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Where no paths exist, a man strays only when he misses his destination. There is no crime, no transgression, no sin save foolishness or incompetence, and no obscenity save the tyranny of custom.

R. Scott Bakker

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R. Scott Bakker
Age: 57
Born: 1967
Born: February 2
Author
Novelist
Writer
Eärwa
Richard Scott Bakker
Sin
Incompetence
Exist
Custom
Missing
Foolishness
Crime
Paths
Path
Customs
Strays
Men
Destination
Misses
Tyranny
Obscenity
Save
Transgression

More quotes by R. Scott Bakker

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Any fool can see the limits of seeing, but not even the wisest know the limits of knowing. Thus is ignorance rendered invisible, and are all Men made fools.
R. Scott Bakker
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The world is a big place and our brain is only three pounds.
R. Scott Bakker
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Consequences lost all purchase when they became mad. And desperation, when pressed beyond anguish, became narcotic.
R. Scott Bakker
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Gods are but greater demons, the Cishaurim said, hungers across the surface of eternity, wanting only to taste the clarity of our souls. Can you not see this?
R. Scott Bakker
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I wanted a literate, socially intricate, and cosmopolitan world - something I could have fun destroying.
R. Scott Bakker
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Exhaustion has a way of parting the veils between men, not so much because the effort of censoring their words exceeds them, but because weariness is the foe of volatility. Oft times insults that would pierce the wakeful simply thud against the sleepless and fatigued.
R. Scott Bakker
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Achamian tossed his hands skyward in dismay. “Foolish boy! How many faiths are there? How many competing beliefs? And you would murder another on the slender hope that yours is somehow the only one?
R. Scott Bakker
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Saying 'I could have done more,' Zin, is what marks a man as a man and not a God.
R. Scott Bakker
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This is the problem of all great revelations: their significance so often exceeds the frame of our comprehension. We understand only after, always after. Not simply when it is too late, but precisely because it is too late.
R. Scott Bakker
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To be ignorant and to be deceived are two different things. To be ignorant is to be a slave of the world. To be deceived is to be the slave of another man. The question will always be: Why, when all men are ignorant, and therefore already slaves, does this latter slavery sting us so?
R. Scott Bakker
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Faith is the truth of passion. Since no passion is more true than another, faith is the truth of nothing.
R. Scott Bakker
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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?
R. Scott Bakker
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Beliefs are the foundation of actions. Those who believed without doubting, he would say, acted without thinking. And those who acted without thinking were enslaved.
R. Scott Bakker
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Something ... made him feel small, not in the way of orphans or beggars or children, but in a good way. In the way of souls.
R. Scott Bakker
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I remeber asking a wise man, once . . . 'Why do Men fear the dark?' . . . 'Because darkness' he told me, 'is ignorance made visable.' 'And do Men despise ignorance?' I asked. 'No,' he said, 'they prize it above all things--all things!--but only so long as it remains invisible.
R. Scott Bakker
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This is the problem of all great revelations: their significance so often exceeds the frame of our comprehension. We understand only after, always after. Not simply when it is too late, but precisely because it is too late.
R. Scott Bakker
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The world is only as deep as we can see. This is why fools think themselves profound. This is why terror is the passion of revelation.
R. Scott Bakker
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Doubt begets understanding, and understanding begets compassion. Verily, it is conviction that kills.
R. Scott Bakker
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Complexity begets ambiguity, which yields in all ways to prejudice and avarice. Complication does not so much defeat Men as arm them with fancy.
R. Scott Bakker
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He had despised the sorcerer, thinking him one of those mewling souls who forever groaned beneath burdens of their own manufacture.
R. Scott Bakker