The notion of evil for its own sake strikes me as boring — all these Dark Lords intent on creating wastelands packed with enslaved victims... for wha… - Steven Erikson

— all these Dark Lords intent on creating wastelands packed with enslaved victims ... for what?

Mappo Trell, I believe motivations prove, ultimately, irrelevant. Upon either side of the battlefield the face grins with blunt stupidity, even as smoke fills the sky from horizon to horizon, even as crops whither and die, even as sweet land turns to salt. Inequity ends, Trell, when no-one and no thing is left standing.

"Indeed Bugg. is it because, do you think, at the human core, we are naught but liars and cheats?" "Probably." "With no hope of ever overcoming our instinctive nastiness?" "Hard to say. How have we done so far?"

For Hood's sake,' the foreigner muttered. 'What's wrong with words?' 'With words,' said Redmask, turning away, 'meanings change.' 'Well,' Anaster Toc said, following as Redmask made his way back to his army's camp,.. 'that is precisely the point. That's their value - their ability to adapt -' 'Grow corrupt, you mean. The Letheri are masters at corrupting words, their meanings. They call war peace, they call tyranny liberty. On which side of the shadow you stand decides a word's meaning. Words are the weapons used by those who see others with contempt. A contempt which only deepens when they how those others are deceived and made into fools because they choose to believe. Because in their naivety they thought the meaning of a word was fixed, immune to abuse.