Rhythm of War

I name you idiot for playing with powers you only presume to understand.

And storm Teft if it wasn’t a valid question. One not enough soldiers asked themselves. Right here, right now, should I be fighting? Is there a better way?

And she would ask the best question of them all.

What will I discover next?

“I’m telling you to think!” his father snapped. “I’m telling you that if you want to change the world, you have to stop being part of the problem!”

In her little room of a laboratory, everything fit together. She’d met scholars who claimed they needed chaos to function. Perhaps that was true for some, but in her experience, good science wasn’t about sloppy inspiration. It was about meticulous incrementalization.

A thousand wrong plans were no more useful that a single wrong one.

“The way you talk lacks hope.”

“‘Hope,’” she said, spreading her papers out on the table. “Have I ever told you how much I dislike that word? Think of what it means, what it implies. You have hope when you’re outnumbered. You have hope when you lack options. Hope is always irrational, Uncle.”

Any information—even if you suspect your enemy is feeding it to you—is useful, son. More wars are lost to lack of information than are lost to lack of courage.

If there is one thing I can guarantee you about humankind, Last Listener, is is this: Provide them with a sword , and they will find a way to impale themselves upon it.”

True freedom—with the power to make certain she didn’t ever have to be dependent upon anyone else, listener or spren. True freedom couldn’t exist while someone else had power over you.

Who did she think was listening? Was she only praying because she was afraid?

Yes, she thought, continuing to paint. I’m afraid. And I have to hope that someone, somewhere, is listening. That someone has a plan. That it all matters somehow.

Jasnah took comfort in the idea that there was no plan, that everything was random. She said that a chaotic universe meant the only actions of actual importance were the ones they decided were important. That gave people autonomy.

Mathematics thought that there were numbers associated with tones—frequencies, wavelengths. Music, at its most fundamental level, was math.

You don’t get to choose to be free, Venli. Just which master to follow.

He grinned, then kissed her hand again. He seemed to think that sort of thing would eventually spark passion in her. When in truth, physical stimulation was so inferior to mental stimulation.

“Innocence is more false a god than the ones in our songs,” Venli said, sitting beside her sister. “People who chase it will find themselves enslaved.”

She knew she shouldn’t let the lack of results bother her. Real scientists understood that experiments like this weren’t failures; they were necessary steps on the way to discovery.

We must not let our desires for a specific result cloud our perceptions.

“No one ever accomplished anything by being content with who they were, Shallan,” Adolin said. “We accomplish great things by reaching toward who we could become.”

“As long as it’s what you want to become. Not what someone else thinks you should become.”

“We proved nothing,” Navani said. “We had a single failed experiment.”

Eventually Dalinar had done what any good commander did when faced by such persistent mass insubordination: He backed down. When good men disobeyed, it was time to look at your orders.

“We need both heart and mind,” Lirin said. “The heart might provide the purpose, but the head provides the method, the path. Passion is nothing without a plan. Wanting something doesn’t make it happen.”

The trouble wasn’t getting answers. It was finding the presence of mind to accept them.

The man who forges weapons can claim he’s never killed, but he still prepares for the slaughter.

Would you prefer a reinforcement of what you already want to believe, or do you seek the truth?

She had been around enough intelligent people to know they worked best in an encouraging environment where study and discovery were rewarded.

That’s the trouble with science. It’s never done. Always upending itself. Ruining perfect systems for the little inconvenience of them being wrong.

Words on the page define men to future generations.

Heroism is a myth you tell idealistic young people—specifically when you want them to go bleed for you.