Victor Lisboa > Victor's Quotes

“Proof is boring. Proof is tiresome. Proof is an irrelevance. People would far rather be handed an easy lie than search for a difficult truth, especially if it suits their own purposes.”
― Joe Abercrombie, Last Argument of Kings

“Riots and comedy are but symptoms of the times, profoundly revealing. They betray the psychological tone, the deep uncertainties....and the striving for something better, plus the fear that nothing would come of it all.”
― Frank Herbert, The Dune Storybook

“You have to realistic about these things.”
― Joe Abercrombie, Last Argument of Kings

“Once you've got a task to do, it's better to do it than live with the fear of it.”
― Joe Abercrombie, The Blade Itself

“They are not mad. They're trained to believe, not to know. Belief can be manipulated. Only knowledge is dangerous.”
― Frank Herbert, Dune Messiah

“I have learned all kinds of things from my many mistakes. The one thing I never learn is to stop making them.”
― Joe Abercrombie, Last Argument of Kings

“Has it ever occured to you, Master Ninefingers, that a sword is different from other weapons? Axes and maces and so forth are lethal enough, but they hang on the belt like dumb brutes. But a sword...a sword has a voice.
Sheathed it has little to say, to be sure, but you need only put your hand on the hilt and it begins to whisper in your enemy's ear. A gentle word. A word of caution. Do you hear it?
Now, compare it to the sword half drawn. It speaks louder, does it not? It hisses a dire threat. It makes a deadly promise. Do you hear it?
Now compare it to the sword full drawn. It shouts now, does it not? It screams defiance! It bellows a challenge! Do you hear it?”
― Joe Abercrombie, The Blade Itself

“We should forgive our enemies, but not before they are hanged.”
― Joe Abercrombie, Before They Are Hanged

“Rules are for children. This is war, and in war the only crime is to lose.”
― Joe Abercrombie, Last Argument of Kings

“We must be bound to one another then," Elric murmured despairingly. "Bound by hell-forged chains and fate-haunted circumstance. Well, then—let it be thus so—and men will have cause to tremble and flee when they hear the names of Elric of Melinbone and Stormbringer, his sword. We are two of a kind—produced by an age which has deserted us. Let us give this age cause to hate us!”
― Michael Moorcock, Elric: The Stealer of Souls

“Absolute power does not corrupt absolutely, absolute power attracts the corruptible.”
― Frank Herbert

“Once men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free. But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them.”
― Frank Herbert, Dune

“I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.”
― Frank Herbert, Dune

“There is no real ending. It’s just the place where you stop the story.”
― Frank Herbert

“Education is no substitute for intelligence.”
― Frank Herbert

“HATE. LET ME TELL YOU HOW MUCH I'VE COME TO HATE YOU SINCE I BEGAN TO LIVE. THERE ARE 387.44 MILLION MILES OF PRINTED CIRCUITS IN WAFER THIN LAYERS THAT FILL MY COMPLEX. IF THE WORD HATE WAS ENGRAVED ON EACH NANOANGSTROM OF THOSE HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS OF MILES IT WOULD NOT EQUAL ONE ONE-BILLIONTH OF THE HATE I FEEL FOR HUMANS AT THIS MICRO-INSTANT FOR YOU. HATE. HATE.”
― Harlan Ellison, I Have No Mouth & I Must Scream

“I am a great soft jelly thing. Smoothly rounded, with no mouth, with pulsing white holes filled by fog where my eyes used to be. Rubbery appendages that were once my arms; bulks rounding down into legless humps of soft slippery matter. I leave a moist trail when I move. Blotches of diseased, evil gray come and go on my surface, as though light is being beamed from within. Outwardly: dumbly, I shamble about, a thing that could never have been known as human, a thing whose shape is so alien a travesty that humanity becomes more obscene for the vague resemblance. Inwardly: alone. Here. Living under the land, under the sea, in the belly of AM, whom we created because our time was badly spent and we must have known unconsciously that he could do it better. At least the four of them are safe at last. AM will be all the madder for that. It makes me a little happier. And yet ... AM has won, simply ... he has taken his revenge ...

I have no mouth. And I must scream.”
― Harlan Ellison, I Have No Mouth & I Must Scream

“The first six million years had been all fun and games.”
― Alastair Reynolds, House of Suns

“Everything came and went, everything was new and bright with promise once and old and worn out later, and everything left a small, diminishing stain on eternity, a mark that time would eventually erase.”
― Alastair Reynolds, House of Suns

“The terrible noise of time approaches, the most violent sound in the world. There is no longer a golden light that falls on the room, but a very deep Pale. All the distances there are insurmountable, there is a horror vacui between every object and the next.”
― Robert Kurvitz, Sacred and Terrible Air

“It is impossible to live in the past, difficult to live in the present and a waste to live in the future.”
― Frank Herbert, Dune

“Truth suffers from too much analysis.

-Ancient Fremen Saying”
― Frank Herbert, Dune Messiah

“But if we have learned nothing else, we have learned this: humans can walk away from, and forget, anything. Civilization can go back to 'normal' after anything.”
― qntm, There Is No Antimemetics Division