The Final Encyclopedia Quotes

“But you keep fighting!”
“Of course!” said Child. “I am of God, whatever or whoever else is not. I must testify to Him by placing my body against the enemy while that body lasts; and by protecting those that my small strength may protect, until my personal end. What is it to me that all the peoples of all the worlds choose to march toward the nether pit? What they do in their sins is no concern of mine. Mine only is concern for God, and the way of God’s people of whom I am one. In the end, all those who march pitward will be forgotten; but I and those like me who have lived their faith will be remembered by the Lord—other than that I want nothing and I need nothing.”

Godlun dropped his face into his hands and sat for a moment. When he took his hands away again and raised his head, Hal saw that the skin of his face was drawn and he looked very old.
“It’s all right for you,” he whispered.
“It is fleshly loves that concern thee,” said Child, nearly as softly. “I know, for I remember how it was in the little time I had with my wife; and I remember the children unborn that she and I dreamed of together. It is thy children thou wouldst protect in these dark days to come; and it was thy hope that I could give you reason to think thou couldst do so. But I have no such hope to give. All that thou lovest will perish. The Others will make a foul garden of the worlds of humankind and there will be none to stop them. Turn thee to God, my brother, for nowhere else shalt thou find comfort.”
― Gordon R. Dickson, The Final Encyclopedia

“We’re painted savages, nothing more, in spite of what we like to think of as some thousands of years of civilization. Only our present paint’s called clothing and our caves called buildings”
― Gordon R. Dickson, The Final Encyclopedia

“We wouldn’t be capable of hope, if hope had no meaning.”
― Gordon R. Dickson, The Final Encyclopedia

“the contest that’s now shaping up can only be won by those who believe in the future if they work and struggle as one single people.”
― Gordon R. Dickson, The Final Encyclopedia

“there is no future—only the choice between the present as they want it or nothing at all. He and those like him lose nothing in their own terms by trading a future that is valueless for them for a here and now that sees them get what they want. But the real price of what they want is an end to all dreams—including”
― Gordon R. Dickson, The Final Encyclopedia

“the faithholder is his faith. He and it make, not two, but a single thing. Since he and it are one, there’s no way to take it from him. That makes him a very powerful opponent. In fact, it makes him an unconquerable opponent; since even death can’t touch him in his most important part.”
― Gordon R. Dickson, The Final Encyclopedia

“Faith,” said Amid to him, the third day out of Coby, “in its large sense, is more than just the capacity to believe. What it is, is the concept of a personal identity with a specific, incontrovertible version of reality. True faith is untouchable. By definition anything that attacks it is not only false but doomed to be exposed as such. Which is why we have martyrs. The ultimate that can be offered against any true faithholder to force him to change his beliefs is a threat to destroy him utterly, to cancel out his universe, leaving only nothingness. But for the true faithholder, even this threat fails, since he, and that in which he has faith, are one; and, by definition, that in which he has faith is indestructible.”
― Gordon R. Dickson, The Final Encyclopedia

“they’re blinded by the limited focus of their attitudes toward time and history. They only look as far as their own lifetime. No, they don’t even look that far. They only look at how things are for their own generation.”
― Gordon R. Dickson, The Final Encyclopedia