Nglangut » wisecrack

On Reputation and Honor

Philip — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 09:29:17 +0000

“Reputation is what other people know about you. Honor is what you know about yourself. The friction tends to arise when the two are not the same. There is no more hollow feeling than to stand with your honor shattered at your feet while soaring public reputation wraps you in rewards. That’s soul-destroying. The other way around is merely very, very irritating.”
“Can I offer you some consoling reflections?
First, this too shall pass. Despite the undoubted charms of sex, murder, conspiracy, and more sex, people will eventually grow bored with the tale, and some other poor fellow will make some other ghastly public mistake, and their attention will go haring off after the new game.”
Secondly, given this accusation, no charge against you that’s less exciting will ruffle anyone’s sensibilities in the future. The near future, anyway.
Third, there is no thought control—or I’d certainly have put it to use before this. Trying to shape, or respond to, what every idiot on the street believes—on the basis of little logic and less information—would only serve to drive you mad.”

Miles stared away for a minute into the middle distance. “So what you’re telling me boils down to the same thing Galeni said. I have to stand here and eat this, and smile.”

“No,” said his father, “you don’t have to smile. But if you’re really asking for advice from my accumulated experience, I’m saying, Guard your honor. Let your reputation fall where it will. And outlive the bastards.”

Aral and Miles Vorkosigan – Miles In Love – A Civil Campaign – Lois McMaster Bujold

On Avenging, Retribution, and Evil

Philip — Wed, 09 Nov 2011 08:05:21 +0000

Retribution might taste sweet, and she was prepared to admit that sometimes the victims of evil required avengers more than they did simple justice, but that sweet taste was also a deadly poison. A corrosive brew which truly could—and all too often did—eat away the moral distinctions between the avenger and those she punished.
Honor Harrington – “Let’s Dance” in “In Fire Forged”

“When that happens,” he said, “when there’s no choice but to kill evil, then kill it. It’s your responsibility, your duty, and if you flinch, you fail—not just yourself, but everything important in your life. But if it must be done, if there truly is no choice, then do it because you must, not because you want to, and never, ever exult in the doing. That’s the priceof your soul, Honor—the ability to do what has to be done without turning yourself into the very thing it is that you’re fighting against.”
Alfred Harrington, “Let’s Dance” in “In Fire Forged”

Liberty and Safety

Philip — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 11:45:31 +0000

Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety

Benyamin Franklin

(A visual version by Niwatori available here)

Every gun that is made..

Philip — Thu, 01 Jul 2004 22:47:30 +0000

“Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.”
President Dwight D. Eisenhower
April 16, 1953