Kage Baker Quotes

Justice doesn’t exist! We did worse things. Nobody deserves to go to that place, Alec said. Anyway, weren’t you Christian types supposed to forgive everybody?
I will shed no tears for that bastard’s damnation, said Nicholas stonily.
No wonder nobody’s left that believes in your stupid religion, said Alec.

“And when there is peace at last, and when men are no longer distracted by the ravages of war and crime, then the real work begins. Mankind has grasped at science and invention to improve his lot; when he truly understands that he can wield those tools to improve himself, he will lay the cornerstone of the earthly paradise,” Edward said. “What might not science achieve, in a world where a nation’s resources weren’t continually drained by strife?

The same intact culture that made them good businessmen also made many of them lousy parents.

They find us outlandish, Lopez admitted. Extravagant. Eclectic. Unfathomable.

He saw in memory Mendoza’s face, her black eyes sad as she downloaded a chapter on revolutions.
Here you go. Great heroes and the things they wrecked. Always easier to destroy something than to create something. It’s harder to plant a garden than to blow up a building, and undoubtedly more boring, but you just might need to do it one day, eh?

Terrorism was too tame for the Scots: they used lawyers.

You have to be pretty damned hot and thirsty to enjoy a soy-milk smoothie, but they were, so it was okay.

Religion has its place, certainly, in reinforcing ethical behavior amongst the masses, but any sufficiently enlightened secular laws will have the same effect. After all, most of the creeds of the world have essentially the same purpose, have they not? To enjoin men to be what we call moral, which is to say civilized. A civilized man obey the rule of law, he acknowledges that he must not injure his neighbors, and if injured by them, he must appeal to law for satisfaction rather than indulge in burning their houses over their heads as they sleep. Civilization is the ideal for which we strive, with so little perceptible success; yet we do succeed, in inches and over years.

Oh, that's childish, says Nicholas in disgust.
Well, so what? says Alec. We happen to be children.

I may cut my coat to follow fashion, sir, but not my conscience.

Edward raises the pointer and places its tip against Alec’s forehead. “What’s the use of having a library in there if you won’t open the books, boy? What’s the good of augmented intelligence if you won’t use it?”

How, in this day and age, can any one of you claim to be better than your fellow human beings?
Because we are, said Marilyn Deighton-True with a shrug. Face reality, Giles, or it will face you. You can spout all the socialiste nouveau crap you like, but it simply doesn't apply to a meritocracy.

Consigned to everlasting fire, said Nicholas in a faint voice. He had gone white as chalk.
No, you medieval imbecile! Edward clenched his fists. You still have no grasp of the truth, have you? Leave your angels and devils in the trash of history, where they belong.

How could millennia-old superbeings be so boring?

Faith and its attendant rituals sound like a good deal, the whole eternal salvation thing, but inevitably they lead to fear, oppression, the rack and flames.