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Iain Banks

" There has seldom if ever a shortage of eager young males prepared to kill and die to preserve the security, comfort and prejudices of their elders, and what you call heroism is just an expression of this simple fact; there is never a scarcity of idiots. "

Expression , simple , Facts

related quotes

" Empathize with stupidity and you're halfway to thinking like an idiot. "

Thinking , Stupidity , Idiot

" Oh, they never lie. They dissemble, evade, prevaricate, confound, confuse, distract, obscure, subtly misrepresent and willfully misunderstand with what often appears to be a positively gleeful relish and are generally perfectly capable of contriving to give one an utterly unambiguous impression of their future course of action while in fact intending to do exactly the opposite, but they never lie. Perish the thought. "

Giving , Lying , Opposites

" The point is, there is no feasible excuse for what are, for what we have made of ourselves. We have chosen to put profits before people, money before morality, dividends before decency, fanaticism before fairness, and our own trivial comforts before the unspeakable agonies of others "

People , Comfort , Agony

" One should never mistake pattern for meaning. "

Mistake , Should , Patterns

" Political correctness is what right-wing bigots call what everybody else calls being polite "

Political , Wings

" Truth, I have learned, differs for everybody. Just as no two people ever see a rainbow in exactly the same place - and yet both most certainly see it, while the person seemingly standing right underneath it does not see it at all - so truth is a question of where one stands, and the direction one is looking in at the time. "

People , Truth , Two

" A guilty system recognizes no innocents. "

Guilt

" My gratitude extends beyond the limits of my capacity to express it. "

Gratitude

" People can be teachers and idiots; they can be philosophers and idiots; they can be politicians and idiots... in fact I think they have to be... a genius can be an idiot. The world is largely run for and by idiots; it is no great handicap in life and in certain areas is actually a distinct advantage and even a prerequisite for advancement. "

Running , Thinking , Teacher

" One should never regret one's excesses, only one's failures of nerve. "

Regret , Excess

" There's an old Sysan saying that the soup of life is salty enough without adding tears to it. "

Tears , Life

" The trouble with writing fiction is that it has to make sense, whereas real life doesn't. "

Fiction , Real , Writing

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