Quotes

"They ridiculed questions, for fear it would make their ignorance plain"

The Judging Eye, Scott Bakker

Quotes: The Thousandfold Thought

Some quotes:

“You understood that when men stop bowing, the emperor ceases to rule, that when the whips are thrown into the river, the slave ceases to serve. For an infant to be an emperor or a slave or a merchant or a whore or a general or whatever, those about him must act accordingly. And Men act as they believe. “You saw them, in their thousands, spread across the world in great hierarchies, the actions of each exquisitely attuned to the expectations of others. The identity of Men, you discovered, was determined by the beliefs, the assumptions, of others. This is what makes them emperors or slaves … Not their gods. Not their blood".

Doubt begets understanding, and understanding begets compassion. Verily, it is conviction that kills. 

From Bakker's The Thousandfold Thought, Book 3 of the Prince of Nothing

The Darkness That Comes Before

Some quotes:

"...though he consorts with man, woman, and child, though he lays with beasts and makes a mockery of his seed, never shall he be as licentious as the philosopher, who lays with all things imaginable"

"Children questioned as much to be rebuffed as to be answered, as they must in order to learn which questions were permissible and which were not."

"We seek absolute awareness, the self-moving thought. The thoughts of all men arise from the darkness. If you are the movement of your soul, and the cause of that movement precedes you, then how could you ever call your thoughts your own? How could you be anything other than a slave to the darkness that comes before?"

From Scott Bakker's The Darkness That Comes Before: Book 1 of the Prince of Nothing.