Quotes from David Weber

Lester Tourville stared at his plot in horror as the impeller signatures of sixty-eight Republican ships of the wall abruptly vanished. Seventeen continued to burn on the display for another handful of seconds. Then they, too, vanished in what he devoutly hoped was a frantic hyper translation.

Shut not your minds to the new because the chains of the bast bind you tight, for it is those who cling most desperately to the old who will turn you from the new way and lead you once more in to the paths of the unclean

A monarchy is a merchantman which sails well, but will sometimes strike on a rock, and go to the bottom,'" Massingill quoted. "'A republic is a raft which will never sink, but then your feet are always in the water.' I don't remember the source.

Shut not your minds to the new because the chains of the past bind you tight, for it is those who cling most desperately to the old who will turn you from the new way and lead you once more in to the paths of the unclean

So bring on your inquiry. Present your case, and we'll present ours. Not because we give one single solitary damn for your prepackaged, predetermined 'impartial conclusions,' but because we care about history. Because unlike you, we do care about truth. And because someday your successors, whoever they may be, will have a record of what you actually do here and will revile your memory with all the contempt and all the disdain your actions will so richly merit.

And you were of the opinion propaganda has to make sense to be effective?

You don't pock with the Dark Lord of the Sixth, Julian said.

Without love, there can be no true marriage; with love, there can be nothing else.

There's got to be at least some contact if they aren't going to lose their assets simply because someone dies before she gets around to telling her son or daughter Oh, by the way. We're actually secret agents for the Mesan Alignment. Here's your secret decoder kit. Be ready to be contacted by the Galactic Evil Overlord on Frequency X with orders to betray the society you've been raised all your life to think of as your own.

Long-term rational planning drops off the chart when men are thinking about women. It's how they're wired. Of course, we're not all that rational about them sometimes

Hamish Alexander stood on Benjamin the Great 's flag deck with his hands clasped behind him and tried very hard not to feel a sense of godlike power.

Roaring Deeps

They're human beings, and the two things humans make are tools…and mistakes. But sometimes we get stuff right, too, and there are some really good models out there

We heads of state really prefer to have some sort of an agenda before we sit down at the high-stakes table, you know. All bad novelists notwithstanding, surprise and improvisation are not the best basis for successful diplomacy!

Fat flakes of snow fell like silent, feathery ghosts in the windless sub-arctic night beyond the window.

It's not what you don't know that hurts you; it's what you think you know that isn't so.

The other side's version," Kolokoltsov thought. Even here, he's not willing to call it "the truth." Whoever said truth is the first casualty of war damned well knew what he was talking about!

You might as well have called them Amygdalum and Amygdalee. He could only hope they didn't do anything really foolish. Too much too hope, of course, that they wouldn't drool.

He seemed quite a cheerful fellow, too. Even puckish, you might say—at least if, like Brice, you had just recently encountered the term and been taken by it, but hadn't yet read enough literature to realize that puckish was by no means the same thing as harmless.

Courtesy seldom costs anything, and the willingness to extend it can be its own subtle declaration of strength. There

Close' only counts in horseshoes, hand grenades, and tactical nuclear weapons

There's not much point in making logical arguments to someone who's already decided to ignore inconvenient truths, so

The message she'd just ordered Webster to send and Venizelos to relay to Manticore was never sent in drills, not even in the most intense or realistic Fleet maneuvers. Case Zulu had one meaning, and one only: Invasion Imminent.

only counts in horseshoes, hand grenades, and tactical nuclear weapons