Red Rising (Red Rising Saga, #1)

by Pierce Brown

Patience is the better part of valor. And obedience the better part of humanity. Listen to your elders.

The others say you are like a machine, because they think you know no fear. They’re blind. They don’t see how fear binds you.

All ears yearn for a voice to lead them through darkness.

“Death isn’t empty like you say it is. Emptiness is life without freedom,

Few men truly like seeing beauty burn.

“No animal but man throws themselves willingly into the flames,

“In the densest places of man, humanity most easily breaks down,

“Mankind was always enslaved, they’ll say. Freedom enslaves us to lust, to greed. Take freedom away, and they give me a life of dreaming. They gave you a life of sacrifice, family, community. And society is stable. There is no famine. No genocide. No great wars. And when the Golds fight, they obey rules. They are … noble about it when the great houses bicker.

“See. That’s what I don’t get. If I am a good man, then why do I want to do bad things?

“If you are thrown into the deep and do not swim, you will drown,” he says, and raises his thin eyebrows. “So keep swimming, right?

I’m a sheep wearing wolves’ clothing in a pack of wolves.

“And violent hearts set harshest flame,

Security and justice aren’t given. They are made by the

strong.

why would I shake hands with a wildfire when I can just sit back and watch it run out of things to consume?”

Man cannot be freed by the same injustice that enslaved it.

Some think honor universal. Some think laws binding. Others know better. But in the end, don’t those who rise by poison die by poison?

Funny thing, watching gods realize they’ve been mortal all along.

Rulers tend to dislike those who break rules.

But of all the things in all the worlds, words are power.”