The Will to Battle (Terra Ignota, #3)

by Ada Palmer

Even standing on the same floor as his guests and guards, so imperious was Caesar’s stance that my mind insists he held a scepter in his hand, though I believe it was, in fact, an apple.

If anyone tries to undermine what we do here today by raising objections to procedure after the fact, you won’t just have blood on your conscience, you’ll have destroyed the best and freest government the world has ever known.

This silence was, I think, the first thing to truly please Jin Im-Jin all day.

Same

representing Graylaws came Jay Sparhawk, master gambler, sailor, marine ecologist, and longtime first mate of the flagship Ahab’s Folly,

I wish this was how people described me

In darker ages Justice stood alone before courthouses, but in Carlyle’s vision her sister Temperance stands to one side holding back her sword, while from the other side Reason lifts away her blindfold, so Justice can finally see the contents of her scales.

How many fewer—set-set and Servicer alike—might have died in Odessa if the Hives had shared the Blacklaw custom that one may not lynch anyone without first asking the best-informed person in town whether we’re being idiots?

“Thank you for coming! Je regrette that humans must exist in only one location!”

“I am Headmaster of Brill’s Institute and Steward of Gordian, the First Hive, which birthed the best age this planet has ever known. When I tell you to look at forty-eight pictures of things eating bananas, you do not ask why.”

Hands down my fav part of this book

“What! Who are you? How do … oh … talking computer…”

lol

(Persuasion was the only power needed; that you always have.)”

Utopians with their otherworldly hippogriffs,

I hereby renounce the right to complacency, and vow lifelong to take only what minimum of leisure is necessary to my productivity, viewing health, happiness, rest, and play as means, not ends, and that, while Utopia provides my needs, I will commit the full produce of my labors to our collective effort to redirect the path of human life away from death and toward the stars.

Isn't this basically the modern-day employment agreement?

“The Chicago Museum of Science and Industry Junior Scientists Squad.” I smiled, and caught Papa smiling too, despite his knitted brows. “The kids grew up.”

Oh snap!

It’s impossible, but the impossible doesn’t tend to stay impossible when humans are involved.