# Quote — Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian

> The judge smiled. It is not necessary, he said, that the principals here be in possession of the facts concerning their case, for their acts will ultimately accommodate history with or without their understanding. But it is consistent with notions of right principle that these facts—to the extent that they can be readily made to do so—should find a repository in the witness of some third party. Sergeant Aguilar is just such a party and any slight to his office is but a secondary consideration when compared to divergences in that larger protocol enacted by the formal agenda of an absolute destiny. Words are things. The words he is in possession of he cannot be deprived of. Their authority transcends his ignorance of their meaning.

- Author: [Cormac McCarthy](https://www.leafyquotes.com/cormac-mccarthy.md)
- Book: [Blood Meridian](https://www.leafyquotes.com/cormac-mccarthy/blood-meridian.md)
- Page: 89
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Blood_Meridian#Quotations) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/cormac-mccarthy/blood-meridian/the-judge-smiled

## More from this book

> Spanish: "People say the coyote is a witch. Most of the time, the witch is a coyote."

p. 75 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/cormac-mccarthy/blood-meridian/spanish-people-say.md)

> Where is yesterday? Where is Glanton and Brown and where is the priest? He leaned closer. Where is Shelby, whom you left to the mercies of Elias in the desert, and where is Tate whom you abandoned in the mountains? Where the ladies, ah the fair and tender ladies with whom you danced at the governor's ball when you were a hero anointed with the blood of the enemies of the republic you'd elected to defend? And where is the fiddler and where the dance?

p. 344 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/cormac-mccarthy/blood-meridian/where-is-yesterday.md)

> This is a terrible place to die in.
>
> Where’s a good one?

p. 217 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/cormac-mccarthy/blood-meridian/this-is-a-terrible.md)