Quotes from Terry Goodkind

Free people were not ruled. Freedom had first to be valued before its existence could be demanded.

Evil grants no mercy, and to attempt to appease it is nothing more than a piecemeal surrender to it. Surrender to evil is slavery at best, death at worse. -Richard Rahl

The power is neither evil nor good; it simply exists. It is up to the mind of man to put it to use.

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 breathe 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 men.

there is no devil, jack said. we are the devil. the devil is us.

loyalty is earned, my dear, not commanded.

There is more to being in love than just jumping into bed, you know. Like just being close, in one another's arms.

Richard clenched the strip in his fist. "It's some kind of riddle. I hate riddles.

That smile might have been on his lips, but it was not in his eyes.

I have my wizard's rock along. Could I interest you? Adie's face softened in a shy smile. I would like that very much. She watched him as she sat back, taking a bite of her apple. Zedd arched an eyebrow. Naked?

The trickster, the Mother Confessor said. I told you that was our name for him»

Though he and Chandalen came from very different peoples, with very different cultures, Richard had grown up by many of the same standards. Perhaps, he thought, they weren't really that different. Maybe they wore different clothes, but they had much the same heart, the same longings, and the same desires. They shared, too, many of the same fears.

sometimes people were simply stupid, and there was no fixing stupid.

The bird cawed. The loud cry echoed off the mountains. The raven swooped down before them again, narrowly missing Richard's head. Gaining height, the bird circled. The air whistled through its feathers as it dove at them, driving them back from the water. "Is that bird crazy?" Kahlan asked. "Maybe it's protecting a nest? Or do all ravens behave like that?

I hate magic, Berdine muttered. It makes no sense.

A single gleaming sword sat in the middle on a raised portion of the red velvet. Magda noticed an ornate gold and silver scabbard attached to a baldric lying on the floor. The scabbard was so striking that it could only belong with the sword.

Even without the drizzle and approaching darkness, it was a miserable time to be digging up dead people.

Deception to a noble end, though regrettable, was sometimes necessary for a greater good. Lying for selfish reasons was the fertile dirt of immorality, from which sprouted the tendrils of evil.

Who knows, perhaps she will think better of such hateful accusations. Perhaps someone will talk some sense into her before it becomes necessary to protect the Minister from her wrongful charges. Perhaps she will even decide that butchering work is not for her, and she will go off to work on a farm, or something.

She had thought she could make a difference. She had thought she could drive back the advancing horde—by the sheer weight of her will, if need be. It was arrogance on her part. The forces of freedom were lost.

We have people like that in our world, too. People who say that freedom is no longer practical, that we must surrender it for a greater common good." "Fear them," she whispered. "They are the heart of evil. They tolerate tyranny, excuse it, compromise with it. In so doing they always bring savagery and death upon the rest of us.

In a time of peace, you have the luxury of order, but in war you must act. Hesitation is death.

Anger made a better warrior than fear.

This was why he couldn't let Richard know it was the chimes themselves that were loose. Richard would not have accepted what Zedd intended, what Zedd knew he must do.