Charles E. Gannon Quotes

Where greed is great, corruption is simple.

Human social evolution is unique in that your race has achieved the maximum, even optimum, balance of violent aggression and social cohesion. Again, consider your recent past. What other race could teeter so long, and yet not topple over, the brink of nuclear self-extermination? And all in the name of ideals, which were simply the facades behind which you hid your national prejudices, racial fears, and innate savagery.

Human, do you derive some strange pleasure by using different words to reiterate the same misperceptions?

It’s bad enough that you’re plying a trade for which you haven’t the aptitude or integrity, but you could at least check your conclusion against the facts.

Riordan surveyed the scene again. Knowing that it could not be other than perfect made it seem less remarkable, much in the way a constructed vista in a theme park could never quite compare with a less perfect one discovered in nature. This was merely a technological achievement, and the price of its perpetual perfection was its inability to inspire a sense of grandeur.

The total lack of information is a kind of information in itself.

It seems to me that you counted on the idiom of speech to mislead the Ambassador, to invite him to presume that they were not interested in hearing your discourse."
Riordan shrugged. "Guilty as charged. But there is a big difference between lying and using language that will trick the incautious. More importantly though, if the Ktor are going to wholly ignore the rules of fair and honest communication, then I'd say we're on pretty firm ethical ground if we simply decide to play by the letter, not the spirit, of those rules.

Your rabble's one unifying cry will be that there must be retribution. Most will call this 'justice.' A few of the most intemperate will also be the most honest; they will call it 'revenge.'

You would have been quite pleased if Hitler had won World War II. That would have made your job easier for you." Sukhinin, whose family was said to have suffered horribly in his nations Great Patriotic War against the Nazis, wore a smile that was more reminiscent of bared teeth.
Shethkador's reply was almost casual. "Of course we would have preferred that outcome. You would have been preacculturated to our ways."
Downing raised an eyebrow. "So Adolf Hitler is your idea of an ubermensch?"
"Hitler? A superior being? Fate, no. Do not mistake our approval of the ethos of a regime for admiration of its leader. Hitler was a weak, superstitious amateur whose profound insecurities and absolute in ability to perceive himself accurately ultimately caused the downfall of his project."
"How so?"
"Is it not obvious? Firstly, he surrounded himself with those like himself; fanatics who were also cranks, individuals whose personal derangements or need for rationalizing their own inferiority led them to a psychopathic projection of their own feelings onto others. The true object of their exterminations was what they most feared and loathed in themselves; weakness, insufficiency, flaccidity, cowardice. They could not admit this, of course, so they protected the roots of their self-hatred by ensuring that these traits were not the overt criteria upon which their social extirpations were based. Rather, they demonized specific groups and then attributed these treats to them, thereby amplifying the political appeal of their movement by invoking traditional prejudices and stereotypes through suitably crafted propaganda.

“On the surface, it’s crazy, right?”
“It’s crazy down beyond the surface, too,” Dora affirmed.

You’re very cheery. Too cheery. So I’m guessing today’s news is bad.

“Is Glamqoozht just a place name or does it mean something?”
“It translates imperfectly as Council Hub.”
Riordan was guardedly hopeful. “Sounds like it’s a place to get questions answered and decisions made.” Unless, of course, it was like human capitals.

Damn, muttered Opal, staring after him, guess he flunked charm school.

You are a traitor to your own race, servitor.
"No. I am its true servant, because the prerequisite of success is a ruthlessly clear understanding of reality, of the facts with which we must contend. Without that, all plans begin in error, and so, they must end in disaster.

There are only three variables governing the outcome of any given situation. Power—political, economic, military, whatever. Intelligence—the information you have and how cleverly you use it. And chance.
"And that's it?"
"That's it. Leaders get themselves too tangled up when they fail to break a situation—any situation—back down to those basics. Or when they forget the fundamental differences between the three variables.