Matt Hughes Quotes

In any case”—he gestured at the car—“this vehicle has achieved a state of permanent inanimation.

I had no doubt that there was madness here. How could it be otherwise in a cosmos that was ordered solely by will? It did not mean that the insane would automatically rise to the apex of the social order; their efforts would be diffused by the randomness of the impulses that drove them. But those whose extraordinary powers of will propelled them to the heights of power and rank would always be vulnerable to going further than they should. And there would be none but their equally mad rivals to restrain them.

When all the good ideas have been expended, I quoted to myself, one might as well try a bad one.

“I suspect that the benefits of travel are indeed overrated. It seems mostly hardship and needless frustration,” she said.

The insane had a tendency to cloak others in the strange garments they found hanging in the backs of their own mental wardrobes. So, for that matter, did the rest of us, but the consequences of error were usually less drastic.

Insanity was not unknown among the wealthy. Indeed, some forms of madness had sometimes been cultivated as fashionable accessories.

"From within such a calcified culture, no change can be generated; the impetus for reform must arise from without. Hence, the external threat posed by Hunan Diath."
"Who does not exist," said Filidor.
"Who need not exist," said Gaskarth, "so long as the idea can do its work."

Well, as I say, authority is always lawfully relinquished, but sometimes the legitimacy is acquired after the relinquishment.
“You mean retroactively?”
I mean that cause and effect are not always arranged in an ideal sequence.
“In other words,” Filidor translated, “not only do victors write the histories, but usurpers also rewrite the rule book to justify the illicit seizure of office.”
Perhaps not the most felicitous manner of putting it, but essentially correct.
“I am surprised the people put up with such shenanigans. They should rise up.”
Unwittingly, I am sure, you put your finger on the flaw in your own reasoning.
“How so?”
You said, “They should rise up,” not “We should rise up.” As long as it is a matter to be solved by others, it will not be.

Gathering himself together, he asked the dwarf, “Was all this in some way planned and predetermined?”
Gaskarth turned upon the young man a thoughtful gaze. “There are those who say that all is planned, to the placement of the last mote and mite. There are others who say that nothing is purposed, and that the galaxies themselves swing where they will. And then there are some, like me, who prefer to walk on, saying as little as possible.”

"Very well," I said, "let us roll the pebble and get the avalanche on its way."

I reflected that the genial glow that surrounds the doer of a good deed loses some of its warmth and brightness when the recipient meets every action with the pinched face of suspicion.

"There are, occasionally, rarely, some difficulties," she admitted.
"That is a word that may cover a great swath of territory," I said, "from the low foothills of minor inconvenience to the insurmountable peaks of constant vexation."

But in this age, logic was a flame that must be frequently starved of fuel.

I cannot comment on your beliefs. What appears self-evident to one person may seem to another observer to be entirely the product of an idiosyncratic bent.

"I have a plan."
"What kind of plan?"
"A daring and bold one," he said.
"Is that wise?"
"It has to be that kind of plan. It's that kind of cosmos."