Quotes from R. Scott Bakker

Set aside your conviction," Moënghus said, "for the feeling of certainty is no more a marker of truth than the feeling of will is a marker of freedom. Deceived men always think themselves certain, just as they always think themselves free. This is simply what it means to be deceived.

No decision is so fine as to not bind us to its consequences. No consequence is so unexpected as to absolve us of our decisions. Not even death.

And 'barbarity,' I fear, is simply a word for unfamiliarity that threatens.

To be ignorant and to be deceived are two different things. To be ignorant is to be a slave of the world. To be deceived is to be the slave of another man. The question will always be: Why, when all men are ignorant, and therefore already slaves, does this latter slavery sting us so? —AJENCIS, THE EPISTEMOLOGIES   But

Love is like sleep. One can never seize, never force love.

One might sooner wash shit from shit than cleanse a soul so wicked!

Like a stern father, war shames men into hating their childhood games.

Of course he could see only blackness, such was the treachery of fire, which iluminated small circles by darkening the entire world.

He struck his own fire, listened to the night wind roar through the trees. Sometimes, when he could see it, he stared at the Conriyan encampment and counted fires like an idiot child. "Always number your foemen," his father had once told him, "by the glitter of their fires." Sometimes he gazed at the stars and wondered if they too were his enemies.

and that revelation murdered all that I once did know. Where once I asked of the God, 'Who are you?' now I ask, 'Who am I?

They so wanted it to be simple, believers. It is what is! they cried, sneering at the possibility of other eyes, other truths, overlooking their own outrageous presumption. It says what it says, spoken with a conviction that was itself insincerity. They ridiculed questions, for fear it would make their ignorance plain. Then they dared call themselves open.

The Men of the Ordeal do not march to save the World, Proyas--at least not first and foremost. They march to save their wives and children. Their tribes and their nations. If they learn that the world, their world, slips into ruin behind them, that their wives and daughters may perish for want of their shields, their swords, the Host of Hosts would melt about the edges, then collapse.

I am Cnaiur urs Skiötha, breaker-of-horses-and-men!, I am Cnaiür urs Skiötha, most violent of all men! I bear your fathers and brothers upon my arms!

Better blind in Hell than speechless in Heaven. —

You know nothing of war. War is dark. Black as pitch. It is not a God. It does not laugh or weep. It rewards neither skill nor daring. It is not a trial of souls, not the measure of wills. Even less is it a tool, a means to some womanish end. It is merely the place where the iron bones of the earth meet the hollow bones of men and break them.

Some events mark us so deeply that they find more force of presence in their aftermath than in their occurrence.

A beggar's mistake harms no one but the beggar. A king's mistake, however, harms everyo but the king. Too often, the measure of power lies not in the number wh obey your will, but in the number who suffer your stupidity.

Truths were carved from the identical wood as were lies--words--and so sank or floated with identical ease. But since truths were carved by the World, they rarely appeased Men and their innumerable vanities. Men had no taste for facts that did not ornament or enrich, and so they willfully--if not knowingly--panelled their lives with shining and intricate falsehoods.

Only madmen and historians, he said, believe their lies.

Sorweel: "Then how can we hope to resist him?" Harweel: "With our swords and our shields. And when those fail us, with spit and curses." But the spit and the curses, Sorweel would learn, always came first, accompanied by bold gestures and grand demonstrations. War was an extension of argument, and swords were simply words honed to a blood-letting edge. Only the Sranc began with blood. For Men, it was always the conclusion.

Convince a man to take a single step—after all, what earthly difference could one step make?—and he would walk the next mile to prove himself right.

That hope is little more than the premonition of regret. This is the first lesson of history.

fot he sin of the idolater is not that he worships stone, but that he worships one stone over others.

Intelligent people, Achamian had found, were typically less happy. The reason for this was simple: they were better able to rationalize their delusions. The ability to stomach Truth had little to do with intelligence—nothing, in fact. The intellect was far better at arguing away truths than at finding them.