All societies are like that; the damping hand of the old and the firebrand youth together.

Tactics cohered into strategy, strategy disintegrated into tactics, in the sliding scale of their dialectical moral algebra.

{He} just wants {...} forgiveness?Sma, given all the things Zakalwe's done, just since we've known him, they'd have to invent a personal deity for him alone, to even start him.Sma turned away to look...

The method was that taking and bending of materials and people to one purpose, the outlook that everything could be used in the fight; that nothing could be excluded, that everything was a weapon, and...

Solotol is a city of arches and bridges, where steps and pavements wind past tall buildings and lance out over steep rivers and gullies on slender suspension bridges and fragile stone arches. Roadways...

High in a turret of a great castle rising on a black crag above snowy plains, besieged and grand, crammed full of an empire's treasure, and he sitting by a log fire with a sad and lovely princess. . ....

Do you want to work with us?""Everybody seems to think I should; they believe you're fighting the good fight. It's just that... I get suspicious when everybody agrees about something.

But I don't know what the right thing to do is; I sometimes think I know too much, I've studied too much, learned too much, remembered too much. It all seems to average out, somehow; like dust that...

Sometimes heroics revolted him; they seemed like an insult to the soldier who weighed the risks of the situation and made calm, cunning decisions based on experience and imagination, the sort of...

A very patient voice. Concerned, somehow, but a hopeful voice; a cheerful, even loving voice. He tried to remember his mother. 'Cheradenine?' the voice said again. Trying to get him to wake up. But he...

{...} there was a relief in not being listened to, sometimes. Power meant responsibility. Advice unacted upon almost always have been right

Concerned, somehow, but a hopeful voice; a cheerful, even loving voice. He tried to remember his mother. 'Cheradenine?' the voice said again.

It was a beautiful voice. He wanted to reply to it. But he couldn't work out how to. It was very dark. 'Cheradenine?' A very patient voice. Concerned, somehow, but a hopeful voice; a cheerful, even...

They also," {the drone} said, "refuse to acknowledge machine sentience fully; they exploit proto-conscious computers and claim only human subjective experience has any intrinsic value - carbon...

That's why you can destroy them, win an argument, prove the other person wrong, and still they believe what they did in the first place. He

I strongly suspect the things people believe in are usually just what they instinctively feel is right; the

Most people are not prepared to have their minds changed

I just think people overvalue argument because they like to hear themselves talk.

But such consummate skill, such ability, such adaptability, such numbing ruthlessness, such a use of weapons when anything could become weapon . . .

Zakalwe, in all the human societies we have ever reviewed, in every age and every state, there has seldom if ever been a shortage of eager young males prepared to kill and die to preserve the...

Darkness came like a black flag waved over the canyon, drawing back the grayness from the shores of the city, then pushing forward the individual specks of street and building lights as though in...

He was what she wanted, but it would mean so much more after a charged friendship; that long, exquisite exchange of gradually more intimate confidences, the slow accumulation of shared experiences,...

just doing nothing is a statement, don't you understand that? What is all your studying worth, all your learning, all your knowledge, if it doesn't lead to wisdom? And what's wisdom but knowing what...

What is any achievement, however great it was, once time itself is dead? Of

Ancient, vicious, discredited ideas backed with adolescent war mania. It's

Tell me, what is happiness?""Happiness? Happiness... is to wake up, on a bright spring morning, after an exhausting first night spent with a beautiful... passionate... multi-murderess.

In another large journal book, he wrote his notes out again, along with further notes on the notes, and then started to cross words out of the completed, annotated notes, carefully removing word after...

My name,' she said. 'Is Rasd-Coduresa Diziet Embless Sma da' Marenhide.

I strongly suspect the things people believe in are usually just what they instinctively feel is right; the excuses, the justifications, the things you're supposed to argue about, come later. They're...

The good soldier did as he was told, and if he had any sense at all volunteered for nothing, especially promotion.