My favourite quotes

📺️ Billions

“I have neither time nor inclination to dicker around with protestations of emotion.”

“You need me, because I am willing to stare into the abyss beyond conventional morality and do what needs to be done.” — Chuck Rhoades, Billions Season 1: The Punch

“The fact that you can’t fully understand that doesn’t mean he’s wrong. It just means you haven’t gone beyond your own limits.” — Mike “Wags” Wagner

📺️ Yes Minister

“Sometimes one is forced to consider the possibility that affairs are being conducted in a manner which, all things being considered and making all possible allowances is, not to put too fine a point on it, perhaps not entirely straightforward.”

James Hacker:
I mean, why should we bug Hugh Halifax’s telephone? I mean, one of my own administration. Don’t know where they got such a daft idea. Sheer paranoia.

Sir Humphrey Appleby:
Yes, the only thing is…

James Hacker:
I mean, why should we listen in to MPs? Boring, stupid ignorant windbags, I do my best not to listen to them. He’s only a PPS. I have enough trouble finding out what’s going on at the Ministry of Defence, what could he know?

Sir Humphrey Appleby:
So I gather you denied that Mr Halifax’s phone had been bugged.

James Hacker:
Well, obviously. It was the one question today to which I could give a clear, simple, straightforward, honest answer.

Sir Humphrey Appleby:
Yes. Unfortunately, although the answer was indeed clear, simple and straightforward, there is some difficulty in justifiably assigning to it the fourth of the epithets you applied to the statement inasmuch as the precise correlation between the information you communicated and the facts insofar as they can be determined and demonstrated is such as to cause epistemological problems of sufficient magnitude as to lay upon the logical and semantic resources of the English language a heavier burden than they can reasonably be expected to bear.

James Hacker:
Epistemological? What are you talking about?

Sir Humphrey Appleby:
You told a lie.

Sir Humphrey has lost his key

Sir Humphrey: Prime Minister, I must express in the strongest possible terms my profound opposition to the newly instituted practice which imposes severe and intolerable restrictions on the ingress and egress of senior members of the hierarchy and will, in all probability, should the current deplorable innovation be perpetuated, precipitate a progressive constriction of the channels of communication, culminating in a condition of organisational atrophy and administrative paralysis, which will render effectively impossible the coherent and co-ordinated discharge of the function of government within Her Majesty’s United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland!

Hacker: You mean you’ve lost your key?

📗 Sezon Burz

“Nawet burmistrz Coppenrath był zadowolony, aż promieniał, a trudno skurwiela usatysfakcjonować, na wszystko nosem kręci, ponury jak burdel w poniedziałek rano.”

“Strzeżcie się rozczarowań, bo pozory mylą. Takimi, jakimi wydają się być, rzeczy są rzadko. A kobiety nigdy.” — Jaskier, Pół wieku poezji

“Historia — uśmiechnął się wiedźmin — to relacja, większością kłamliwa, ze zdarzeń, większością nieistotnych, zdawana nam przez historyków, większością durniów.”

📗 The Signal and the Noise

“Conspiracy theories are an irresistible labor-saving device in the face of complexity.”

📗 Redemption Ark

“I’m not in the habit of co-operating with people, Clavain, so make the most of this rare display of magnanimity and shut the fuck up.”

📗 Absolution Gap

“I offer only advice, from the bottomless pit of goodness which is my heart.”

“Your powers of observation do you credit.”

“Not greatly troubled by self-doubt, are you, Miss Els?”

📗 Seveneves

“His working hypothesis was that the breakup of the moon had made Doob young again, exfoliating layers of emotional callus from his soul and leaving a pink shiny impressionable heart just waiting to be colonized by the first appealing woman who came along.”

“The existence of seven distinct human races, as well as various Aïdan subraces, provided modern society with a rich fund of opportunities for socially awkward happenings.”

“That is not an unreasonable supposition,” Doc admitted, in a tone that, however, made it clear that no such idea had actually crossed his mind.”

📗 The Ghost Brigates

“Harvey had a reputation as an argumentative blowhard.”

📗 The Cartel

“The announcement by Tim Taylor’s receptionist that there’s an Art Keller here to see him is greeted with the enthusiasm normally reserved for a colonoscopy.”

📗 Nemesis Games

“Well, funny thing. I don’t have to put up with being called stupid by someone I’m trying to help.”

📗 Babylon’s Ashes

“I’ll do whatever I can, but you might have to make do with being avenged. Sorry about that.”

📗 Persepolis Rising

“Everyone spies on everyone, Camina. Let’s not pretend to be outraged at water for being wet.”

“Do you know how to polish a rock?” “No, sir.” “You put it in a tumbler with a lot of other rocks and some sand and you roll them around for a couple of weeks until all the edges are worn off and they’re nice and shiny. We’re taking control of thirteen hundred different worlds, and we’ve only got a hundred old farts like me and Tanaka, and a couple thousand university-educated greenhorns like yourself.”

“Katria Mendez in person was all hard angles and sharp edges, and her dark eyes burned with a constant low-level fury.”

📗 Tiamat’s Wrath

“Also, that you care at all what any of these people think is charming beyond words.”

📗 Mongoliad

“He was not the sort to parade his grief about and seek sympathy and solace from others.”

“War did not just level, it plowed the field, raising the muck and sinking the stubble.”

“Kim did not think it was fitting to belabor a sick man, and so he allowed this to pass without comment.”

“All titles are unwarranted, Raphael,” Sir John said. “Whether or not we live up to them is what matters.”

“It takes a selfish, petty man to choose a Bishop of Rome according to the candidate’s personality. There are important issues at stake, and we cannot afford to indulge our egos or our personal preferences.”

“He looked more Frisian than Spanish, and he carried himself with a grace that teetered on the edge of swaggering arrogance but never quite spilled over.”

“Did I not just fucking itemize it for you?” Frederick said with mock exasperation. “Would you like me to write it out for you? I can do it in crude pictures if that will make it easier for you to grasp.”

📗 Katabasis

“All she saw was the set line of his mouth and his hard stare—the face of a man who knew he might have to do violence and the utter calm with which he would attend to that task.”

📗 Siege Perilous

“I have fought—on both sides of the wall—during sieges at Córdoba and Damietta,” interrupted Raphael, “and do not mistake my tone as insulting to your status here, but I know exactly what we need to do.”

📗 The Dark Forest

“Without the fear of heights, there can be no appreciation for the beauty of high places.”

📗 Turn The Ship Around!

“Don’t move information to authority, move authority to the information.”

“I had suffered through many wasted hours listening to lectures about how we should “work together,” “take initiative,” and the like. These weren’t backed up with mechanisms that actually enabled or rewarded these behaviors, so the speeches were worse than nothing at all; they sounded hypocritical and the speakers out of touch.”

“I was resolved to avoid this altogether. Instead of trying to change mind-sets and then change the way we acted, we would start acting differently and the new thinking would follow.”

📗 The Border

“I’m not firing anybody. The knock on me is that I’m not an administrator and don’t have a clue how to run a gigantic organization. That rap is accurate—I don’t. What I do have is you. I will give clear, concise direction and I trust you to make the organization work toward those objectives. What I expect from you is loyalty, honesty and hard work. What you can expect from me is loyalty, honesty, hard work and support. I will never stab you in the back, but I will stab you in the chest if I catch you playing games. Don’t be afraid to make mistakes—only slackers and cowards don’t make mistakes. But if we have a problem, I don’t want to be the last to know. I want your thoughts and your criticisms. I’m a big believer in the battleground of ideas—I don’t need the only word, just the last word.”

“I mean this with all respect and affection, Ben,” Keller says. “Go fuck yourself.”

“Hidalgo stares at her. “Oh, you’re good.” “Don’t tell me, I already know,” she says. “Tell my boss.”

📗 Termination Shock

“At first the protesters gave him mean looks for driving a huge gas-guzzling dually until they saw through the glass that he was a person of color and then they didn’t know where to direct their moral indignation.”

“Here, insects seemed a good default explanation for just about anything that might require explaining.”

📗 Fail; or, Dodge in Hell

“The only reason people like Weaver know enough of Lord Stranath to sing songs about him is because one of his company ‘turned tail and ran home’ when that struck him as intelligent.”

📗 Excession

“An Outside Context Problem was the sort of thing most civilisations encountered just once, and which they tended to encounter rather in the same way a sentence encountered a full stop.”

“Genar-Hofoen, I won’t pretend I’m happy to be communicating with you again; however, I have been asked to do so by certain of those whose opinions and judgement I respect and admire and hence deem the situation to be such that I would be derelict in my duties if I did not oblige to the utmost of my abilities.”

“A most interesting contribution, we’re sure, but can we keep this just a little more focused?”

“Have you never had some clue, some lead, a hint of some potential sport, amusement, jape or focus of contemplation that was certainly worth acting upon but equally decidedly did not merit advertising due to some reservation concerning potential embarrassment, the wish not to seem vain or simply a desire for privacy?”

“it remains an improbability predicated upon an uncertainty.”

“extemporising sensibly but with all due urgency where it had to.”

“If all you can do is make snide insinuations then it would probably benefit all concerned if you bestowed the fruits of your prodigious wit on someone with the spare time to give them the consideration they doubtless deserve.”

“after all this is over, we are both still in a position for me to confer and you to benefit from such leniency, I shall be infinitely glad to extend such forbearance.”

📗 Leviathan Falls

“Ekko laughed again. The release felt almost postcoital.”

📗 The Player of Games

“Hamin studied him for a moment. “I hope you understand how frank I’ve been with you, Jernau Gurgeh. It would be unfortunate if such honesty went unacknowledged, and unrewarded.”

📗 Use of Weapons

“There were games and trials of wit or strength, there were free flowers and party hats and a much frequented Compliments stall where one paid a little money, or gave a paper hat or whatever, and was told what a nice, pleasant, good, unshowy, quiet-tempered, undemonstrative, restrained, sincere, respectful, handsome, cheerful, good-willed person one was.”

“He loved the plasma rifle. He was an artist with it; he could paint pictures of destruction, compose symphonies of demolition, write elegies of annihilation, using that weapon.”

“‘Sounds expensive. You must have to charge a lot, doctor.’ ‘There is, of course, a small consideration involved, but well within the means of most cultured people, and I can assure you of some very exclusive company, and complete discretion, as ever.’”

📗 Inversions

“You can draw the blinds in a brothel, but people still know what you’re doing.”

“I feel my credulity being stretched.”

“I am sure I cannot, but your flattery is still gratifying.”

📗 Look to Windward

“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.”

“Not that tonight’s news has exactly been conducive to inspiration or motivation.”

“They asked me to help play host to you,” Kabe told the Chelgrian. “I am shamefully weak in the face of such flattery and so accepted immediately.”

“He would claim not to be,” Kabe said, “though I think in his music over the last few years I have detected a certain plaintive harking back to traditional Chelgrian folk themes, with hints of eventual resolution implicit in their serial development.”

“That is conservative and a little stupid, certainly, but not actually idiotic.”

📗 Matter

“Roundly insulting one’s superiors behind their backs was one of the perks of being inferior, Choubris held.”

“I tell you, Seltis, at every point at which I feel my rage cannot conceivably grow any further, having reached the outermost extremity of that possible for a man to bear, I am propelled further into indecent fury by the next action of that unspeakable puddle of excrement tyl Loesp.”

“Let us three agree a compact, shall we? I shall forgive you for being obtuse, disloyal and selfish if you two forgive me for seeming to have expressed my orders by way of a question, with the implication that there is any choice whatsoever on your part. What d’you say?”

“That, sir, is no comfort,” Ferbin said. “Comforting was not my intention. My duty is to state facts.” “Then the facts tell a sorry truth of cynicism and complacency in the face of outright evil.”

“His feet were sore and he was growing tired of what seemed to him like pointless speculation, not to mention something dangerously close to philosophy, a field of human endeavour he had encountered but fleetingly through various exasperated tutors, though long enough to have formed the unshakeable impression that its principal purpose was to prove that one equalled zero, black was white and educated men could speak through their bottoms.”

“Although not required to do so by the terms of our highly pleasing and mutually beneficial Agreement, or indeed by the General Treaty Framework existing between our two most excellent Peoples, I am – both as a profound admirer of our Nariscene friends and allies and as a personal expression of the love and respect felt between yourself and me (either of which consideration would naturally entirely and wholly constitute an unarguable reason for said) – happy to inform you that this minor and surely by mutual consent intrinsically untroubling asset relocation has been made necessary by the deterioration in the relationship between the Nariscene’s client species the Oct/Inheritors and the Aultridia (said dispute remaining at the moment, fortunately, still specific to the subject Shellworld).”

“I beseech you to allow me to share with you the indisputable fact that I am so blissfully happy that something so small and unimportant nevertheless confers upon me the elationary privilege of addressing you, my good and faithful friend!”

📗 Surface Detail

“Come out now while I can still persuade myself this is merely charming high spirits and attractive rebelliousness rather than gross treachery and outright insult.”

“Well,” she said, “I’m sure we didn’t mean to insult you, honourable colleague.” Errun only half-rose from his seat to say, “Insult, like many such feelings, is experienced in the soul of the person addressed; it is not something that can be granted or withheld by the person doing the addressing.”

“The truth is not always useful, not always good. It’s like putting your faith in water. Yes, we need the rain, but too much can sweep you away in a flood and drown you. Like all great natural, elemental forces, the truth needs to be channelled, managed, controlled and intelligently, morally allocated.”

“Your position is perverse, farcical and as intellectually demeaning as it is morally destitute.”

“I imagine my sorrow for your loss will prove containable.”

📗 The Hydrogen Sonata

“That is unfortunate. I would hope that, nevertheless, you might appreciate my disquiet – one might even characterise it as disappointment – at the fact that we appear to have initiated our association here on such an unfortunate tack.”

“As a challenge, without peer. As music, without merit.”

“Septame, I am a mild-mannered man, I am known for my forbearance and general good humour, my tolerance and my indefatigable desire to give the other person the benefit of the doubt in all matters and at all times, but in all my wide and valuable experience in matters of inter-species diplomacy I have to say that even I, sir, even I am shocked to find my clients and – yes, my friends, my valued friends, for so they have become, and I am absolutely not ashamed to say it, no; in fact I am proud to, proud to say it, I am – the Liseiden legation being so roundly deceived and so ill-used is as appalling as it is shocking.”

“We are here,” Berdle told her, “because while you were asleep, more information came in, as information is prone to do, and one particular detail passed on by another ship involved happened to be the Culture full name of your friend Mr QiRia. Which would be Tursensa Ngaroe Hgan QiRia dam Yutton.”

“My crew are loyal to me, Colonel; I am only loyal to the regiment and Gzilt. Also, faith is belief without reason; we operate on reason and nothing but. I have zero faith in my crew, just absolute confidence.”

“I just wanted to reiterate the Culture’s condolences and to reinforce our offer of help.” “Both much appreciated. I hope you will take it as a sign of our confident closeness, not our arrogance, that we had assumed no less.”

Deflect from its earlier course and instigate its current re-disposition’,” Ossebri 17 Haldesib quoted. “Does the Culture machine possess any other especially pretty ways of saying ‘run away’ or ‘escape like a shamed, pursued prey’?

Uh-huh. You know, if anything serious does kick off there, Colonel, you will need to limit civilian casualties as far as possible. ~I am aware of that, ma’am, Agansu sent, thinking how typical – and shameful – it was that a superior tried to cover themselves against any unfortunate outcome by re-stating something that was already entirely and properly covered in ambient standing orders and by military rules of engagement.

🧑 Unknown

“Mądrość nie zawsze przychodzi z wiekiem. Czasem zdarza się, że wiek przychodzi sam.”

🎥 Rejs

“Każdy może, prawda, krytykować, a mam wrażenie, że dopuszczenie do krytyki, panie, tu nikomu tak nie podoba się. Tak więc z punktu, mając na uwadze, że ewentualna krytyka może być, tak musimy zrobić, żeby tej krytyki nie było, tylko aplauz i zaakceptowanie tych naszych, prawda, punktów, które stworzymy.”

🧑 Robert Kennedy

“What is objectionable, what is dangerous, about extremists is not that they are extreme, but that they are intolerant. The evil is not what they say about their cause, but what they say about their opponents.”

🧑 Edward Kennedy

“We must understand that there is a difference between being a party that cares about labor and being a labor party. There is a difference about being a party that cares about women and being the women’s party. And we can and we must be a party that cares about minorities without becoming a minority party. We are citizens first - and constituencies second.” (1985)

🧑 Thomas Sowell

“One of the painful signs of years of dumbed-down education is how many people are unable to make a coherent argument. They can vent their emotions, question other people’s motives, make bold assertions, repeat slogans - anything except reason.”

🧑 Olgierd Rudak

“dyskryminacja to kwalifikowana postać nierówności”

📗 Hyperion

“To call this conveyance a “passenger dirigible” is an exercise in creative semantics.”

📗 Rozdroże Kruków

“Póki nie sprawdzimy, wiedzieć nie będziemy.”

🧑 The Engineer and the Manager

A man is flying in a hot air balloon and realizes that he is lost. He reduces height and spots a man down below. He lowers the balloon further and shouts, “Excuse me. Can you help me? I promised a friend I would meet him half an hour ago, but I don’t know where I am.”

The man below says, “Yes. You are in a hot air balloon, hovering approximately 30 feet above this field. You are between 40 and 42 degrees north latitude, and between 58 and 60 degrees west longitude.

”You must be an engineer” says the balloonist.
”I am”, replies the man. “How did you know?"

"Well…” says the balloonist. “Everything you told me was technically correct, but I have no idea what to make of your information and the fact is I am still lost.”

The man below says, “You must be a Manager"

"I am”, replies the balloonist. “How did you know?"

"Well…” says the man. “You don’t know where you are, or where you are going. You made a promise which you have no idea how to keep, and you expect me to solve your problem. The fact is you are in the exact same position you were in before we met but now it is somehow
my fault.”