Harry Turtledove Quotes

Why do we have such a pack of confounded dunderheads running this country?" "My theory used to be that we get the government we deserve," Sam said. "Bad as we are, though, I don't think we're that bad. Right now, I'm taking a long look at the notion that God hates us.

“What’s the war news?”
“They’re killing people,” Sam said, and let it go at that.

Every so often, though, the passing years up and ambushed him. They had more skill at it than any Yankees. One day, they would shoot him down from ambush, too.

“You wouldn’t bring me fifty dollars. You’re too damn old and too damn uppity.”
“I can’t help being old, and I am proud to be uppity,” Douglass said.

War was rapidly doing what war did—making ugly everything it touched.

Oh, they are great ones for taking a high moral tone, the Confederate States," Douglass said. "Taking a high moral tone costs them nothing. Living up to it is something else again.

Then he laughed at himself. If Fort Benton counted for civilization, he’d been out in the wilderness too long.

He knew what he imagined and what was real were not one and the same. Knowing it and coming to terms with it were not one and the same, either.

Blaine hated the Confederate States because they were a rival, not because they were tyrants. Had they been exemplars of purest democracy, rivals they would have remained, and he would have hated them no less.

He rode forward at the gallop, brave but stupid. A moment later, he was brave and stupid and dead.

So this is the famous George Cannon of whom you telegraphed me, is it? He doesn't look so much like a wild-eyed fanatic as some of the ones we snared before." "No, sir," Custer agreed: close enough for his superiors to hear him, he made a point of agreeing with them. "But without their coldhearted, coolheaded comrades egging them on, the wild-eyed fanatics could not do so much damage.

“I see that this photograph shows me you have been imperfectly truthful here,” he told them, having been too well brought up to call a woman a liar to her face.

The Mormons habitually dissembled about their plural marriages.

Custer paused and sent Tom a quizzical look. “‘Scoops’? What’s a scoop?”
“A Mormon. Heard it the other day,” his brother answered. After removing his hat, Tom mimed removing the top of his skull in the same way and scooping out a large portion of its contents. “Have to have most of your brain missing to buy what they’re selling, don’t you think?”
“Mm, you’re likely right.”

War is cruelty, and you cannot refine it. Its glory is all moonshine.