Sandy > Sandy's Quotes

“I think if you did, you might not be shocked by it. Teachers are expected to do more and more, and much of the parenting authority has been ceded to us by the parents. In the media they call it teacher accountability, but really it’s a lack of parent accountability. There’s no respect anymore. I’m afraid I find the violence in this case shocking but not exactly the murder itself. Does that make sense?”
― James Patterson, Haunted

“No matter our personal dedication to goodness and justice, we are all, in greater or lesser measure, complicit in the injustices of the society which we tolerate. Even if we tolerate it for the best of reasons, it is a constant struggle not to be consumed by the self-contempt that such accommodation threatens to breed in any person of conscience.”
― Charles E. Gannon, 1636: Calabar's War

“Paeonies,” said Miss Marple as she rose from table, “are most unaccountable. Either they do—or they don’t do. But if they do establish themselves, they are with you for life, so to speak, and really most beautiful varieties nowadays.”
― Agatha Christie, 4:50 from Paddington

“He knew exactly what thoughts—emotions, rather—would be filling Pakenham's breast. The same that would have been filling his own, had Ross still been in command. Doubts, hesitations, fears, second thoughts, quibbles, uncertainties—all those, Pakenham would be burning on the altar this very moment.”
― Eric Flint, 1812-The Rivers of War

“Your society, at least what I have observed of it, seems not to understand the fundamental inconsistency between individual freedom and the common welfare. The two must be carefully balanced. No group can survive, let alone thrive, unless what is good for the overall community is more important than individual freedom. Take, for example, resource allocation. How can anyone with any intelligence possibly justify, in terms of the overall community, the accumulation and hoarding of enormous material assets by a few individuals when others do not even have food, clothing, and other essentials?”
― Arthur C. Clarke, Rama Revealed

“I quite appreciate your scruples, but they are not worth much when they are used to screen a murderer or to cast suspicion on an innocent person.”
― Ngaio Marsh, A Man Lay Dead

“Soul. Yes. Whatever it is called, it was not deceived by my belief in the rightness of what I was doing, even if I’d managed to deceive myself.”
― J.N. Chaney, Blackest Ocean

“When modes of music change, the fundamental laws of the state always change with them. —Plato”
― Eric Flint, 1636: The Devil's Opera

“But sleep is only an illusion of weakness and, unless it appeals to our protective instincts, is likely to arouse in us a nasty, bullying spirit. From a height of conscious superiority we look down on the sleeper, thus exposing himself in all his frailty, and indulge in derisive comment upon his appearance, his manners and (if the occasion is a public one) the absurdity of the position in which he has placed his companion, if he has one, and particularly if we are that companion.”
― Dorothy L. Sayers, Gaudy Night

“principles have become more dangerous than passions. It’s getting uncommonly easy to kill people in large numbers, and the first thing a principle does—if it really is a principle—is to kill somebody.”
― Dorothy L. Sayers, Gaudy Night

“principles have become more dangerous than passions. It’s getting uncommonly easy to kill people in large numbers, and the first thing a principle does—if it really is a principle—is to kill somebody.” “‘The real tragedy is not the conflict of good with evil but of good with good’; that means a problem with no solution.”
― Dorothy L. Sayers, Gaudy Night

“Mr. Bunter was professionally accustomed to judge human beings by their behavior, not in great crises, but in the minor adjustments of daily life.”
― Dorothy L. Sayers, The Lord Peter Wimsey Collection 3: Murder Must Advertise / The Nine Tailors / Gaudy Night / Busman's Honeymoon

“No,” he said. “And, Domina, I would not have chosen them. I would greatly have preferred to start shoulder to shoulder with others, or even handicapped. As it is, I am always in a false position; anything I can ever achieve is done by a form of cheating, is the result of an accident of birth.”
― Dorothy L. Sayers, Thrones, Dominations

“Some see their inferiors as ripe for conquest.  Others think they have to take up the white man’s burden and uplift the poor savages, somehow making sure they’re still the ones in charge.  Somehow, the savages never reach the top, no matter how much they embrace the more advanced culture”
― Christopher G. Nuttall, The Lone World

“She had little sympathy for the student loan companies that had lent vast sums to students with little hope of repayment, then whined when the students fled into space rather than letting their lives be destroyed by debts they could never repay.  Idiots.  If they hadn’t thought the government would underwrite the loans …”
― Christopher G. Nuttall, The Firelighters

“He couldn’t help thinking of cities he’d visited, back on Earth, where fantastic levels of wealth contrasted sharply with the most grinding poverty.  Everywhere he looked, he saw the signs.  Belos might be a rich world, but the population was poor.”
― Christopher G. Nuttall, The Firelighters

“You got scum everywhere, but you don’t know anybody till you’ve walked in their shoes. And a hungry belly or a sick kid or losing the roof over your head, or being the wrong color and having to live your life with that unfairly hanging over your head every damn day, can make bad things happen to good people, Mick. It doesn’t mean the law won’t be enforced. It just means they’re human beings who you know very little about. You ever lose that bit of truth, go do something else for a living.”
― David Baldacci, Simply Lies

“The average person cares very little for events that don’t immediately impact their lives—that’s just reality.”
― J.N. Chaney, Echoes in the Deep

“Because in my experience, patriotism, while a fine quality, can fuel quite a dangerous agenda if taken to the extreme.”
― David Baldacci, The Escape

“There is a difference between knowing the path you must walk, and how exactly to place your feet along every step of the way.”
― J.N. Chaney, Point of Impact

“Again and again he pleaded with his listeners to be generous, and the joke was circulated through Safed: “Rabbi Zaki wants more than anything else in the world to give things away … especially his daughters.”
― James A. Michener, The Source

“I said, “We have to play the good guy and supply them with what they need to survive. How stupid they are with what they have, you cannot idiot-proof anything; they keep coming up with new and improved idiots.”
― David Collins, The Eighth Artifact