, and still more were said to be doomed by a bath of acid rain shortly thereafter, as well as in radiation that would fry the world when the ozone layer disappeared. Hadn’t hundreds of millions more perished at the turn of the millennium - Y2K - when every damn computer went haywire and all the nuclear missiles in the world were launched, to say nothing of the lethal effects of canola oil in theater popcorn? Living in the End Times was exhausting. When you were assured that billions of people were on the brink of imminent death at every minute of the day, it was hard to get the necessary eight hours of sleep, even harder to limit yourself to only one or two alcoholic drinks each day, when your stress level said, I gotta get smashed. | |
| 350 | Valuable lessons! Arlo realized that there was more to assuming leadership than giving directions or deciding broad policy. He had to use his mind and be ready to accept the advice of those whose minds were better than his.
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