Quotes from Jack L. Chalker

It's sometimes a blessing that great historical figures don't live to see what people do to their visions.

All magic means is a line between knowledge and ignorance,

There are only three kinds of people in the universe, no matter what their race or form. They are scoundrels, hypocrites, and sheep.

If you don't lose that fear of death, then you can never appreciate life or take the chances life gives you.

When one sees herself and her kind as the standard of perfection against which all else is measured, it is impossible to have perspective.

there was supposed to be this man who was Jewish and claimed to be God's son. For this the powers-that-be killed him, because they were scared he might lead a revolution or something. Supposedly he was to come back from the dead. One Jew was supposed to have cursed him at his execution and been told that he would stay until this god-man returned.

equality is best when you're the one with the guns, or at least on the winning side.

It makes absolutely no difference in the scheme of things whether all but a handful of people live or die. No more than the importance of a single flower, or blade of grass, or vegetable, or bird. It would make no difference if those men who held that ancient pass or that equally ancient fort had, instead, died of disease or old age or in a saloon fight. But it made a difference that they died where they did. It mattered. It justified their whole existence.

It's easy to rattle the saber if the enemy's five thousand or more kilometers distant.

I'm a nut, I know I'm a nut, I enjoy being a nut so I'll stay a nut.

Love is the most abused word in history. It is, simply, caring more for others than you do for yourself.

The boat—no, it was a ship, as one of the crew had explained, since it had a solid superstructure and was stabilized by ballast,

What you don't have to think about can't really get to you.

an award one's superiors gave in lieu of a bonus—

You must be rendered sane according to the culture of the people.

When a nation was faced with a choice between abstract principle or complete self-interest, it took self-interest every time.

You can fill a bucket with water but not water with a bucket.

Was having someone else hunt and kill for you any different, morally, than doing it yourself, or was it worse because it removed you from the act while still requiring the kill?

the true test of awesome power is the ability not to use it,

War is the greatest of teachers, and not all of its lessons are bad. Their cost is just so terribly high.

What was love, anyway? he mused. She said it was caring, caring more about someone else than about yourself.

Orwell. Wrote a book that said that a totalitarian society sustains itself by the basic selfishness of everybody. When the chips were down, his hero and heroine betrayed each other.

Nothing done in love that harms no one can be perverse.

the captain decided to hoist sail and move a little westward, on the chance that the fog was hugging the coast of the Island. This was likely; land heats up and cools down faster than water, which caused early fogs over many seacoasts in warm weather.