John C. Wright

I cannot describe myself except to say that I am either very vain or very beautiful, and that I hope I am the latter, while suspecting I may be the former.

Quentin looked glum and shook his head. “Unleashing the appetites is not freedom, but another type of slavery. Freedom in the absence of virtue will destroy a country as quickly as any tyranny.”
Victor said, “Virtue imposed from without is not virtue at all, but merely prudence. A man who avoids lying merely because a law tells him to tell the truth will avoid telling the truth as soon as the law tells him to lie.”

War is murder, king-sized.

When I was young, I thought the act of getting older meant, year by year, getting more sophisticated, more hard, cool, and unpitying. Less innocent.
Maybe that was a childish idea of what getting older was about. Maybe adults, mature adults, get more innocent with time, not less. Because the word “innocent” does not mean “naïve,” it means “not guilty.”
Children do small evils to each other, schoolyard fights and insults, not because their hearts are pure, but because their powers are small. Grownups have more power. Some of them do great evils with that power. But what about the ones who don’t? Aren’t they more innocent than children, not less?

Merlin and Solomon can tell you how well the wise and learned can withstand the foolishness of love!

I resolved, as I walked, to be the most dangerous one I could be. And in my mind, that meant one thing: thought. Think things through; then act. First be patient; then be brave.

Educators know there are only two types of schooling: indoctrination and education.
Indoctrination teaches a student how to cleave to a party line, and to recite the slogans and bromides of the accepted conformity. He is taught only how to swallow lies, and there is no assurance he will not swallow the propaganda of foes as easily as that of friends. Such folk are hopelessly provincial to their time and place. Unable to distinguish truth from fable, they swallow both or spit both out, and become zealots, or, worse yet, cynics. The zealot holds that truth can be won with no effort; the cynic, that no effort will suffice.
Education teaches the art of skeptical inquiry. The student learns the thoughts of all the great minds of the past, so that the implications and mistakes of philosophy of various schools are not unknown to him. And he learns, first, current scientific theories and, second, how frail and temporary such theories can be. He learns to be undeceived by those who claim to know a last and final truth.

Were I a real master of intrigue, I would not have the reputation for being a master of intrigue.

Death was soon and growing sooner.

There is no magic, only mysteries explained, and mysteries unexplained.

Unliving things have no passions, and no memory: mere matter is the amnesia of the universe.

Those who work are free. There are only three categories of nonproductive people: babies, beggars, robbers.

Come on, Amelia. We are not really British. We do not have to look down our noses at honest labor.

You were raised perfectly well, better than most. If you feel that the world has treated you unfairly, you have achieved a state of mind well known to all teenagers, but maintained only by adults of a more shrill and self-absorbed type.

Comedy is easy. Intrigue is hard.