The Kingdom on the Waves Quotes

“We all flee in hope of finding some ground of security”
― M.T. Anderson, The Kingdom on the Waves

“Those accustomed to failure fear the novelty of success. Those taught the lessons of subordination are oft timid in the school of self-service.”
― M.T. Anderson, The Kingdom on the Waves

“In all things we become acclimated; this is our strength in wartime, and also our weakness. What is a principle, if it alter with circumstance?
But what is a man, if he cannot change to meet changed times?
And if he can change to meet changed times, is he a man, or several in succession?”
― M.T. Anderson, The Kingdom on the Waves

“This is the war where we change. This is the trickster war. It's where we disappear, just like they desire us disappear. I spoke it you before: They wish us blank," he said, gesturing without thinking at Dr. Trefusis, who was the nearest exemplar of the white race. "They want us with no history and no memory. They want us empty as paper so they can write on us, so we ain't nothing but a price and an owner's name and a list of tasks. And that's what we'll give them. We'll give them your Nothing. We'll give them my William Williams and Henry Henry. We'll slip through and we'll change to who we must needs be and I will be all sly and have my delightful picaresque japes. But at the end of it, when it's over, I shall be one thing. I shall be one man, fixed, and not have to take no other name. I shall be one person steadily for some years."
"This is why we got to win...If we ever wish to be one person, we got to win.”
― M.T. Anderson, The Kingdom on the Waves

“Altruism is the kind of pie best eaten with a lot of gravy and little inspection of the kind of kidney it's stuffed with.”
― M.T. Anderson, The Kingdom on the Waves

“There are some who believe that the mind is a blank tablet, on which experience is writ until the page be full, and the cryptic world is known; but I see rather that my own life hath been one long forgetting, the erasure of what was drawn, a terrible redaction; til all that remains is blank white and comfortless.
I know not what we have been; I know not what we are; but I know what we might be.
And so I light out for the unknown regions.”
― M.T. Anderson, The Kingdom on the Waves

“I hope thou shalt never retreat beneath the ground. The sun is thy inheritance. The sky is thy birthright. Stay here, my boy, and with the conversation of mankind. rejoice in the light.”
― M.T. Anderson, The Kingdom on the Waves

“We ain't anything more than a name and some likes and some distastes and a story we tell about ourselves.'

'And what others say about us.'

'If you want them stories heaped in, too, then you're welcome to them. And we're a body; and sometimes the stories and the name, they live on after the body.”
― M.T. Anderson, The Kingdom on the Waves

“Do not speak glibly of virtue. Nothing shall change-nothing-so long as each individual awaits preferment rather than embodying beneficence in himself; so long as we wait upon the edicts of a government ruled by invested and interested men looking to their private purses; so long as we idle in expectation that all shall be healed, and that we shall somehow be stopped in our career of plunder by an eighteen-hundred-year-old mummy, scarred with the wounds of torture, falling out of the sky or stumbling out of the desert, eyes filled with the tears that we should weep ourselves.”
― M.T. Anderson, The Kingdom on the Waves

“I run through the woods, at once applauding myself for my wit-"
"Well deserved, sir. Well deserved."
"And at the self instant, I am grinding my teeth because I am a vain, revenging idiot and shall be run down because of it.”
― M.T. Anderson, The Kingdom on the Waves

“...all the beasts from sloth to pigmy shrew, arrayed silently in ordered cavalcade as if waiting admission to the Ark.”
― M.T. Anderson, The Kingdom on the Waves

“We ain't anything more than a name and some likes and some distastes, and a story we tell about ourselves.'
And what others say about us.”
― M.T. Anderson, The Kingdom on the Waves

“To participate, then, in the pomp of the orchestra, in the full scintillation thereof, was in the highest degree thrilling. Is this not the image of the perfect republic -- each instrument singing its wonted melody, endeavoring at once to express its part, and, in the same instance to conform its voice to the conversation of the whole?”
― M.T. Anderson, The Kingdom on the Waves

“It does not take long to die, nor to kill. A life is present or absent, and it is an instant passed between those extremities.”
― M.T. Anderson, The Kingdom on the Waves

“There is a power in names. Olakunde told us of ashe-the power which runs through all things, subtle and flexible, which find its most potent expression in human utterance; so that it is a terrible thing to call down imprecations on an enemy, or to wish for anything but good, for what is said out loud is forged into truth.”
― M.T. Anderson, The Kingdom on the Waves

“The British Army and Navy sang a rousing song called "Heart of Oak"; the rebels had writ one to counter it called "The Liberty Song." Both songs blustered of freedom; but both were sung to the same tune.
And we, to avoid offense, played the tune without words.”
― M.T. Anderson, The Kingdom on the Waves

“Because we ain't anything more than a name and some likes and some distastes and a story we tell about ourselves.”
― M.T. Anderson, The Kingdom on the Waves

“There is no virtue in concealment. When the earth is rendered chaos, regulations of speech and propriety are rendered impotent, just as city may become desolate, and street, battle ground, and flesh may become fire.”
― M.T. Anderson, The Kingdom on the Waves

“How do we change - within moments, the whole form of our habits and dispositions may become alien to us, and we almost cannot remember what we were.”
― M.T. Anderson, The Kingdom on the Waves