# Tactics of Mistake

- Author: [Gordon R. Dickson](https://www.leafyquotes.com/gordon-r-dickson.md)
- Quotes: 7
- Book page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/gordon-r-dickson/tactics-of-mistake

## Quotes

> Trouble rather the tiger in his lair than the sage amongst his books. For to you Kingdoms and their armies are things mighty and enduring, but to him they are but toys of the moment, to be overturned by the flicking of a finger...

p. 153

> Plainly he was one of those rare people who burn with an inner fire—but the inner fire that never failed in James Arm-of-the-Lord was a brand of woe and a torch of terror to the Unrighteous. Nor was it lessened by the fact that the ranks of the Unrighteous, in James’ estimation, included all those whose opinions in any way differed from his own.

p. 328

> “Exaggeration of confidence,” he said, “is a fault in people who don’t know their business.”

p. 315

> “Good luck to you, too, sir.”
>
> “I make it a point not to know the lady,” said Cletus. “I can’t afford to count on her.”

p. 349

> It’s a dirty, damn universe, and every once in a while I get a chance to hit back at it. That’s all. If I knew in the morning when I started out that I was going to be killed that day, I’d still go—because I couldn’t die happier than to go down hitting back.

p. 334

> “You don’t quench ambition by feeding it any more than you quench a fire the same way,” said Cletus. “To an ambitious man, what he already has is nothing. It’s what he doesn’t have that counts.”

p. 280

> The immediate teaching of philosophers may be gentle, but the theory behind their teaching is without compunction—and that’s why so much bloodshed and misery has always attended the paths of their followers, who claim to live by those teachings. More blood’s been spilled by the militant adherents of prophets of change than by any other group of people down through the history of man.

p. 195