Scythe (Arc of a Scythe, #1)

by Neal Shusterman

Humanity is innocent; humanity is guilty, and both states are undeniably true.

Hope in the shadow of fear is the world’s most powerful motivator.

The ending of human life used to be in the hands of nature. But we stole it. Now we have a monopoly on death. We are its sole distributor.

The greatest achievement of the human race was not conquering death. It was ending government.

The emperor not only had no clothes—turns out he had no testicles either.

we must always be vigilant, because power comes infected with the only disease left to us: the virus called human nature.

Nature deemed that to be born was an automatic sentence to death, and then brought about that death with vicious consistency.