Merentha - Quotes from In Conquest Born

- Listing of Viton's and Harkur's quotes -

Viton:	We recognize that in man's nature there is a drive to oppress others, be they truly alien or his own women. Perhaps the true measure of his power is how openly he can indulge in this.
Viton:	These gentle emotions, what good are they? Love, compassion, amity; what purpose do they serve? To my mind they are socially invalid, obstacles to emotional efficiency. There is no more constructive emotion than hatred.
Harkur:	Civilized man longs for the illusion of barbarism. Either his culture fulfills this need by adopting its outer trappings, or he will be seduced by his first contact with a culture that does.
Harkur:	A man's most sacred possession is his privacy of mind. Examine him, torture him, break him; still his thoughts are his own until he chooses to express them. This concept is one of the foundations of Braxin philosophy. Psychic ability, by its very nature, guarantees violation of this privacy. Therefore, we should not and will not tolerate it.
Harkur:	The more complex the language, the greater its capacity to influence the thoughts of men.

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Harkur: An uninspired ruler works to develop those relationships which will be most to his advantage. A great ruler determines the most desirable relationships and assumes them in to being.

Viton: It is in the nature of man that he is antagonistic toward the others of his sex. Each man sees in another a potential competitor for the limited rewards of male success, and the hostility which arises between them is a part of the natural balance of human life.
It is possible, as is in the case of father and son, that a closeness will arise between two men which threatens the functional hostility of each. It is the duty of society to provide an artificial means of encouraging the proper degree of antagonism.

Viton: For the true warrior, friendship is disarming and security is deadly. Both weaken a man by giving him the illusion of might, when in fact they undermine the very foundations of his own power by causing him to rely upon others. Anything that distracts a man from his chosen course is abhorrent to one who values his own strength.

Harkur: If the Braxanà, or any other single tribe, were to try to rule Braxi for an extended length of time, they would have to set themselves apart from all other Braxins. They would have to create an image so alien to the rest of Braxin culture that no other group could aspire to it, and do it to such an extreme that the image itself becomes synonymous with power. Then and only then, no man would dare to question their rule.

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Harkur: We must assume that the thought processes of human and non-human differ so greatly that without direct mental contact there can be no true understanding between the two.

Harkur: Never underestimate man's ingenuity in masterminding his own destruction.

Harkur: If a man understands the priorities of his fellows, he can lead them. If he fails in this, all the good intentions in the world won't buy him loyalty.

Harkur: War is the fire that tempers men's souls.

Viton: The relationship between hatred and desire is this: That they are born of the same passionate source; that, being observed, they are often confused; and that each one intensifies the other.

Harkur: The man who will not resort to violence must find his own ways to manipulate men.

Viton: Between natural enemies there is never peace.

Harkur: The Braxanà are wrong if they think that they will never be intolerant toward human indulgences. They simply have not yet encountered one that offends them.

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Viton:	Nothing frustrates the true warrior more than political necessity.
Harkur:	You can remove undesirable emotions from society's repertoire by careful manipulation of cultural trends. You can revise your language so that a man has no means of expressing that which is forbidden; lacking a familiar label, he will eventually lose his grasp of the concept itself. You cannot, however, wholly excise emotions from a man's character and still expect him to be a complete human being.
Harkur:	He who controls the soldiers, controls the throne.
Harkur:	A man's greatest enemy is his own fear.
Harkur:	In order to make the most of the future, we must first comprehend the past.
Harkur:	A man does not truly understand his limitations until he has tested them.
Viton:	It is when a man's House seems most secure that he is most vulnerable from attack.

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Harkur:	Nothing, not even pleasure, an bind two humans as close as a long-enduring vendetta, for it forces upon each a constant awareness of the strengths and vulnerabilities of each other, and commits them to a common purpose which colors all other activities.
Harkur:	Above all else, never underestimate the enemy.
Viton:	The true k'airth is a complex and dangerous sport, in that it forces one's enemy to continually improve his skills. The most successful participant is he who can manipulate this factor. To cause the enemy to over-extend himself, or to channel his energies down paths that will ultimately destroy him, is often the subtlest and most pleasing of all strategies.
Viton:	And then - say the Braxanà - Taz'hein turned on his Creator, and war came into being. The gods turned their men into warriors, pawn against pawn, brother against brother, and blood was spilled on the surface of the planet. Thus was man baptized by the treachery of the gods, to know the rich variety of conflict. And when Taz'hein was supreme in the Void he saw what men had become, and he withheld the hand of destruction which he had meant for them. "This is good," he said, "and since you have truly learned to live, I will not take that life from you. But if you must seek guidance, look to the Void - for it is as likely as I to answer, or to care."