War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself.

—Lois McMaster Bujold

About Lois McMaster Bujold

Portrait of Lois McMaster Bujold

Lois McMaster Bujold ( boo-ZHOHLD; born November 2, 1949) is an American speculative fiction writer. She has won the Hugo Award for best novel four times, matching Robert A. Heinlein's record (not counting his Retro Hugos). Bujold is best known for her Vorkosigan Saga, a series of science fiction novels...

More quotations from Lois McMaster Bujold

If power was an illusion, wasn't weakness necessarily one also?

—Lois McMaster Bujold

The idea of perfect closes your mind to new standards. When you drive hard toward one ideal, you miss opportunities and paths, not to mention hurting your confidence. Believe in your potential and then go out and explore it; don't limit it.

—Lois McMaster Bujold

potential perfection belief

For rarely are sons similar to their fathers: most are worse, and a few are better than their fathers.

—Lois McMaster Bujold

Adulthood isn't an award they'll give you for being a good child. You can waste... years, trying to get someone to give that respect to you, as though it were a sort of promotion or raise in pay. If only you do enough, if only you are good enough. No. You have to just... take it. Give it to yourself, I suppose. Say, I'm sorry you feel like that and walk away. But that's hard.

—Lois McMaster Bujold

Many that live deserve death. And some die that deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then be not too eager to deal out death in the name of justice, fearing for your own safety. Even the wise cannot see all ends.

—Lois McMaster Bujold

More quotations tagged with “war”

War may sometimes be a necessary evil. But no matter how necessary, it is always an evil, never a good. We will not learn how to live together in peace by killing each other's children.

—John Stuart Mill

The outcome of the war is in our hands; the outcome of words is in the council.

—Jeannette Rankin

War is a series of catastrophes that results in a victory.

—Georges Clemenceau

The quickest way of ending a war is to lose it.

—Georges Clemenceau

People in general are scared to death of the war and all the exhibition have been a failure, because the rich - don't want to buy anything.

—George Orwell