You can also find me on Adult-FanFiction.org under the pen name StAraqiel and Archive of Our Own under StTabris.

QUOTES

"I admire your dedication to remaining ignorant." — Anonymous

"Without music, life would be a mistake." — Friedrich Nietzsche

"I cannot live without books." — Thomas Jefferson

"Equity is the essence of equality." — Victor Hugo

"Out of the crooked timber of humanity, no straight thing was ever made." — Immanuel Kant

"Wit often eludes the literal." — John Podhoretz

"Idealism is fine, but as it approaches reality, the costs become prohibitive." — William F. Buckley, Jr.

"We must mistrust utopias; they usually end in holocausts." — Mario Vargas Llosa

"Political tags—such as royalist, communist, democrat, populist, fascist, liberal, conservative, and so forth—are never basic criteria. The human race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and those who have no such desire." — Robert A. Heinlein

"Try and penetrate with our limited means the secrets of nature and you will find that, behind all the discernible concatenations, there remains something subtle, intangible and inexplicable. Veneration for this force beyond anything that we can comprehend is my religion. To that extent I am, in point of fact, religious." — Albert Einstein

"Scientism does not eliminate the will but decides that since the results of science are valid for everyone, this will must be something shared, not individual. In practice, the individual must submit to the collectivity, which 'knows' better than he does." — Tzvetan Todorov

"In the matter of reforming things, as distinct from deforming them, there is one plain and simple principle; a principle which will probably be called a paradox. There exists in such a case a certain institution or law; let us say, for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected across a road. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, 'I don't see the use of this; let us clear it away.' To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: 'If you don't see the use of it, I certainly won't let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it.'" — G. K. Chesterton

"In the absence of any standard of truth other than success, it seems evident that the familiar methods of the struggle for existence must be applied to the elucidation of difficult questions, and that ironclads and Maxim guns must be the ultimate arbiters of metaphysical truth. The worship of force, as we find it in Nietzsche, is not to be found in the same form in William James, who, though he lauds the will and the life of action, does not wish action to be bellicose. Nevertheless, the excessive individualism of the pragmatic theory of truth is inherently connected with the appeal to force. If there is a non-human truth, which one man may know, while another does not, there is a standard outside the disputants, to which, we may urge, the dispute ought to be submitted; hence a pacific and judicial settlement of disputes is at least theoretically possible. If, on the contrary, the only way of discovering which of the disputants is in the right is to wait and see which of them is successful, there is no longer any principle except force by which the issue can be decided." — Bertrand Russell

"Those who seek absolute power, even though they seek it to do what they regard as good, are simply demanding the right to enforce their own version of heaven on earth. And let me remind you, they are the very ones who always create the most hellish tyrannies. Absolute power does corrupt, and those who seek it must be suspect and must be opposed." — Barry Goldwater

"Agnosticism is a perfectly respectable and tenable philosophical position; it is not dogmatic and makes no pronouncements about the ultimate truths of the universe. It remains open to evidence and persuasion; lacking faith, it nevertheless does not deride faith." — Sydney J. Harris

"Thank you. I'm glad I met you." — Kaworu Nagisa, Neon Genesis Evangelion

"It was to create a world of peace, not to win positions of power, that we raised our swords and killed. If we forget that, then we are no revolutionaries after all." — Kenshin Himura, Rurouni Kenshin

"Those who wish to punish the current and future generations for the inequities of a generation long gone, and who equate justice with revenge, are the most dangerous people in the world." — Odd Thomas, Deeply Odd

"The future is an inherently good thing. And we move into it one winter at a time. Things get better one winter at a time. If you're going to celebrate anything, then have a drink on this: the world is, generally and on balance, a better place to live this year than it was last year." — Spider Jerusalem, Transmetropolitan

"The weakest component in any system is people. All it takes is one guy who'll take a bribe, one optimist who thinks he's smarter than everyone else, one desperate mother or father who'll do anything for their kid, and the whole system breaks down." — Aaron Keener, The Division

"I don't want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness. I want sin." — John the Savage, Brave New World

"People are messy, awkward, sometimes selfish and cruel. But they're trying, and I'm going to make sure they have a chance." — Commander Shepard, Mass Effect 2

"To say that nothing is true is to realize that the foundations of society are fragile, and that we must be the shepherds of our own civilization. To say that everything is permitted is to understand that we are the architects of our actions, and that we must live with their consequences, whether glorious or tragic." — Ezio Auditore da Firenze, Assassin's Creed: Revelations

"Doesn't matter what the press says. Doesn't matter what the politicians or the mobs say. Doesn't matter if the whole country decides that something wrong is something right. This nation was founded on one principle above all else: the requirement that we stand up for what we believe, no matter the odds or the consequences. When the mob and the press and the whole world tell you to move, your job is to plant yourself like a tree beside the river of truth, and tell the whole world — 'No, you move.'" — Captain America, Amazing Spider-Man

"Let me give you some advice, Captain. It may help you to make sense of the world. I believe you find life such a problem because you think there are the good people and the bad people. You're wrong, of course. There are, always and only, bad people, but some of them are on opposite sides." — Lord Havelock Vetinari, Guards! Guards!

"So, let's suppose that it's true what Defense Attorney Schell implies: that each of you, all of you, sympathize with the defendants, trapped as they are in their fears; that, in fact, more people hate homosexuals than are willing to admit. Then I venture to say that somewhere in your family history, someone somewhere hates you or your relatives for no other reason than that they are black or white; Slovak instead of Czech; Protestant instead of Catholic; left-wing, not right. And are you going to let officers of the law determine which of you they will help based on who and what you are? If so, then don't dial 911, even if you think you're one of them, because you may end up being Officer Newhouse." — ADA Benjamin Stone, Law & Order

"Well-meaning people can disagree, especially about the most socially divisive issue to face our country this century. Drew Seeley has an opinion about abortion. He thinks that his opinion entitles him to kill people. Here's what he did: he hunted down a woman named Eileen Reid, he gave Randall Jenkins a gun and told him to shoot Eileen Reid. And he did. Drew Seeley is a self-appointed executioner. If you let him go, you better just pray that one day, someone like him doesn't find some fault with you." — ADA Jack McCoy, Law & Order

"A lot of people say that morals are how we treat the people we know and ethics are how we treat the people we don't know. So morals are what make us a good parent, a good friend, a nice neighbor. But ethics are how we build a society. That's the true test of our higher self. But what happens when society is ruled by subjective morals, and you choose to project that onto complete strangers, is that we all end up with a society that's governed by self-aggrandizement. So, really, by calling in to make sure you're the first little pedant to jump off your chair and teach me a lesson with smug superiority about your own particular moral point of view, when you know precisely nothing of the situation, you've done your part to contribute to the erosion of our entire social fabric." — Henry McCord, Madam Secretary

"Do you really think we can afford to have the developing world develop? You think we could have survived the rise of a modern, articulated Chinese superpower twenty years ago? You think we could manage an Africa full of countries run by intelligent, uncorrupted democrats? Or a Latin America? Just imagine it for a moment. Whole populations getting educated, and healthy, and secure, and aspirational. Women's rights, for Christ's sake. We can't afford these things to happen. Who's going to soak up our subsidized food surplus for us? Who's going to make our shoes and shirts? Who's going to supply us with cheap labor and cheap raw materials? Who's going to store our nuclear waste, balance out our CO2 misdemeanors? Who's going to buy our arms? An educated middle class doesn't want to spend eleven hours a day bent over a stitching machine. They aren't going to work the seaweed farms and the paddy fields 'til their feet rot. They aren’t going to live next door to a fuel-rod dump and shut up about it. They're going to want prosperity." — Jack Notley, Market Forces

"When there are starving people in Africa, what kind of person spends two hundred bucks on shoes? See, once you buy into that paradigm, it's a bottomless pit. You can never feel good about yourself while there's anybody in the world poor or hungry, which there always is, and has been since the dawn of time, so you feel guilty and hypocritical all the time. You're one of those people who's never had to make a decision between ethics and results. You went to college and learned that companies with satisfied employees tend to be more profitable, and you went, 'Oh good.' Because that let you off the hook; you didn't have to decide what you'd do if it was a choice between one or the other. You won't work for a tobacco or gun manufacturer because those are bad companies; you'll only work for good ones, helping them to improve customer satisfaction and produce better products and—oh hey!—just by coincidence, those things increase company profits and get you promoted. Well, you're in the real world now." — Eve Jantiss, Company

Videos

The Great Schism

The Suffering of Shinji & Asuka

Our Love Makes a Dead Sound