Andre

“The second decade of the twenty-first century seems replete with examples as to why autocracies are, to put it mildly, very stupid. Our headlines are dominated by regimes with one nigh-all-powerful man at the top making any number of terrible choices, and then – to the bafflement of the entire globe – doubling down on them, thus inflicting massive suffering on his people. It seems the talents that make a man capable of navigating palace intrigue until he wins the throne generally don’t coexist with the talents required for – or even a passing interest in – good governance. P 459
Yet if the 2010’s awed us with the power of autocrats, the 2020’s seem hell-bent to refute it. More and more, it becomes impossible to deny that autocrats – like any ruler – are but men, yet men with no obligation to listen their people, and thus acknowledge reality. This, in turn, makes them fools: fools that are very difficult to dislodge from their thrones, true, but fools nonetheless. P 460”
― Robert Jackson Bennett, A Drop of Corruption

“Just because the tyrant dresses like a clown doesn’t mean he’s funny.”
― Adrian Tchaikovsky, Alien Clay

“This is the way they revere the dead. They remember what they offered the world and what everybody else has to do to fill the gap. There are no prayers here, no thoughts of an afterlife. The reward for a good life is the living of it.”
― Stuart Turton, The Last Murder at the End of the World

“I heard Ghrelin’s voice continue beside me, whispering, “So I wonder
now. I wonder—what does that make us?”
“I…I beg pardon, sir?” I asked.
I turned and saw him smiling sadly at me through the glass of his helm.
“What does it mean,” he said, “when the line that once connected us to the
inscrutable and ineffable instead coils about, forms a great loop—and then
comes back to us?”
― Robert Jackson Bennett, A Drop of Corruption