Halo Quotes

“Humans believed they thought things consciously when most of the time they were simply rationalizing instinctive reactions as basic as the amoeba’s, and after those reactions had already taken place.”
― Karen Traviss, Halo: Mortal Dictata

“the best way to stop worrying about your inevitable demise is to dwell on it morbidly until you’re so bored that you forget it.”
― Karen Traviss, Halo: Mortal Dictata

“Bury me the ONI way. Fill me up with explosives and use me as a booby trap.”
― Karen Traviss, Halo: Mortal Dictata (Kilo-five Series (Halo)) [Paperback] [Nov 01, 2014] Karen Traviss

“When wars end, all the shit comes tumbling out. People talk, point fingers at each other, reveal things they’ve kept quiet for years.”
― Karen Traviss, Halo: Mortal Dictata

“That was the trouble with opportunities. If they were exceptional, then they had to be seized first and thought through later.”
― Karen Traviss, Halo: Mortal Dictata

“Humans have a wonderful saying for everything and then proceed to ignore the wisdom in all of them.”
― Karen Traviss, Halo: Mortal Dictata

“Two wrongs—not equal to or more than a right (...) Good luck with quantifying a unit of right or wrong.”
― Karen Traviss, Halo: Mortal Dictata

“Law is just religion for atheists, dear. It’s equally shot full of contradictory nonsense.”
― Karen Traviss, Halo: Mortal Dictata

“One day’s too far ahead to plan.”
― Karen Traviss, Halo: Mortal Dictata

“Your conscience is what you do, not what you think or say you think. It’s also something you do when it has to be done, not as an afterthought when you’re forced to face up to your wrongdoing. Remorse is cheap and easy. It’s an insult.
My awareness obliged me to act, but I did nothing: I cooperated, and my compliance enabled something monstrous. I didn’t slaughter millions, but there’s no sliding scale in atrocities, even if the robotic imagination of the law requires fixed thresholds. Each death, each act of suffering, is a complete and qualifying act of evil in itself.
Humans instinctively norm. We behave like others around us, because compliance is our survival strategy. No matter how intelligent, sensible, or kind, 99 percent of human beings will carry out the most appalling acts if the rest of their tribe is doing the same. And most of our conscious acts are simply postscript rationalizations of our hard-wired unconscious decisions.”
― Karen Traviss, Halo: Mortal Dictata

“In my experience,...the humans who talk most loudly about freedom are the ones who think it’s so good that nobody else should have any of it.”
― Karen Traviss, Halo: Mortal Dictata

“Kig-Yar didn’t think like humans, though. They’d tried imperial culture once and decided it wasn’t for them. Maybe they were right: humans were constantly in denial about their ape-sized social circles, always pretending they could think on a global scale when history proved every time that they really couldn’t.”
― Karen Traviss, Halo: Mortal Dictata

“He’d known from the moment he started making it that it was more than just a special gift for his granddaughter. He accepted that it was a penance for failing to get one for Naomi, a subconscious motive buried in so shallow a grave that he could see the bones below with little effort.”
― Karen Traviss, Halo: Mortal Dictata

“Look. If you want to go back to the ship fully clothed and mostly sober, I promise I wont tell anyone.”
― Karen Traviss, Halo: Mortal Dictata