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Charles E. Gannon
97 quotes
“Well, no plan survives contact with reality and today is no exception.”
Charles E. Gannon (born 1960) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If the motivation was simple greed, then that was a promising target for development as an agent inside the enemy’s camp. Greed was not only a predictable impulse, but was an indicator of the dependability of the individual being suborned. It was overwhelmingly associated with profoundly self-centered egos and values.”
Charles E. Gannon (born 1960) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We need no technological assistance. Hkh’Rkh capabilities and engineering is unsurpassed.” Yaargraukh managed to keep his tongue from writing out in a spasm of grim hilarity. “I have heard others say the same thing.” “And your response to them?” “That their empty rhetoric is delusional lunacy spoken as truth.”
Charles E. Gannon (born 1960) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Riordan stared. “Your…media…really advertised things like, uh, canned vegetables named after mythical monsters?” Paulsen shook his head. “You wouldn’t believe what our media did, on occasion.”
Charles E. Gannon (born 1960) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“All enlightenment begins in ignorance and humility. This place has been a constant instruction in both.”
Charles E. Gannon (born 1960) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“So,” sighed Rulaine, “we’re pretty much screwed.” Yaargraukh’s black eyes stared. “I do not understand your expression—‘screwed?’ This is a carpentry metaphor?” Bannor almost smiled. “Not exactly.”
Charles E. Gannon (born 1960) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Idrem sensed Brenlor swinging toward the rash reactivity that the Srin often mistook for decisive action when confronted with a crisis.”
Charles E. Gannon (born 1960) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“You think she’ll make it?” “She should. Unless something else goes wrong.” Tsaami’s tone was sour. “Caine: this is a battlefield. Something else always goes wrong.” To which Riordan had no ready response. After all, Karam was right.”
Charles E. Gannon (born 1960) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“On the surface, it’s crazy, right?” “It’s crazy down beyond the surface, too,” Dora affirmed.”
Charles E. Gannon (born 1960) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“How would you answer their demand for justice and vengeance?” “I would begin by insisting that justice and vengeance are different. Vengeance is often blind to reason: all it can see is the object it hates. Conversely, justice is blind to our preferences and prejudices; all it may see are the deeds and the conditions under which they were carried out.”
Charles E. Gannon (born 1960) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I do not disagree with you, Bannor Rulaine. But in my culture, when tradition is challenged by law, the law is often twisted, construed, and reconstrued until it can be made to conform with tradition. I believe your word for this is teleology: where a result is decided before the process debate or discovery is initiated.” O’Garran snorted. “Fancy word for saying, ‘they’re going to have it their way, no matter what.’”
Charles E. Gannon (born 1960) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Would anyone, even low-breeds, be so ingenuous to believe such a tale?” “Remarkably, yes. Their power to believe what they wish, if not given incontrovertible evidence to the contrary, is rather astonishing.”
Charles E. Gannon (born 1960) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“That’s one thing I’ve noticed about war, Richard: there’s always more than enough irony to go around.”
Charles E. Gannon (born 1960) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Virodok!” exclaimed Sukhinin, who sounded short of breath. “Do you monsters hold nothing dear beyond yourselves?” “No, we do not, and that is the source of our power: to reject the delusion that any human, anywhere, at any time, actually does anything or feels anything that they believe is not, at some level, in their own interest.”
Charles E. Gannon (born 1960) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Your rabble’s one unifying cry will be that there must be retribution. Most will call this ‘justice.’ A few of the most intemperate will also be the most honest; they will call it ‘revenge.’”
Charles E. Gannon (born 1960) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“After all, an agent on the inside of a rival organization was always worth more, operationally speaking, than a loyal servitor in one’s own.”
Charles E. Gannon (born 1960) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“He is young—well, younger—and idealistic. Which is to say, foolish.”
Charles E. Gannon (born 1960) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It seems to me that you counted on the idiom of speech to mislead the Ambassador, to invite him to presume that they were not interested in hearing your discourse.” Riordan shrugged. “Guilty as charged. But there is a big difference between lying and using language that will trick the incautious. More importantly though, if the Ktor are going to wholly ignore the rules of fair and honest communication, then I’d say we’re on pretty firm ethical ground if we simply decide to play by the letter, not the spirit, of those rules.”
Charles E. Gannon (born 1960) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Battles are lost because a combatant stops fighting too soon; wars are lost because a combatant does not stop fighting soon enough.”
Charles E. Gannon (born 1960) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Caine, neither of us has a choice in this matter. The orders must be obeyed. The full truth of what you found, of what your troops know and can testify to, is too destabilizing. It’s a delicate time, Caine. You, more than anyone else, should understand that.” “I do understand. I understand that the time has come to stop managing information and concealing the truth.”
Charles E. Gannon (born 1960) first seen 1011 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Chapter 72 (p. 1011)
“And here are the wages you must pay in order to climb the political ladder, you foolish sod. You’ve got to do the dirty work that others have ordered. I’ve done it out of dubious patriotism. Let’s see if you’ll do it out of blind ambition.”
Charles E. Gannon (born 1960) first seen 1020 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Chapter 73 (p. 1020)
“No matter which images of battle and carnage came to haunt him, no matter which specific terror rose up through them, the lessons they rehearsed were always the same: There’s no such thing as certainty. Control is an illusion. Death and destruction descend the moment you forget to watch for them. That was what two years of intermittent war had taught him. And once you learned those lessons, you didn’t just remember them: you lived them, moment to moment.”
Charles E. Gannon (born 1960) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“And over the many months that followed, as Caine crept through both terrestrial and alien undergrowth on missions to reclaim some of the autonomy humanity had lost, he learned and relearned the prime lesson in common to all the shocks: That all assumptions, like all plans, or never more than a second away from a catastrophic collision with reality.”
Charles E. Gannon (born 1960) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The reality, both now and historically, was that whatever the future held, change was always uneven in distribution and irregular in timing.”
Charles E. Gannon (born 1960) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Damn it, Dad. You make me crazy.” “That’s part of my job as a parent. If I read the manual correctly.”
Charles E. Gannon (born 1960) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Your conjecture is reasonable but inaccurate.”
Charles E. Gannon (born 1960) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“You are impetuous. But then again, you are human.”
Charles E. Gannon (born 1960) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“You mean, control my instincts?” “No, most of your species can learn to do that. The true challenge is whether you can control your predisposition to assume moral equivalencies where none exist.”
Charles E. Gannon (born 1960) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“These matters should incite more urgent investigation than the technology you arrogated from your attackers. But like most primitive cultures, your reflex is one of stimulus and response: to focus entirely on the issues and actions of the moment.”
Charles E. Gannon (born 1960) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Is Glamqoozht just a place name or does it mean something?” “It translates imperfectly as Council Hub.” Riordan was guardedly hopeful. “Sounds like it’s a place to get questions answered and decisions made.” Unless, of course, it was like human capitals.”
Charles E. Gannon (born 1960) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Riordan surveyed the scene again. Knowing that it could not be other than perfect made it seem less remarkable, much in the way a constructed vista in a theme park could never quite compare with a less perfect one discovered in nature. This was merely a technological achievement, and the price of its perpetual perfection was its inability to inspire a sense of grandeur.”
Charles E. Gannon (born 1960) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I guess that, living in a sanitized world, you’ve forgotten this basic lesson: if you want to stay free or stay alive, never play by your opponent’s rules. Particularly when your opponent is more powerful than you are. Do the unexpected. Turn on your pursuer. Attack the attacker.”
Charles E. Gannon (born 1960) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Stupid creatures tend to be stubborn creatures.”
Charles E. Gannon (born 1960) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Whose tutelage led you into those fishless waters?”
Charles E. Gannon (born 1960) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Aren’t you even going to wish me luck?” “We do not believe in luck, Caine Riordan. However, I wish enlightenment unto you. In every passing second.”
Charles E. Gannon (born 1960) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It was the oldest, most primal fear of humankind, inculcated by eons of brutal lessons which, titrated down into their purest form, became age’s invariable advice to youth: beware the things and places you do not know.Because out there, beyond the flickering ring of the tribal fire, on the unlit streets of concrete cities, in the unending depths of space—there lay an unquantifiable, unbounded potential for death.”
Charles E. Gannon (born 1960) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Riordan almost smiled. “You sound like another historian I know.” “Historian?” She stiffened. “I am an observer. I do not claim to convey a unified story, just the pieces for which I have data.”
Charles E. Gannon (born 1960) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Whatever destiny we assign to ourselves also defines our doom. It is there, lurking, waiting, from the instantiation of sentience. It is the antipodal defect of the virtue we call ‘foresight.’”
Charles E. Gannon (born 1960) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It is in the nature of social creatures to crave approval and approbation, to build a temple out of what they have told themselves they are and must be.” Oduosslun stared at Riordan. “Reject that reflex. Reject the simplistic narrative. Reject the opiating allure of presuming you know your own destiny. Rather, embrace the ineluctable truth that you are not preordained saviors in the midst of a mythic cycle, any more than we were the guardians and guarantors of civilization. Like us, you are simply another species living out the consequences of what came before.”
Charles E. Gannon (born 1960) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Human, do you derive some strange pleasure by using different words to reiterate the same misperceptions?”
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“When such leaders act in opposition to their sworn duties, they compound injustice with disgrace.”
Charles E. Gannon (born 1960) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Weiner-Kutkh waved airily. “I seem to have been born lucky.” “Said every cheater who’s ever lived,” Caine retorted.”
Charles E. Gannon (born 1960) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In the face of crisis, I will choose unauthorized action over disastrous inaction.”
Charles E. Gannon (born 1960) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“You must remind yourself—hourly—that Caine Riordan is but one human. He is an aberration among them, a flicker of conscience that his own megacorporate kin would have extinguished if he had not run far and fast. Do not let his noble deed seduce you into thinking the rest of his race are capable of something similar….” “And Riordan himself. What do I tell him?” “Hu’urs Khraam looked at Darzhee Kut closely. “Tell him that his deed was noble and we are grateful for it. And, if you think he is ready to hear it, you should also tell him that we can already measure how much his deed will change the outcome of this war.” “Really? How much?” “Not at all.”
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“You would have been quite pleased if Hitler had won World War II. That would have made your job easier for you.” Sukhinin, whose family was said to have suffered horribly in his nations Great Patriotic War against the Nazis, wore a smile that was more reminiscent of bared teeth. Shethkador’s reply was almost casual. “Of course we would have preferred that outcome. You would have been preacculturated to our ways.” Downing raised an eyebrow. “So Adolf Hitler is your idea of an ubermensch?” “Hitler? A superior being? Fate, no. Do not mistake our approval of the ethos of a regime for admiration of its leader. Hitler was a weak, superstitious amateur whose profound insecurities and absolute in ability to perceive himself accurately ultimately caused the downfall of his project.” “How so?” “Is it not obvious? Firstly, he surrounded himself with those like himself; fanatics who were also cranks, individuals whose personal derangements or need for rationalizing their own inferiority led them to a psychopathic projection of their own feelings onto others. The true object of their exterminations was what they most feared and loathed in themselves; weakness, insufficiency, flaccidity, cowardice. They could not admit this, of course, so they protected the roots of their self-hatred by ensuring that these traits were not the overt criteria upon which their social extirpations were based. Rather, they demonized specific groups and then attributed these treats to them, thereby amplifying the political appeal of their movement by invoking traditional prejudices and stereotypes through suitably crafted propaganda.”
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“I could offer considerable inducements. I can arrange for a new mate who is, in all meaningful measures, superior to the one you are currently pursuing. You look unimpressed. Ah, multiple mates, then? Within reason, I am quite certain I can procure—” Riordan was careful to keep his interruption calm. “I am not interested in other mates.” “Ah. Well. I am also able to provide you with material riches. I believe your species persists in its obsession with gold? To use your idiom, I would pay you handsomely for any successful breeding activity. Even if you do not wish to stay afterward.” Riordan forced his molars to unclench. Uinzleej moved on to his next offer. “What else—ah! Many of your species enjoy hunting. This world is full of creatures you may kill for your gratification.”
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“Worse yet, he still had to remind himself that sensations—such as tonight’s skin-cooling sea breeze—were just a blizzard of electric impulses, tricking his brain, his nerves. Which, he had begun to fear, might not just be the endgame for Dornaani civilization. It could be in humanity’s future as well. Conceivably, those seeds were latent in electricity itself. Given how it ultimately expanded each individual’s sphere of contact and control, its utility was inseparable from the allure of its power. We summon heat and light without having to create it ourselves. We communicate across continents and oceans. We operate machines that labor in our stead. We keep opponents at a safe distance with remote sensors and drones. Is that how the long, subtle slide into speciate senescence began, that the more a species distanced itself from direct action, the more unfamiliar the natural environment became?”
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