"You will have useful work: the destruction of evil men. What work could be more useful?"

Jack Vance Literature See all quotes by Jack Vance →

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“Evidently you do not trust me. This does not predispose me to trust you.”

“My fees are not too high. Your wage scale may simply be too low.”

“My clever baton holds your unnatural sorcery in abeyance.”

““Why not alter the habits of a lifetime and speak with candour?” asked Shimrod. “Truth, after all, need not be only the tactic of last resort.”

“I suspect that the word was invented by second-rate intelligences to describe the incomprehensible activities of their betters.”

“Of all questions, why? is the least pertinent. It begs the question; it assumes the larger part of its own response; to wit, that a sensible response exists.”

Resonant Thoughts

"According to this approach, legitimate disagreements may occur between subjects and rulers when alienable rights are involved, but no such disputes are justified over the question of inalienable right…"

— George H. Smith

Education1949–2022

#justice

"If I were an academician.. ..or a believer in a higher reality outside me, as most people are , I would have no need for any justification for painting landscapes, or portraits, or social realism. I w…"

— Naum Gabo

Politics1890–1977

#truth

"Long before winter came the chances had been diminished owing to the repeated delays in the advance that were caused by bad roads, and mud. The 'black earth' of the Ukraine could be turned into mud by…"

— Gerd von Rundstedt

Military1875–1953

#nature

"In there. The words hit me hard. In there was my best friend lying on the floor dead. The body. Now I could call it that. Yesterday it was Jack Williams, the guy that shared the same mud bed with me t…"

— Mickey Spillane

Literature1918–2006

#time