John C. Wright Quotes

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.

You have reached that unfortunate age where you have all of life’s answers and you know everything more perfectly and more profoundly than your elders.

What can you do?"
"I can bring you in dream to one who dreams of you."
"Will that help me?"
"No. But you will come, because you will hope that it will.

The Maiden had been abducted by the Unseen One, and raped. When the crime of the Unseen One finally came to light, instead of punishing his brother, Lord Terminus (who feared him) gave him the Maiden as his wife.
We have never forgiven Lord Terminus his crime, this cynical and smirking act of corruption. What kind of punishment is it to a rapist, to have the victim of his outrages be given to him in bounds of matrimony, his victim to be his, forever after? Lord Terminus decreed that when a husband takes a wife by violence, it is not rape, but holy matrimony; honor is satisfied once the wedding is performed.
Honor was satisfied, but we were not satisfied.

Yes, I prayed. Why not? The advantage of being an agnostic over being an atheist is that I always had the possibility of being wrong, and could still entertain the hope that the universe was better organized than it appeared to be.

Miss Daw said, half to herself, “Now you have had your first lesson in what it is like to be a real grown-up woman in a man’s world, my dear. We are judged by our looks, and men are not.”

I will grant you three wishes, but do not ask for immortality without asking for eternal youth.

Everyone loses in war, even the winners.

Broken oaths are bad luck eggs."
That was so weird, I did not know what to say. So I said, "Eggs?"
"They hatch bad luck.

You all think I am a coward, when all I am is polite.

It seemed even the smallest exercise of arbitrary authority could go to one’s head like wine. I told myself to remember this when I was older.

This thought had led to the fear that I might pick the wrong God to pray to. I thought that, because praying to the wrong God was expressly a sin, and because a merciful God might forgive me for forgetting to pray, it therefore followed that, even without knowing which one was the right one, my best chances lay in staying quiet and hoping for the best. That strategy worked in class when I didn’t know the answer, so I supposed it might work in the arena of theology, also.

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.

There was no point in debating the advantages of reality over unreality. There was no reasoning with someone to whom truth was a matter of taste.

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