Top 100 L.E. Modesitt Jr. Quotes
#2. The tongue of the adder, visible only briefly, is a small matter.
L.E. Modesitt Jr.
#3. We developed a philosophical credo and applied it consistently. We accept that morality, power, and consensus are the underpinnings for any society and work to maintain all three in balance. Trust and mutual respect are, in a way, the mortar that hold the other three together.
L.E. Modesitt Jr.
#4. Love of another is merely empty flattery and self-deception for one who cannot accept himself without pretense.
L.E. Modesitt Jr.
#5. Power cannot be maintained and effectively exercised without a moral structure accepted and practiced by all because power attracts the corruptible and because corruption destroys consensus.
L.E. Modesitt Jr.
#6. Were all of us who were furcated across the Web misintegrals of one sort or another? From religious delusionals to obsessed perfectionists?
L.E. Modesitt Jr.
#7. Life wasn't yes-no, on-off. Life was shades of gray, and rainbows not in the order of the spectrum. Our bodies have always known more than our minds have acknowledged they knew.
L.E. Modesitt Jr.
#8. Albertini stared at a dented samovar. "Ser, what do you have against the samovar?" "Nothing." Trystin grinned. "I like tea. But the revs don't, I guess." "They're crazy, all of them.
L.E. Modesitt Jr.
#9. Someone in my country made a comment along the lines that solutions are always possible if you are willing to let someone else take the credit.
L.E. Modesitt Jr.
#10. We all might be in less trouble if we did not speak, I sometimes think.
L.E. Modesitt Jr.
#11. That is the greatest danger in theology and deities - that they create the impression that goodness cannot be created or maintained by mere humans without divine help. This allows all measure of excuses ... and strange contortions to explain perfectly logical occurrences ... .
L.E. Modesitt Jr.
#12. That's the problem with all of us. We've never time to think about the past, and we're always planning for the future. And since the future's always the future, we never live in the present.
L.E. Modesitt Jr.
#14. I started writing poetry in high school because I wanted desperately to write, but somehow, writing stories didn't appeal to me, and I loved the flow and the feel and sense of poetry, especially that of what one might call formal verse.
L.E. Modesitt Jr.
#15. I was trying to foment a little dissension.' He paused. 'No, that's too flippant. How about trying to make the system less warlike - injecting a little love?' He snorted. 'Through violence, of course, like all religious reformers.
L.E. Modesitt Jr.
#16. Do you really know what they want?" "I don't have an absolute confirmation, but almost anything would be better than what I've prepared for." I laughed hoarsely. "Then, I'll probably find out that what they want is even worse than that. It usually works that way.
L.E. Modesitt Jr.
#18. The ancients wrested the secrets from the depths of the earth and from the hearts of the stars, and with those secrets they banished sickness, death, and all forms of discomfort. And sickness, death, and discomfort gathered together and created the demons, and the demons destroyed the ancients.
L.E. Modesitt Jr.
#19. Sometimes, Johan ... " He offered a self-deprecating grin. "It would be easier to forget the past." I understood, although I didn't know that he knew that. "Sometimes ... but without the past we wouldn't be who we are.
L.E. Modesitt Jr.
#21. An accurate fact in an incorrect context is an effective lie. As
L.E. Modesitt Jr.
#22. Symbolic forms have always been the supports of civilizations, their laws, and their morality. Since symbolic forms are illusions, and illusions sustain civilization, those who rule must maintain illusion.
L.E. Modesitt Jr.
#23. Good principles and feelings are far from enough to ensure peace and prosperity - or free actions for people.
L.E. Modesitt Jr.
#24. Baldur laughed. "I don't think you understand just how alien these people are." "They aren't people, Sammis said." "In my view, anything that thinks is a person." I had to think about that. Didn't flying gophers think a little? Where did you draw the line?
L.E. Modesitt Jr.
#25. Energy is matter, and vice versa, and if you can control energy through your mind, theoretically the rest follows.
L.E. Modesitt Jr.
#26. Didn't need to fear the Lord on Josephat either, just the idiots who thought they knew His will.
L.E. Modesitt Jr.
#28. Was there really something to the obsolete idea of a national character? Some countries just changed tyrants, without changing anything else.
L.E. Modesitt Jr.
#29. Knowledge begets power. "Power begets force. "Force is applied from ignorance." With a smile of habit, I looked at the blond youth on the end. "Sergol? Would you finish it?" "Knowledge leads to ignorance.
L.E. Modesitt Jr.
#30. The difference between truth and honesty is the difference between the riverbed and the river.
L.E. Modesitt Jr.
#32. Dzin wasn't the problem. It was a tool, and could be misused, like any tool. The problem was that I wasn't a demon in heart and spirit, either, and I didn't know what I was except that being a demon in body had taken everything I had been.
L.E. Modesitt Jr.
#33. Of necessity, you will have to maintain her respect becasue I will not have my sister ever disrespected." Bhayar
L.E. Modesitt Jr.
#34. I will die, later or sooner, and what I understand will be lost, for when men and women seek truth, what they find is as deceptive as lies, and neither truth nor lies exist outside of a deceptive soul.
L.E. Modesitt Jr.
#35. Never mistake law for justice. Justice is an ideal, and law is a tool.
L.E. Modesitt Jr.
#36. According to my royalty statements, 'The Green Progression' sold 392 copies in hardcover.
L.E. Modesitt Jr.
#37. Death had two meanings - the loss of resources to society and the personal grief of the few who cared. Fersonne's value was less than that of one cargo, and this time, I was one of the few who cared, and I wanted there to be some meaning
L.E. Modesitt Jr.
#38. Popularity is an element in any system, even the most autocratic and regimented, because it is so much easier to count heads or hands than to evaluate excellence.
L.E. Modesitt Jr.
#39. Power beyond great power allows honesty and compels those in such a society to demand it.
L.E. Modesitt Jr.
#40. Most people don't care who rules, as long as their lives don't change.
L.E. Modesitt Jr.
#41. Intelligence is overrated by any species that has it, and that's provable by the fact that all intelligent species are outlived by a factor of a hundred to one, if not a thousand to one, by nonintelligent species, who don't have the brains or perversity to destroy themselves or their environments.
L.E. Modesitt Jr.
#42. I'd have felt better with Morgen to talk to, to help, but all I had was memory and a soulsong to help me with our ancient cousins from across the stars, cousins so willful they could not see. Cousins even more willful than the ancient heroes my mother had bequeathed to me.
L.E. Modesitt Jr.
#43. While every new fantasy author is hailed as unique, new, and different, Brandon Sanderson's ELANTRIS does indeed provide an absorbing adventure in a unique, different, and well-thought-out fantasy world, with a few nifty twists as well.
L.E. Modesitt Jr.
#44. Then, as he chevies the ancient ones on their way, he opens a tunnel, a tunnel in time, back to when a certain FO star was younger, and without a planet.
L.E. Modesitt Jr.
#45. Minds, like parachutes, function better when open, but, like fists, they strike harder when closed.
L.E. Modesitt Jr.
#46. I'm not sure there are too many people who write what I write.
L.E. Modesitt Jr.
#47. It really is amazing how some young people feel that short stature and small minds are a sign of superiority. I wonder what ever happened to decency and courtesy?
L.E. Modesitt Jr.
#48. I guess that showed why the Guard mainly meddles with humanoid cultures. We're opportunists, not real knowledge-seekers, and we just don't have the knowledge base to go beyond humanoid contacts.
L.E. Modesitt Jr.
#49. If you do good because you expect to be rewarded, it is greed.
L.E. Modesitt Jr.
#50. When the complexity of social patterning is reduced, so is individual freedom.
L.E. Modesitt Jr.
#51. A chronometer will measure intervals precisely, but not the passage of time.
L.E. Modesitt Jr.
#52. When the symbolic images developed by the society no longer work, and the images which do work are not those of the society, the individual has nowhere to turn.
L.E. Modesitt Jr.
#53. They say you can do anything with plastique except play with sparks, but I still treat things that can blow you apart with respect. It can't hurt.
L.E. Modesitt Jr.
#54. Each hero had a tale, of the old days, and of how he had routed and killed, and set things to right, sometimes to right the right that the hero before him had righted.
L.E. Modesitt Jr.
#55. the most important thing was to show strength of will, not when matters were going well, but when they were going badly.
L.E. Modesitt Jr.
#56. The end is always the same. That's why what we do does matter. Good or bad, we die. If we bring some light and prosperity into the world, isn't that better than there being less light?
L.E. Modesitt Jr.
#57. If I recall correctly, I think I signed my first contract with Tor in 1983.
L.E. Modesitt Jr.
#58. A name is only what others want you to believe." He pauses, hoping that the pause will let the meaning sink in. "I am what I am, not what others would have you believe." Martel smiles. "And a pleasant evening to you all.
L.E. Modesitt Jr.
#59. Hatred is a form of faith, distilled by passion to remove all rationality.
L.E. Modesitt Jr.
#60. she stands before him as a collection of clashing traits - the face of a girl with eyes that have seen Hell, the figure of a virgin with the body posture of experience, a complexion that demands dark hair with golden.
L.E. Modesitt Jr.
#61. The headline is good - 'World-Renowned Pair Open Concert Reason.
L.E. Modesitt Jr.
#62. The empty quarter, the empty half, the empty outside of a full beaker ... why are these the things he looks for?
L.E. Modesitt Jr.
#63. Political science came into being as alchemy was being discredited, although history has since proved that alchemy had a better record.
L.E. Modesitt Jr.
#64. The Russians have a saying. Offer a man a finger, and he will take your hand - if not your arm.
L.E. Modesitt Jr.
#65. Life and death are one. You have life, and life is death. Without death there is no meaning to life. Without life there is no death. Be content with what you have.
L.E. Modesitt Jr.
#66. No society that places the individual above itself will survive; but neither will any society that places the individual below itself.
L.E. Modesitt Jr.
#67. They belonged to the long and honorable human tradition that had spawned the Luddites, the flat-earthers, various bible-thumping faithies, the scientographers, and the back-earthies, not to mention all the other forms of the true believers that had parasitized human society over the millennia.
L.E. Modesitt Jr.
#68. Time to face the well-groomed and empty-minded masses." "All young in any culture tend to be empty-minded," I pointed out. "I suspect" we were. "We were probably happier then.
L.E. Modesitt Jr.
#69. Complaining doesn't do any good," I pointed out. "If the person you complain to is the kind who would listen, they've already done what they can, and anyone else either won't listen, doesn't care, or can't do anything.
L.E. Modesitt Jr.
#70. how could so many people talk about the good of Query, and the good of the Guard, and then act in ways basically immoral or destructive just to be a little higher, just to get a star with silver edges instead of gold edges?
L.E. Modesitt Jr.
#71. In a technological society, the practice of completely private property cannot exist.
L.E. Modesitt Jr.
#72. Politicians who don't have to face the weaponry they have built have always worried me." "Politicians don't have to worry about facing weaponry of any sort. That's the definition of a politician - someone who gets someone else to pay the bill and take the bullets.
L.E. Modesitt Jr.
#73. What I still didn't understand was how women could vote in a patriarchal, polygamous society and yet how they clearly voted to support the theocracy.
L.E. Modesitt Jr.
#74. We all feel better when we can defend ourselves. When we can tell ourselves and everyone else that we did what was necessary and no more. That's easy. What's so much harder is doing what is necessary before others see it and when the actions are harsh and unpopular.
L.E. Modesitt Jr.
#75. He learned that some things that seemed to make little sense were senseless only from his point of view, not necessarily from someone else's perspective.
L.E. Modesitt Jr.
#76. Deities are invented by fallible and finite beings in the hope and desire to create immortal perfection; unfortunately, such deities only reflect their creators and inspire their followers to similar imperfections.
L.E. Modesitt Jr.
#77. Too often, especially in democratic societies, people mistook the mechanisms of power for power itself.
L.E. Modesitt Jr.
#78. Martel also knows Kryn will not accept him, readies himself, drawing his cloak of darkness from the closet of time around the corner from now, preparing to use it at the proper instant.
L.E. Modesitt Jr.
#79. If you're not practical, I've found, it can be difficult to hold on to your ideals,
L.E. Modesitt Jr.
#82. You are always prompt, Minister Eschbach. You do not make time a game of position." "Oh, but I do. My time is important. So is yours. When I waste neither, you find yourself indebted to me.
L.E. Modesitt Jr.
#83. Music must lead people, don't you think?" asked Thies. "If it follows whatever the popular taste happens to be, then what's its value?
L.E. Modesitt Jr.
#84. Think about the adiamante." I was too tired to say much more. "It says more than I can." And it did - the hardest manmade substance, and it couldn't stand up to the souls of human beings.
L.E. Modesitt Jr.
#85. 'The One-Eyed Man' is a novel that was one I never intended to write.
L.E. Modesitt Jr.
#87. Without power, knowledge is useless. without knowledge, faith is tyranny. Without understanding, humanity is blind, and without all four, it is doomed.
L.E. Modesitt Jr.
#88. The politicians pose some danger because they are interesting and employ popular vanity and the illusion of ideals to make small changes in society. Small does not necessarily mean insignificant, and for this reason the politicians must be watched.
L.E. Modesitt Jr.
#89. I took the stairs two at a time. There's a time for decorum and a time to run like a crazed vorpal's after you, except a crazed vorpal's an oxymoron. This was the time to run.
L.E. Modesitt Jr.
#90. To that which is born, death is certain; to that which is dead, birth is certain.
L.E. Modesitt Jr.
#91. The great fault of logic is that it seems so reasonable, even when it is not.
L.E. Modesitt Jr.
#92. I only did about one novel a year while I was working full time, but since 1993, I've averaged two and a half books a year.
L.E. Modesitt Jr.
#93. Was attraction and repulsion all a matter of appearances? Or preconceptions?
L.E. Modesitt Jr.
#94. My experiences in the military, the private sector, and as a congressional staffer were at times almost enough to drive me crazy. Writing offered the all-too-often-cited creative outlet.
L.E. Modesitt Jr.
#95. Every piece of the globe has been conquered at least a handful of times." "And the conquerors promptly forgot that they stole it from someone else so that they could claim some sort of moral right to the land when someone else tried to take it away from them," I suggested.
L.E. Modesitt Jr.
#96. In a culture where life was short, decisions had to be made in a hurry. You would never have enough time, might never live to see the consequences of a wrong action - or a correct one. On Query, it was different.
L.E. Modesitt Jr.
#97. A culture that blames the rest of the world or the rest of the galaxy for its ills is likely to stoop to anything. One
L.E. Modesitt Jr.
#98. The difference between an explanation and an excuse lies with the one receiving it.
L.E. Modesitt Jr.
#100. The ancients sought their gods in temples, in worldly goods, in the technology they created, and lastly in the stars. They found neither gods nor enlightenment in the materials of the universe, nor will any wise soul find aught in such but the reflection of sorrow.
L.E. Modesitt Jr.
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