All Quotes

"“Legends travel on rainbow wings and sport gaudy colors,” the harbormaster answered him, “while truth plods on in sober garb.”"

"Old legends said Death had a skinny sister denominated Pain, passionately devoted to the loathsome torture that often was Death’s prelude."

"Great conquerors live on as their enemies’ devils."

"Yes, indeed, he assured himself rapidly, things did seem to be working around to a grand payoff in the great game of trading heroic feats for intimate maidenly favors that all heroes lived or at least hoped by, no matter how disordered and irregular the bookkeeping."

"“You have been told that the Great God rules the universe—earth and sky. I tell you the Great God is fake!”"

"But now the priests think only one thing. How to hold on to their power as long as mankind lasts—until the sun darkens and the earth freezes!"

"No matter how hard and wearisome an age this might be, it was certainly a very exciting one with regard to manifestations of the supernatural."

"“Armon Jarles, there is only the cosmos and the electronic entities that constitute it, without soul or purpose, save so far as neuronic minds impose purpose upon it. “Armon Jarles, the Hierarchy embodies the highest form of such purpose. “Armon Jarles, the supernatural and the idealized have one trait in common. They are not. There is only reality.”"

"What is idealism? It is distortion. A giving of false values to things which in reality do not possess those values. Personalities differ chiefly in their pattern of values. When the values are largely false, the personality is unstable."

"He knew that ahead lay many perils—threats to his bodily welfare. And recently Jarles had come to have a great respect for that bag of flesh and bones which contained his ego."

"The idea of brutality actually shocks him, thought Goniface amusedly. I wonder what name he has for the toil we exact of the commoners, and the penances we impose on them?"

"I suppose that every blundering idealist who hasn’t been brought face to face with the hard facts of life carries, at the back of his mind, a sneaking suspicion that villainy is a very dashing and romantic thing. When your mind turned turtle, or when they turned it for you, your new personality was necessarily fabricated out of all your fragmentary romantic notions of villainy—unlimited ambition and conceit, absolute lack of emotion, and all the rest of the supervillain ideology!"

"“Dreams mean nothing,” he said coldly. “They are unreal.” “They’re as real as anything else,” she shot back at him. “And they merely mean conscience.”"

"“Conscience is only social pressure,” he told her, tense without quite knowing why, “the impulse to submerge your ego in that of the herd, and do what other people want you to because you’re afraid of their censure. Realistic self-interest frees a person from the childish restrictions of conscience.” “Are you sure of that, Jarles? What about your dreams? Conscience may be partly what you say it is, but it’s more than that. It’s hearkening to the wisest thoughts that have occurred to the minds of the human race.”"

"There was always something new to be seen in the unchanging night sky."

"After all, to the truly skeptical mind, diabolic forces are just as reasonable building blocks for the cosmos as mindless electrons. No possibility, however seemingly fantastic, should revolt the truly skeptical mind. It all depends on the evidence. The evidence decides everything."

"Goniface was thinking how like his own was the destiny of the whole Hierarchy and of every priest in it. Whether they murdered their families—and their own youth—actually or only in spirit, it amounted to the same thing. They betrayed and deserted them, left them for dead, to enjoy the power and pleasures of a sterile tyrant class."

"What is superstition, but misguided, unobjective science? And when it comes down to that, is it to be wondered if people grasp at superstition in this rotten, hate-filled, half-doomed world of today? Lord knows, I'd welcome the blackest of black magic, if it could do anything to stave off the atom bomb."

"A scientist ought to have a healthy disregard for coincidences."

"Thoughts are dangerous, he told himself, and thoughts against all science, all sanity, all civilized intelligence, are the most dangerous of all."

"What was life worth, anyway, if you had to sit around remembering not to mention this, that, and the other thing because someone else might be upset?"

"Things are different from what I thought. They’re much worse."

"He opened his eyes and looked down at his pale chest With the two lone hairs that were a sardonic last farewell from glorious jungle ape-hood."

"Hey, am I dreaming?...Or have I really blasted off from behind the hair line? The second question, though not spoken, was quickly suppressed. He felt too good to let it worry him. If this was insanity, then three cheers for paranoia!"

"The only thing robots couldn’t do, it seemed, was sit in foxholes. That was one place where Phil recalled no mechanical competition."

"For a full century now Americans have been living in one of those ages of collective madness and herd delusion, comparable only to the Dutch tulip mania, the witchcraft dread, the dancing madness, Trotskyism, and the Crusades. Until 1950 ours might have been called the Automobile Mania, but now the imagination can only grope for a name—I’m writing an unpopular book on the subject, you see. Not that this current social madness is a deep secret or anything to be startled at. What other results could have been expected when American society began to overvalue on the one hand security, censorship, an imagined world-saving idealism and self-sacrifice in war, and on the other hand insatiable hunger for possessions, fiercely competitive aggressiveness, sadistic male belligerence, contempt for parents and the state, and a fantastically overstimulated sexuality?"

"They sat in small parties with a truculent quietness that sneered at and challenged the frantic hustle of the times and the belief that the hustle was leading anywhere."

"What have I always told you about Soldiers? The bigger the gripe, the smaller the cause! It is infallible!"

"The king who is situated anywhere immediately on the circumference of the conqueror's territory is termed the enemy. The king who is likewise situated close to the enemy, but separated from the conqueror only by the enemy, is termed the friend (of the conqueror)."

"The area extending from the Himalayas in the north to the sea and a thousand yojanas wide from east to west is the area of operation of the King-Emperor."

"Ravana, unwilling under the influence of vanity to restore a stranger's wife, as well as Duryodhana to part with a portion of his kingdom."

"Don't judge the future of a person based on his present conditions, because time has the power to change black coal to shiny diamond."

"A person should not be too honest. Straight trees are cut first and honest people are screwed first."

"Till the enemy's weakness is known , he should be kept on friendly terms."

"Our bodies are perishable, wealth is not at all permanent and death is always nearby. Therefore we must immediately engage in acts of merit."

"The serpent, the king, the tiger, the stinging wasp, the small child, the dog owned by other people, and the fool: these seven ought not to be awakened from sleep."

"Skills are called hidden treasure as they save like a mother in a foreign country."

"The world's biggest power is the youth and beauty of a woman."

"Treat your kid like a darling for the first five years. For the next five years, scold them. By the time they turn sixteen, treat them like a friend. Your grown up children are your best friends."

"Lakshmi, the Goddess of wealth, comes of Her own accord where fools are not respected, grain is well stored up, and the husband and wife do not quarrel."

"There is no disease so destructive as lust."

"The wise man should restrain his senses like the crane and accomplish his purpose with due knowledge of his place, time and ability."

"We should always speak what would please the man of whom we expect a favour, like the hunter who sings sweetly when he desires to shoot a deer."

"It is better to live under a tree in a jungle inhabited by tigers and elephants, to maintain oneself in such a place with ripe fruits and spring water, to lie down on grass and to wear the ragged barks of trees than to live amongst one's relations when reduced to poverty."

"सुखस्य मुलं धर्मः"

"न कृतार्थानां मारणाभयम्"

"नास्ति खलस्य मित्रम्"

"[Arvind] Sharma speculates that a reason for India's downfall was the eclipse of the category of Chakravarti as mentionned in the Arthashastra. A Chakravarti's domain was from ocean to ocean; he was above all the other kings who were local. He feels that the Arthashastra at some point ceased to be taught for learning realpolitik. There appears to have been an attack on it by liberal passivism. It is ironic, he says, that during British rule the Arthashastra text had disappeared until a copy suddenly surfaced with a farmer in Kerala in the early twentieth century... Sharma recommends introducing the study of Arthashastra in all schools in all languages."

"These days it seems like any idiot with a laptop computer can churn out a business book and make a few bucks. That's certainly what I'm hoping. It would be a real letdown if the trend changed before this masterpiece goes to print."

"Ninety percent of all new business ventures fail. Apparently, ten percent of the time you get lucky, and that's enough to support a modern economy. I'm betting that's what separates us from the animals; animals are lucky only nine percent of the time. I suspect this is true because I play strip poker with my cats and they rarely win. In fact, it's gotten to the point where they run like cowards at the sound of my electric shaver."