# Quote — Iain M. Banks, The Algebraist

> In the old days he had once wondered how many of the Cessorian high command, his old bosses, really believed in the Truth. He strongly suspected that the higher you went, the greater grew the proportion of those who didn’t really believe at all. They were in it for the power, the glory, the control and the glamour.

- Author: [Iain M. Banks](https://www.leafyquotes.com/iain-m-banks.md)
- Book: [The Algebraist](https://www.leafyquotes.com/iain-m-banks/the-algebraist.md)
- Page: 223
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Iain_Banks#The_Algebraist_(2004)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/iain-m-banks/the-algebraist/in-the-old

## More from this book

> Which was more likely: what appeared to be the case, or this all being a lie, a set-up, a vast and incomprehensible joke? Discuss.

p. 298 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/iain-m-banks/the-algebraist/which-was-more.md)

> He was one of those people who got to the top of an organisation through luck, connections, the indulgence of superiors and that sort of carelessness towards others that the easily impressed termed ruthlessness and those of a less gullible nature called sociopathy. But sometimes, just through his sheer unthinking brusqueness and inability to think through the consequences of a remark, he said what everybody else was only thinking. A comic poet working in obscene doggerel.

p. 316 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/iain-m-banks/the-algebraist/he-was-one.md)

> Whether the Dweller List existed or not, everybody appeared to be acting as though it did, and that was all that mattered. It was a bit like money; all about trust, about faith. The value lay in what people believed, not in anything intrinsic.

p. 278 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/iain-m-banks/the-algebraist/whether-the-dweller.md)