# Quote — Brandon Sanderson, The Way of Kings

> “I just don’t see how anything could be outside God’s decrees.” The king shook his head, bemused. “Brightness Jasnah, I don’t mean to argue but isn’t the very definition of the Almighty that all things exist because of him?”
>
> “If you add one and one, that makes two, does it not?”
>
> “Well, yes.”
>
> “No God needs to declare it so for it to be true, Jasnah said. “So, could we not say that mathematics exists outside the Almighty, independent of him?”
>
> “Perhaps.”
>
> “Well,” Jasnah said, “I simply claim that morality and human will are independent of him too.”
>
> “If you say that,” the king said, chuckling, “then you’ve removed all purpose for the Almighty’s existence!”
>
> “Indeed.”

- Author: [Brandon Sanderson](https://www.leafyquotes.com/brandon-sanderson.md)
- Book: [The Way of Kings](https://www.leafyquotes.com/brandon-sanderson/the-way-of-kings.md)
- Page: 466
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Brandon_Sanderson#The_Way_of_Kings_(2010)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/brandon-sanderson/the-way-of-kings/i-just-dont

## More from this book

> “And so,” he said, “in the end, what must we determine? Is it the intellect of a genius that we revere? If it were their artistry, the beauty of their mind, would we not laud it regardless of whether we’d seen their product before?
>
> “But we don’t. Given two works of artistic majesty, otherwise weighted equally, we will give greater acclaim to the one who did it first. It doesn’t matter what you create. It matters what you create before anyone else.
>
> “So it’s not the beauty itself we admire. It’s not the force of intellect. It’s not invention, aesthetics, or capacity itself. The greatest talent that we think a man can have?” He plucked one final string. “Seems to me that it must be nothing more than novelty.”

p. 1000 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/brandon-sanderson/the-way-of-kings/and-so-he-said.md)

> People see in stories what they’re looking for.

p. 807 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/brandon-sanderson/the-way-of-kings/people-see-in-stories.md)

> That man’s so incompetent he might as well be fighting for the other side.

p. 667 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/brandon-sanderson/the-way-of-kings/that-mans-so-incompetent.md)