Richard Scott Bakker Quotes
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To be ignorant and to be deceived are two different things. To be ignorant is to be a slave of the world. To be deceived is to be the slave of another man. The question will always be: Why, when all men are ignorant, and therefore already slaves, does this latter slavery sting us so?
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It is only after that we understand what has come before, then we understand nothing. Thus we shall define the soul as follows: that which precedes everything.
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If the world is a game whose rules are written by the God, and sorcerers are those who cheat and cheat, then who has written the rules of sorcery?
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The world is only as deep as we can see. This is why fools think themselves profound. This is why terror is the passion of revelation.
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You know nothing of war. War is dark. Black as pitch. It is not a God. It does not laugh or weep. It rewards neither skill nor daring. It is not a trial of souls, not the measure of wills. Even less is it a tool, a means to some womanish end. It is merely the place where the iron bones of the earth meet the hollow bones of men and break them.
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The thoughts of all men arise from the darkness. If you are the movement of your soul, and the cause of that movement precedes you, then how could you ever call your thoughts your own? How could you be anything other than a slave to the darkness that comes before?
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Doubt begets understanding, and understanding begets compassion. Verily, it is conviction that kills.
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Where no paths exist, a man strays only when he misses his destination. There is no crime, no transgression, no sin save foolishness or incompetence, and no obscenity save the tyranny of custom.
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Here we find further argument for Gotagga’s supposition that the world is round. How else could all men stand higher than their brothers?
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Darkness shields as much as it threatens.
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To indulge it is to breed it. To punish it is to feed it. Madness knows no bridle but the knife.
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The bondage we are born into is the bondage we cannot see. Verily, freedom is little more than the ignorance of tyranny. Live long enough, and you will see: Men resent not the whip so much as the hand that wields it.
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This is the problem of all great revelations: their significance so often exceeds the frame of our comprehension. We understand only after, always after. Not simply when it is too late, but precisely because it is too late.
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Saying 'I could have done more,' Zin, is what marks a man as a man and not a God.
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Sometimes the Nonman would climb upon some wild pulpit, the mossed remains of a fallen tree, the humped back of a boulder, and paint wonders with his dark voice. Wonders and horrors both.
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I wanted a literate, socially intricate, and cosmopolitan world - something I could have fun destroying.
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Everyone thinks they've won the Magical Belief Lottery. Everyone thinks they more or less have a handle on things, that they, as opposed to the billions who disagree with them, have somehow lucked into the one true belief system.
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I tell you, guilt dwells nowhere but in the eyes of the accuser. This men know even as they deny it, which is why they so often make murder their absolution. The truth of crime lies not with the victim but with the witness.
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Complexity begets ambiguity, which yields in all ways to prejudice and avarice. Complication does not so much defeat Men as arm them with fancy.
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Consequences lost all purchase when they became mad. And desperation, when pressed beyond anguish, became narcotic.
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Love is lust made meaningful. Hope is hunger made human.
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A beggar's mistake harms no one but the beggar. A king's mistake, however, harms everyone but the king. Too often, the measure of power lies not in the number who obey your will, but in the number who suffer your stupidity.
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Exhaustion has a way of parting the veils between men, not so much because the effort of censoring their words exceeds them, but because weariness is the foe of volatility. Oft times insults that would pierce the wakeful simply thud against the sleepless and fatigued.
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Something ... made him feel small, not in the way of orphans or beggars or children, but in a good way. In the way of souls.