Harry Turtledove

She was willing to give her life for her country. She wasn’t willing to throw it away.

He still couldn't believe she was dead. She’d been one of those fiercely vital people you thought of as going on forever. But life didn't work like that, and war had an obscene power all its own. What it wanted, it took, and an individual’s vitality mattered not at all to it.

Where cool heads had failed, hotheads prevailed.

His action shows convincingly that there is no chance of expecting that this man will ever give up his practice of using force to gain his will. He can only be stopped by force. We have a clear conscience. We have done all that any country could do to establish peace.

Of all the sins in this world, which is more unforgivable than the sin of not having enough money? None I can think of.

“God bless you, suh, for what you done there.”

“I don’t believe in God, anymore than I believe in Mother Goose,” Darrow said. “Foolish notion. But I do believe in justice, and you deserve that. Everyone deserves that.”

You kill everybody who doesn’t want to see reason, people will get mighty thin on the ground mighty fast.

“Death is never dignified.” O’Doull spoke with a doctor’s certainty. “Never. Dignity in death is something we invent afterwards to make the living feel better.”

The party and the CSA could get by without a lot of fellows who brought only fanaticism. Losing somebody with brains would have hurt much more. Brains were harder to come by.

Some people had a vested interest in trouble. If it looked as if calm threatened to break out, people like that would do anything they could to thwart it.

Manicheism, n., The ancient Persian doctrine of an incessant warfare between Good and Evil. When Good gave up the fight the Persians joined the victorious Opposition.

A war is a disaster whether you win or you lose—it’s only a worse disaster if you lose.