Quotes from Terry Goodkind

I have found that people do not often want to believe the truth. It is of little value to them.

Sometimes making the wrong choice is better than making no choice. You have the courage to go forward, that is rare. A person who stands at the fork, unable to pick, will never get anywhere.

She had lived her whole life on shifting quicksand, where reason and the intellect were not to be trusted, where only faith was valid, and blind faith was sacred. She, herself, had enforced mindless conformity to that empty evil.

Life was not fair, it simply existed. If you accidentally stepped on a poison snake, you got bitten. Intentions were irrelevant.

The truth can seem awfully small and insignificant when compared to a mountain of lies.

How can you be alive, now, if you were dead?" "Well, death isn't what it used to be.

An adversary is not one who does loathsome acts for their own sake. He always has a reason that to him is justification. My cat eats mice. Does that make him bad? I don't think so, and the cat doesn't think so, but I would bet the mice have a different opinion.

The power is neither evil not good; it simply exists. It is up to the mind of man to put it to use.

As long as we have choices in life and use our heads, there is always the possibility of turning around the worst situation.

Faith is a device of self-delusion, a sleight of hand done with words and emotions founded on any irrational notion that can be dreamed up. Faith is the attempt to coerce truth to surrender to whim. In simple terms, it is trying to breath life into a lie by trying to outshine reality with the beauty of wishes. Faith is the refuge of fools, the ignorant, and the deluded,not of thinking rational people.

Books served to keep hard-won knowledge safe. They endured.

He was the monster. That was what Kahlan saw. And she had sent him away in a collar to be tortured. Because he was a monster that needed to be collared, a beast.

It was important for a person not to let their body or mind become slow and dull. Oba believed it was important to learn new things. He believed it was important to grow. He thought it was important for a person to use what they had learned. That was how people grew.

That's what friends are for—to be strong for you when you need a moment to find your own strength.

The good in life is what quenches hatred in normal people, the way a smile can calm a quarrel. But in those people who carry this flaw, their hatred burns so hot they come to hate what is good in life specifically because they don't want to stop hating. Hatred becomes the driving purpose of their lives. They live to hate.

We can't live our lives according to what might have been. We have to live by what is.

You can't expect to walk through life without stepping in the muck now and again. The important thing is to maintain your footing when you do, and not fall on your face and make it worse.

There seemed to be some inner need in many people to believe that the world would end in some cataclysmic event. Usually in the very near future.

Your only chance is to let the truth escape.

Everyone to one extent or another must face life's trials. There will always be those who try to influence or even dominate us. We can not allow such things to be an excuse for making the wrong choices. Ultimately each of us lives our own life and is responsible for it. (Terry Goodkind The Confessor)

Safety is only an illusion when evil is on the hunt. I can't stand by and watch. I have to act.

Wishing gets people killed," he often said. "Using your head gets you home.

Richard didn't trust Minister Chanboor. The man's tongue was too smooth. Truth didn't wear a tongue smooth; lies did.

it didn't matter how hard you could swing a sword, if you couldn't hit anything.