The Will to Battle (Terra Ignota, #3)

by Ada Palmer

If the mote cannot perceive the workings of the Whole, how can the Whole comprehend the anguish of the mote?”

as the crimson dripping starved my brain toward rest, yours was the first voice which called to me of duties yet undone.

“How do you feel?” “Alright,” I smiled. Usually I think harder about that question, but this was the time for reassurance, not for truth.

There was a third option in Homer’s Greek between active and passive verbs, the middle voice, a subtle space between the doer who creates or kills and the recipient who is created or is killed. Between these opposites lies he who causes but does not do the deed himself.

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. What is Caesar but a man so rich in power that he can afford to be distracted every instant of every day?

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