More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
Glumly, Miles considered this possibility. If more than half of him became spare parts, could he be declared legally dead?
The trick of handling horses isn’t to be faster than the horse, or stronger than the horse. That pits your weakness against his strengths. The trick is to be smarter than the horse.
The fundamental principle was clear; the spirit was to be preferred over the letter, truth over technicalities. Precedent was held subordinate to the judgment of the man on the spot.
What God means you to do, Miles’s theist mother claimed, could be deduced from the talents He gave you.
Jolly red cheeks or no, Miles reminded himself, Baron Fell had climbed a pile of bodies to attain this high place.
It’s not what you don’t know that’ll hurt you, the old saying went. It’s what you do know that isn’t so.
“Now, there’s this about cynicism, Sergeant. It’s the universe’s most supine moral position. Real comfortable. If nothing can be done, then you’re not some kind of shit for not doing it, and you can lie there and stink to yourself in perfect peace.”
“This whole place is suffering from sins of omission.”
The wounded want power, nothing else; they think it will keep them from being hurt again.
“Power is a live thing, by which you reach out to grasp the future. Revenge is a dead thing, reaching out from the past to grasp you.”
“Men may move mountains, but ideas move men. Minds can be reached through bodies—what else is the point of all this”— he waved at the camp— “but to reach your minds through your bodies. But that power flows both ways, and the outflow is the stronger tide.
Who could outrace the moon?
“The loonies who sought a glorious death in battle found it very early on. This rapidly cleared the chain of command of the accumulated fools. The survivors were those who learned to fight dirty, and live, and fight another day, and win, and win, and win, and for whom nothing, not comfort, or security, not family or friends or their immortal souls, was more important than winning. Dead men are losers by definition. Survival and victory.
