The Will to Battle (Terra Ignota, #3)

by Ada Palmer

Hobbes tells us that war consists not in Battle only, but in that tract of time wherein the Will to Battle is so manifest that, scenting bloodlust in his fellows and himself, Man can no longer trust civilization’s pledge to keep the peace.

There’s honor in urging the right course, even when the wrong is set.

I think all humans feel rage at our finitude when we see others read what we cannot.

Humor, mankind’s survival strategy, brought absurd images before my mind here, mobs in blasted wastelands, raising impossibly honest banners: “Financial stability! Self-determination! Xenophobia!” We do need pretexts for our wars. A man may leap into the fray in the name of Liberty, Homeland, Human Rights, Justice, but never Economics.

All human achievement, our empires, good deeds, art, the Great Project itself, all are distractions, invented by a race so weak we cannot sit still in a chair for five minutes and face our finitude.

It is not power that corrupts, but the belief that it is yours.