Use of Weapons (Culture, #3)

by Iain M. Banks

To fight for what would inevitably melt and could never provide food or minerals or a permanent place to live seemed an almost deliberate caricature of the conventional folly of war.

“I am in a state of grace with my enthusiasms, sublimely tensioned grace.”

“It’s not cynicism,” he said flatly. “I just think people overvalue argument because they like to hear themselves talk.”

“Most people are not prepared to have their minds changed,” he said. “And I think they know in their hearts that other people are just the same, and one of the reasons people become angry when they argue is that they realize just that, as they trot out their excuses.”

“I strongly suspect the things people believe in are usually just what they instinctively feel is right; the excuses, the justifications, the things you’re supposed to argue about, come later. They’re the least important part of the belief. That’s why you can destroy them, win an argument, prove the other person wrong, and still they believe what they did in the first place.” He looked at Erens. “You’ve attacked the wrong thing.”

Where they lay, the discarded robes looked like the just-shed skin of some exotic reptile.

“I am reminded of something the worshipful Sma said to me once, on the subject of heroism, which was something like: ‘Za-kalwe, in all the human societies we have ever reviewed, in every age and every state, there has seldom if ever been a shortage of eager young males prepared to kill and die to preserve the security, comfort and prejudices of their elders, and what you call heroism is just an expression of this simple fact; there is never a scarcity of idiots.’

his own retaliatory action against the tyranny of memory;

To acknowledge the interest millions of other people had in whatever happened here was to place too great a burden on him; it would be to admit, by implication, that he was at least partially responsible for the deaths already of hundreds of thousands, even if nobody else could have fought more humanely.

secure in the nadir of his sufferings, perversely content that at least now they could grow no worse;