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| 351 | The temptation to form premature theories upon insufficient data is the bane of our profession. | |
| 352 | The trouble with computers, of course, is that they are very sophisticated idiots. | |
| 353 | The trouble with computers, of course, is that they're very sophisticated idiots. | |
| 354 | The trouble with time travel is, one never seems to find the time. | |
| 355 | The truth of a situation most often turns out to be that one with the simplest explanation. | |
| 356 | The tyrant fears the laugh more than the assassin’s bullet. | |
| 357 | The universe is at war, Doctor. Name one planet whose history is not littered with atrocities and ambition for empire. It is a universal way of life. | |
| 358 | 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. | |
| 359 | 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. | |
| 360 | The world is full of obvious things which nobody by any chance ever observes. | |
| 361 | 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. | |
| 362 | 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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| 363 | There are some corners of the universe which have bred the most terrible things. Things which act against everything that we believe in. They must be fought. | |
| 364 | There are worlds out there were the sky is burning, and the sea's asleep, and the rivers dream. People made of smoke and cities made of song. Somewhere there's danger, somewhere there's injustice, somewhere else the tea's getting cold. Come on Ace we've got work to do. | |
| 365 | There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them. | |
| 366 | There can be many opinions on a thing, but there is only one truth. | |
| 367 | 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. | |
| 368 | There is no indignity in being afraid to die, but there is a terrible shame in being afraid to live. | |
| 369 | 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. | |
| 370 | 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. | |
| 371 | There’s a difference between thinking an action is wise and doing it. | |
| 372 | 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. | |
| 373 | 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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| 374 | There's no job so simple it can't get messy if you don't pay attention to it. | |
| 375 | There's no point in being grown up if you can't be childish sometimes. | |
| 376 | 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... | |
| 377 | 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. | |
| 378 | 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. | |
| 379 | 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. | |
| 380 | 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. | |
| 381 | 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. | |
| 382 | Think about me when you're living your life, one day after another, all in a neat pattern. Think about the homeless traveller in his old police box, his days like crazy paving. | |
| 383 | Thinking is not always… comforting. It is always good, but not always comforting. | |
| 384 | 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. | |
| 385 | 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... | |
| 386 | This is my TARDIS and I am in my own body. | |
| 387 | This one a long time have I watched. All his life has he looked away, to the future, to the horizon. Never his mind on where he was, hmm? What he was doing. Hmm. Adventure. Heh. Excitement. Heh. A Jedi craves not these things. | |
| 388 | 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. | |
| 389 | To the rational mind, nothing is inexplicable; only unexplained. | |
| 390 | 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. | |
| 391 | Truly, pride is a foolish item in a man's baggage! | |
| 392 | Truth didn't wear a tongue smooth; lies did. | |
| 393 | Typical human, you can always count on them to mess things up. | |
| 394 | 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. | |
| 395 | 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. | |
| 396 | Vegetarianism is known and practiced on Kregen; but if a man is starving and a fat deer passes by - well, a man must live unless he wishes to surrender to the fate high ideals may bring. It is an argument that continues. | |
| 397 | Verence wasn't frightened, however; not simply because it is difficult to be in fear of anything when the bits you need to be frightened with are curdling several yards away, but because he had never really been frightened of anything in his life, and wasn't going to start now. This was partly because he didn't have the imagination, but he was also one of those rare individuals who are totally focused in time.
Most people aren't. They live their lives as a sort of temporal blur around the point where their body actually is - anticipating the future, or holding onto the past. They're usually so busy thinking about what happens next that the only time they ever find out what is happening now is when they come to look back on it. Most people are like this. They learn how to fear because they can actually tell, down at the subconscious level, what is going to happen next. It's already happening to them. | |
| 398 | Villains don't think they're evil. Villains don't believe they're the bad guy. Villains believe in what they're doing. Villains think they're righteous, and that's what makes them dangerous.... There's a trap in wringing your hands together and going 'Mwahaha' - that's not villainy. The villainy to be afraid of is the villainy you don't see coming. He's sweet, he's pleasant and polite. He sneaks up on you. And you don't know he's a villain until he's got a knife buried in you. Now that's a villain. | |
| 399 | Violence will never get you anywhere. | |
| 400 | War is the last option of the state that has failed... | |