Quotes from R. Scott Bakker

You realized those truths that cut against the interests of the powerful were called lies, and that those lies that served those interests were called truths.

We Dûnyain, Cnaiür, are guides and trackers, students of the Logos, the Shortest Way. Of all the world, we alone have awakened from the dread slumber of custom. We alone." He drew Cnaiür's young hand to his lap. Thumbs probed the spaces between his calluses. How could bliss ache so? "Tell me, Chieftain-son, what do you desire before all things? What circumstance? Tell me, one who is awake, and I'll show you the trail you must follow." Cnai

There was an absurdity to places far, a sense of insignificant people scratching meaningless earth. Let them die, she would sometimes think, whenever she heard tidings of famine in Ainon or plague in Nilnamesh. What are these people to me? These places? A fool … that's what she had been.

Though all men be equally frail before the world, the differences between them are terrifying." —

Look unto others and ponder the sin and folly you find there. For their sin is your sin, and their folly is your folly. Seek ye the true reflecting pool? Look to the stranger you despise, not the friend you love.

There was nothing the ignorant prized more than the ignorance of others.

few things are more familiar, he supposed, than finding oneself a stranger.

Where the holy take men for fools, the mad take the world. —

That's the horrible fact of sinners. We're indistinguishable from the righteous.

And now, when he needed a brother more than at any time in his life, he was not even sure he possessed a friend.

Hope is ever the greatest luxury of the helpless, the capacity to suppose knowledge that circumstances denied.

What did they know of motherhood, the mad miracle of finding your interior drawn from you, clinging and bawling and giggling and learning everything there was to learn anew?

A cut scarred where a caress faded away.

I am a warrior of ages, Anasurimbor ... ages. I have dipped my nimil in a thousand hearts. I have ridden both against and for the No-God in the great wars that authored this wilderness. I have scaled the ramparts of great Golgotterath, watched the hearts of High Kings break for fury.

To see what was unseen was to understand that blindness was always a matter of degree. To say that all men were blind in some respect—to the machinations of others, to themselves—was a truism scarcely worth noting. What was astounding was the way this truism perpetually escaped Men, the way they confused seeing mere slivers with seeing everything they needed to see.

Politics, he thought sourly. It was not, as the philosopher Ajencis had written, the negotiation of advantage within communities of men; it was more an absurd auction than an exercise in oratory. One bartered principle and piety to accomplish what principle and piety demanded. One sullied himself in order to be cleansed.

Like life, games were governed by rules. But unlike life, games were utterly defined by those rules. The rules were the game, and if one played by different rules, then one simply played a different game. Since a fixed framework of rules determined the meaning of every move as a move, games possessed a clarity that made life seem a drunken brawl by comparison. The proprieties were indubitable, the permutations secure; only the outcome was shrouded.

Beliefs were the foundation of actions. Those who believed without doubting, he would say, acted without thinking. And those who acted without thinking were enslaved.

No man has wit enough to reason with a fool, Zin.

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

Have you heard the saying, Skeaös? 'Cats look down upon Man, and dogs look up, but only pigs dare look Man straight in the eye.'" "Y-yes, God-of-Men." "Pretend that you are a pig, Skeaös." What

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.

When we believe without ground or cause, Proyas, conviction is all we possess, and acts of conviction become our only demonstration. Our beliefs become our God, and we make sacrifices to appease them.

Stupid men, Conphas had found, tended to be excessively proud of their few brilliant moments.