Ryan B

“Second, you should know that if you choose to be a tyrant, you are conscripting yourself to a life of paranoia and isolation. Your reign will be defined by treachery, rebellion, and terror of your own dwindling faculties. I have conducted a survey of history and found that the most common causes of death among dictators are beheading, dismembering, disemboweling, hanging, and poisoning. Have you never wondered why the bullies of the past are always anemic, impotent, depraved, incestuous, deformed bedwetters? It's because their obituaries were written by their victims, written by the very men and women who pulled down their pants and chopped off their heads. So shall it be for you. You will live in fear, die in violence, and your name will be scorned for generations. Ruminate upon your fate young man, that is all I have to say to you.”
― Josiah Bancroft, The Fall of Babel

“Funny thing about those Middle Ages,” said Joseph. “They just keep coming back. Mortals keep thinking they’re in Modern Times, you know, they get all this neat technology and pass all these humanitarian laws, and then something happens: there’s an economic crisis, or science makes some discovery people can’t deal with. And boom, people go right back to burning Jews and selling pieces of the true Cross. Don’t you ever make the mistake of thinking that mortals want to live in a golden age. They hate thinking.”
― Kage Baker, In the Garden of Iden: The First Company Novel

“The best way I’ve ever summed up the war as I see it is that one side, our side, sees a foul as being against the rules, and if you do it too many times you have to be removed. The other side, Jimmy’s side, sees fouls as things you’re allowed to get caught doing several times, and if you don’t, you aren’t trying hard enough.”
― Scott Meyer, Off to Be the Wizard

“True conspiracies are inflexible and susceptible to discovery, but imaginary plots are ever evolving and, as a result, invulnerable. That is to say, conspiracies are perishable, paranoia is not.”
― Josiah Bancroft, The Fall of Babel