"He leaned forward to put his elbows on the comconsole, and lace his fingers together, and regarded Miles with a kind of clinical disapproval, as if he were a data point that messed up the curve, and Illyan was deciding if he could still save the theory by re-classifying him as experimental error."

“Men may move mountains, but ideas move men.”

“Permanent justice is well worth a temporary offended protest, I can assure you, Lieutenant.”

“I may be small, but I screw up big because I’m standing on the shoulders of GIANTS.”

“Realize this, though. Half my genes run through your body, and my selfish genome is heavily evolutionarily pre-programmed to look out for its copies. The other half is copied from the man I admire most in all the worlds and time, so my interest is doubly riveted. The artistic combination of the two, shall we say, arrests my attention.”

“I wanted to give you a victory. But by their essential nature triumphs can’t be given. They must be taken and the worse the odds and the fiercer the resistance, the greater the honor. Victories can’t be gifts.”

“I’ve always felt that theists were more ruthless than atheists.”