Quotes from Ken Follett

She nodded. "They're counting again in California. Almost a million people voted, and the difference is about five thousand." "So much hangs on the decisions of a small number of poorly educated people." "That's democracy." Gus smiled. "A terrible way to run a country, but every other system is worse.

I think there's probably a controlling intelligence in the universe, a being that decided the rules, such as E = mc2, and the value of pi. But that being isn't likely to care whether we sing its praise or not, I doubt whether its decisions can be manipulated by praying to a statue of the Virgin Mary, and I don't believe it will organize special treatment for you on account of what you have around your neck.

If you don't take an interest, then what happens is your fault.

It did not occur to them that a woman could be dangerous. How foolish they were.

wondered if he really was capable of it. Then he thought what a thrill it would be to create something from nothing; to see, one day in the future, a new church here where now there was nothing but rubble, and to say: I made this.

When you were trying to enforce law and order, it was difficult to explain that the rules did not actually apply to you personally.

Don't be sorry for that. Be sorry that you made so happy. That's what hurts, woman. That you made me so happy.

Greg heard Frank Oppenheimer say: "It worked." Oppie said: "Yes, it worked." The two brothers shook hands. And the world is still here, Greg thought. But it has been forever changed.

He had forgotten that God saw through the silk robes to the sinful heart, that the only wealth worth having was treasure in heaven, and that even the king had to kneel down in church. Feeling that everyone else was so much more powerful and sophisticated than he was, he had lost sight of his true values, suspended his critical faculties, and placed his trust in his superiors. His reward had been treachery.

Talvez os selvagens nunca abandonem o poder - afirmou Philip com ar de desalento. - Talvez a cobiça nunca deixe de pesar mais nos conselhos dos poderosos que a sabedoria; talvez o medo nunca deixe de vencer a compaixão na mente dum homem com uma espada empunhada.

Monika answered for her father. Giving Walter a conspiratorial grin, she said: "Daddy used to say that if the tsar had been born to a different station in life, he might, with an effort, have become a competent postman.

This was not a political party. It was an army. The purpose of the display, Lloyd figured, was to give them false authority. They wanted to look as if they had the right to close meetings and empty buildings, to burst into homes and offices and arrest people, to drag them to jails and camps and beat them up, interrogate and torture them, as the Brownshirts did in Germany under the Nazi regime so admired by Mosley and the Daily Mail's proprietor

Don't worry. We who are born poor have to use cunning to get what we want. Scruples are for the privileged." She

At last it faded away, and the mushroom cloud began to disperse. Greg heard Frank Oppenheimer say: "It worked." Oppie said: "Yes, it worked." The two brothers shook hands. And the world is still here, Greg thought. But it has been forever changed.

Excessive pride is a familiar sin, but a man may just easily frustrate the will of God through excessive humility. - Cuthbert Whitehead

A chill December morning dawned, with rags and tatters of mist hanging on the trees like poor people's washing.

politicians often had the knack of seeming to know everyone intimately. Either they had remarkable memories, or their secretaries reminded them efficiently.

Never call a meeting until the outcome is a foregone conclusion.

A person who breaks a promise diminishes herself. It's like losing a finger. It's worse than being paralyzed, which is merely physical. Someone whose promises are worthless has a disabled soul.

A fool was just a fool, but a fool in the White House was the most dangerous person in the world.

It was a sunny day in early summer, and he could hear birdsong. In a nearby orchard that had so far escaped shelling, apple trees were blossoming bravely. Men were the only animals that slaughtered their own kind by the million, and turned the landscape into a waste of shell craters and barbed wire. Perhaps the human race would wipe itself out completely, and leave the world to the birds and trees, Walter thought apocalyptically. Perhaps that would be for the best.

Carla had never before realized how much she had been protected by politicians, newspapermen, and lawyers. Without them, she saw now, the government could do anything it liked, even kill people.

He was the kind of man George had been fighting for a decade: an ugly, fat, foul-mouthed, stupid white racist.

man thought he could fly, so he jumped off the top of a ten-story building, and as he fell past the fifth floor, flapping his arms uselessly in the air, he was heard to say: 'So far, so good.