The Will to Battle (Terra Ignota, #3)

by Ada Palmer

No Law or Right may be justly called Universal which is in any way relative, debatable, dispensable, or based on any belief or custom whose universality is not proved by those guides of Reason and Necessity which are truly unchanging in all generations of the human race.

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.

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.