Steven Jr. > Steven's Quotes

“A reservoir of rage exists in each person, waiting to burst out. We fantasize about killing or humiliating our boss or the guy who took our parking space. It is only by growing up in a civilized society of law that we learn the idea of proportionate response.”
― Rex Beaber

“The enduring attraction of war is this: Even with its destruction and carnage it can give us what we long for in life. It can give us purpose, meaning, a reason for living. Only when we are in the midst of conflict does the shallowness and vapidness of much of our lives become apparent.”
― Chris Hedges, War is a Force That Gives Us Meaning

“A revolution is an idea, taken up by bayonets.”
― Napoleon Bonaparte

“I come in peace. I didn't bring artillery. But I'm pleading with you, with tears in my eyes: if you fuck with me I'll kill you all.”
― Marine General James Mattis

“I am the punishment of God...If you had not committed great sins, God would not have sent a punishment like me upon you.”
― Genghis Khan

“We decry violence all the time in this country, but look at our history. We were born in a violent revolution, and we've been in wars ever since. We're not a pacific people.”
― James Lee Burke

“War has changed.

It's no longer about nations, ideologies, or ethnicity. It's an endless series of proxy battles, fought by mercenaries and machines.

War--and it's consumption of life--has become a well-oiled machine.

War has changed.

ID-tagged soldiers carry ID-tagged weapons, use ID-tagged gear. Nanomachines inside their bodies enhance and regulate their abilities.

Genetic control, information control, emotion control, battlefield control…everything is monitored and kept under control.

War…has changed.

The age of deterrence has become the age of control, all in the name of averting catastrophe from weapons of mass destruction, and he who controls the battlefield, controls history.

War…has changed.

When the battlefield is under total control, war becomes routine.”
― David Hayter as Solid Snake

“Mr. McGee, don't make me angry. You wouldn't like me when I'm angry.”
― Bill Bixby as Dr. David Banner

“John Steinbeck once said that socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.”
― Ronald Wright, A Short History of Progress

“Hypocrite: The man who murdered his parents, and then pleaded for mercy on the grounds that he was an orphan.”
― Abraham Lincoln

“Somewhere along the way, the balance of power between the prosecution, the defense, and the judiciary shifted. We have to readjust it. The stakes are so high—the well-being of so many communities and the trajectories of so many lives. Public safety depends on our collective faith in fairness and our view of the law as legitimate.”
― Emily Bazelon, Charged: The New Movement to Transform American Prosecution and End Mass Incarceration

“There is no client as scary as an innocent man."

J. Michael Haller, Criminal Defense Attorney, Los Angeles, 1962.”
― Michael Connelly, The Lincoln Lawyer

“When it comes to justice - the indigent get the noose while the affluent get pardoned.”
― Stewart Stafford

“We'll do it live... WE'LL DO IT LIVE! FUCK IT! DO IT LIVE... look, I'll write it and we'll do it live! Fucking thing SUCKS!”
― Bill O'Reilly

“Yesterday we obeyed kings and bent our necks before emperors. But today we kneel only to truth, follow only beauty, and obey only love.”
― Kahlil Gibran, The Vision: Reflections on the Way of the Soul

“There are some people who think you have to hate them in order to shoot them. I don’t think you do. It’s just business.”
― James Mattis

“Even the strongest blizzards start with a single snowflake.”
― Sara Raasch, Snow Like Ashes

“Give us what belongs to us in peace, and if you don't give it to us in peace, we will take it by force.”
― Emma Goldman

“The path to paradise begins in hell.”
― Dante Alighieri

“Let this hell be our heaven.”
― Richard Matheson, What Dreams May Come

“Everyone who has ever built anywhere a new heaven first found the power thereto in his own hell.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

“I will not have you without the darkness that hides within you. I will not let you have me without the madness that makes me. If our demons cannot dance, neither can we.”
― Nikita Gill

“Light the torch. Where is the torch you ask! Look at the mirror.”
― Abhijit Naskar, When Call The People: My World My Responsibility

“How can I live without thee, how forego
Thy sweet converse, and love so dearly joined,
To live again in these wild woods forlorn?
Should God create another Eve, and I
Another rib afford, yet loss of thee
Would never from my heart; no, no, I feel
The link of nature draw me: flesh of flesh,
Bone of my bone thou art, and from thy state
Mine never shall be parted, bliss or woe.

However, I with thee have fixed my lot,
Certain to undergo like doom; if death
Consort with thee, death is to me as life;
So forcible within my heart I feel
The bond of nature draw me to my own,
My own in thee, for what thou art is mine;
Our state cannot be severed, we are one,
One flesh; to lose thee were to lose myself.”
― John Milton, Paradise Lost

“There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.”
― Maya Angelou, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

“Write the kind of story you would like to read. People will give you all sorts of advice about writing, but if you are not writing something you like, no one else will like it either.”
― Meg Cabot

“The car, one of those coachbuilt delicacies named after some French province or variety of grape, practically shouted at Nick that he was far too vulgar and ignoble to even stand beside it, let alone debase its flawless leather upholstery with the seat of his plebeian trousers.”
― Nate Granzow, Get Idiota

“Nick was not an especially brave man. He knew this. He also knew he'd arrived with a thud at his life's nadir, the world he'd known now little more than a pinprick of light miles above him. This gave him a special kind of courage: The prospect of both death and success offered unique appeal.”
― Nate Granzow, Get Idiota

“You ever put a down payment on a car with your ethics? Ever written a child-support check from a bank account filled with your morals? I passed bankrupt three exits ago, and—not to be an alarmist—but things are beginning to look pretty bleak.”
― Nate Granzow, Get Idiota

“Now look at me! Did you know the Americans have a ten-million-dollar bounty on my head? Not bad, right? There's no better way to tell how successful you've become than by how badly other people want to kill you."
By that metric, Nick couldn't have been less successful. He was certain that anyone who had him in their crosshairs would ultimately balk when measuring the value of his life against the price of the bullet.”
― Nate Granzow, Get Idiota