Look to Windward (Culture, #7)

by Iain M. Banks

“Oh, they never lie. They dissemble, evade, prevaricate, confound, confuse, distract, obscure, subtly misrepresent and willfully misunderstand with what often appears to be a positively gleeful relish and are generally perfectly capable of contriving to give one an utterly unambiguous impression of their future course of action while in fact intending to do exactly the opposite, but they never lie. Perish the thought.”

We always want more, he thought, we always take our past successes for granted and assume they but point the way to future triumphs. But the universe does not have our own best interests at heart, and to assume for a moment that it does, ever did or ever might is to make the most calamitous and hubristic of mistakes.

“Strange that people are happy to adopt epithets they would fight to the death to throw off had they been imposed.”

Symbols are important, symbols do work. And when the symbol is a person then the symbol becomes … dirigible. A symbolic person can to some extent steer their own course, determine not just their own fate but that of their society.

The dead escape death in heaven, and the living escape life in dreams.”

The more sophisticated you became, the less you relied on fear and pain to keep you alive; you could afford to ignore them because you had other means of coping with the consequences if things went badly.

“It must be a burden, not even being able to say you were just obeying orders.” “Well, that is always a lie, or a sign you are fighting for an unworthy cause, or still have a very long way to develop civilizationally.”

I need never wonder what it is like to kill, Ziller, because I have done it, and it is a wasteful, graceless, worthless and hateful thing to have to do.

the soup of life is salty enough without adding tears to it.”

But sometimes ugly thoughts can be prevented from becoming ugly deeds by exposing them.