Terry Goodkind famous quotes

If the road is easy, you're likely going the wrong way.
-- Terry Goodkind

#Truth #Adversity #Survival

Never let a beautiful woman pick your path for you when there is a man in her line of sight
-- Terry Goodkind

#Beautiful #Men #Sight

Once you place that crown of liar on your head, you can take it off again, but it leaves a stain for all time.
-- Terry Goodkind

#Honesty #Liars #Crowns

The Wizard's First Rule: People are stupid; given proper motivation almost anyone will believe almost anything.
-- Terry Goodkind

#Motivation #Stupid #Believe

Knowing when to fight is just as important as knowing how.
-- Terry Goodkind

#Fighting #Knowing #Important

We reap a reward merely in the act of helping others. We never know how, or if, that reward will come back to us. Helping is the reward; none other is needed nor better.
-- Terry Goodkind

#Helping Others #Rewards #Needed

...you'll find that being a friend is to like a person for who they are, even the parts you don't understand. You don't have to understand, or do the same, or live their lives for them. If you truly care for them, then you want them to be who they are; that was why you liked them in the first place.
-- Terry Goodkind

#Friendship #Caring #Want

I'm afraid that we all make mistakes. One of the things that defines our character is how we handle mistakes. If we lie about having made a mistake, then it can't be corrected and it festers. On the other hand, if we give up just because we made a mistake, even a big mistake, none of us would get far in life.
-- Terry Goodkind

#Giving Up #Mistake #Lying

If something is wrong, it matters not if a thousand men are for it; you must still oppose it. If something is just, no amount of popular outcry should stay you from your course.
-- Terry Goodkind

#Men #Matter #Should

Sometimes, making the wrong choice is better than making no choice. You have the courage to go forward, that is rare. A person who stands at the fork, unable to pick, will never get anywhere.
-- Terry Goodkind

#Courage #Choices #Sometimes

Knowledge is a weapon. I intend to be formidably armed.
-- Terry Goodkind

#Weapons

Love is not about what you want. It's about finding happiness for the one you love.
-- Terry Goodkind

#Love Is #Want #Finding Happiness

Your life is yours and yours alone. Rise up and live it.
-- Terry Goodkind

#Being Yourself #Individuality #Life Is

Knowledge is a destination. Truth, the journey.
-- Terry Goodkind

#Journey #Destination

I felt like I'd been misplaced in the cosmos and I belonged in Maine.
-- Terry Goodkind

#Cosmos #Maine #Misplaced

Only a fool walks into the future backwards.
-- Terry Goodkind

#Fool #Walks #Backwards

If you care about yourself, you should care about learning - even learning simple things. You come to have pride in yourself only by accomplishing things, even from fixing some old stairs...Others can't grant you self-respect, even others who care about you. You have to earn self-respect yourself.
-- Terry Goodkind

#Pride #Simple #Self

Charity, if you have the means, is a personal choice, but charity which is expected or compelled is simply a polite word for slavery.
-- Terry Goodkind

#Mean #Choices #Slavery

People are stupid. They will believe a lie because they want to believe it's true, or because they are afraid it might be true.
-- Terry Goodkind

#Lying #Stupid #Believe

Celebrating faith over reason is merely a way of denying what is, in favor of embracing any whim that strikes your fancy.
-- Terry Goodkind

#Favors #Fancy #Way

If you want to be a slave in life, then continue going around asking others to do for you. They will oblige, but you will find the price is your choices, your freedom, your life itself. They will do for you, and as a result you will be in bondage to them forever, having given your identity away for a paltry price. Then, and only then, you will be a nobody, a slave, because you yourself and nobody else made it so.
-- Terry Goodkind

#Forever #Choices #Identity

When the whole world is crazy, it doesn't pay to be sane.
-- Terry Goodkind

#Crazy #World #Pay

Nothing gained without cost is valued. Freedom has a cost, and all will bear it so all will value and preserve it.
-- Terry Goodkind

#Bears #Cost #Values

Not everyone is willing to embrace liberty; liberty requires not just effort, but risk. Some people choose to delude themselves and see their chains as protective armor.
-- Terry Goodkind

#People #Effort #Risk

There is no place so dangerous as a world without magic.
-- Terry Goodkind

#Magic #World #Dangerous

Pity for the guilty is treason to the innocent." -Kahlan
-- Terry Goodkind

#Guilty #Innocent #Pity

It's only some rice and beans Captain. It's not like I'm giving you Cara's hand in marriage." - Richard
-- Terry Goodkind

#Hands #Giving #Captains

...You have to accept yourself, who you are. You don't believe. You still fight who you are. Until you accept yourself, until you believe, you won't be able to call forth your Han, your power, except in great anger.
-- Terry Goodkind

#Believe #Fighting #Able

They look at me and I kind of back up in case they go for my throat.
-- Terry Goodkind

#Looks #Kind #Cases

No one ever goes into battle thinking God is on the other side.
-- Terry Goodkind

#Thinking #Battle #Sides

If God is so powerful, can he create a rock which he cannot lift?
-- Terry Goodkind

#Powerful #Rocks

I don't think I could have written what I did any earlier.
-- Terry Goodkind

#Thinking

Ever since I was really little, I've had characters that were in my mind.
-- Terry Goodkind

#Character #Mind #Littles

Her green eyes came unafraid to his. The connection was so intense that it threatened to drain his sense of self. He felt that he had always known her, that she had always been a part of him, that her needs were his needs.
-- Terry Goodkind

#Eye #Self #Needs

But if used for retribution, magic is vengeance incarnate.
-- Terry Goodkind

#Magic #Vengeance #Retribution

Books served to keep hard-won knowledge safe. They endured.
-- Terry Goodkind

#Book #Safe

Emotion did not play a part in truth, only reality did.
-- Terry Goodkind

#Reality #Play #Emotion

Once you teach me something, it's mine to use.
-- Terry Goodkind

#Use #Teach

Being afraid something is true is accepting the possibility. Accepting the possibility is the first step to believing.
-- Terry Goodkind

#Believe #Firsts #Steps

Wizard's Sixth Rule The only sovereign you can allow to rule you is reason.
-- Terry Goodkind

#Sovereign #Wizards #Reason

Wizard's Seventh Rule Life is the future, not the past.
-- Terry Goodkind

#Past #Wizards #Life Is

Wizard's Eighth Rule Talga Vassternich. (Deserve Victory)
-- Terry Goodkind

#Victory #Wizards #Deserve

Wizard's Ninth Rule A contradiction can not exist in reality. Not in part, nor in whole.
-- Terry Goodkind

#Reality #Wizards #Contradiction

Why should I live my whole life where I don't want to be. [it's a good point - pretty hard to argue with that sort of logic really isn't it!
-- Terry Goodkind

#Want #Logic #Arguing

Wizard's Tenth Rule Willfully turning aside from the truth is treason to one's self.
-- Terry Goodkind

#Self #Wizards #Truth Is

Wizard's Eleventh and Final Rule The "Rule Unspoken", the "Rule Unwritten", "The rule from the beginning of time.
-- Terry Goodkind

#Finals #Wizards

Are we our bodies? Is a small person less than a big person, then? If we were our bodies, then when we lost an arm, or a leg, would we be less, would we begin to fade from existence? No. We are the same person. We are not our bodies; we are our thoughts. As they form, they define who we are, and create the reality of our existence.
-- Terry Goodkind

#Reality #Body #Legs

I've always said fantasy is sort of 'stealth philosophy'.
-- Terry Goodkind

#Philosophy #Fantasy #Said

That's what friends are for-to be strong for you when you need a moment to find your own strength.
-- Terry Goodkind

#Strong #Needs #Moments

It allows you to say things that sound very dramatic and get away with it. If you had characters in modern fiction say the same things as they're driving down the street in an Oldsmobile they'd sound ludicrous!
-- Terry Goodkind

#Character #Sound #Fiction

The training of a Mord-Sith takes years - to learn to handle the pain. I guess it's also why only women are Mord-Sith, men are too weak.
-- Terry Goodkind

#Pain #Men #Years

Dance with me, Death, I am ready.
-- Terry Goodkind

#Ready

Those who have come here to hate should leave now; for in their hate, they only betray themselves.
-- Terry Goodkind

#Hate #Leave Me Alone #Should

It does the sheep no good to preach the goodness of a diet of grass, if the wolves are of a different mind.
-- Terry Goodkind

#Sheep #Mind #Doe

Everyone makes mistakes. How a person deals with their mistakes is a mark of their character.
-- Terry Goodkind

#Mistake #Character #Mark

I had to live this long, have the experiences I've had, to create what I do. I knew I wanted to write for years, but I had to be ready so I wouldn't blow it. The move to Maine was the final step.
-- Terry Goodkind

#Moving #Writing #Blow

When you're the leader, everything is your fault.
-- Terry Goodkind

#Leader #Faults

Dancing with death meant being committed to killing, committed with your heart and soul.
-- Terry Goodkind

#Heart #Dancing #Soul

Life for the strongest. There is no sympathy for the slain, only admiration for the winner's strength.
-- Terry Goodkind

#Admiration #Winner #No Sympathy

Reason and reality are the only means to just laws; mindless wishes, if given sovereignty, become deadly masters.
-- Terry Goodkind

#Mean #Reality #Law

There is magic in sincere forgiveness - magic to heal.
-- Terry Goodkind

#Magic #Sincerity #Sincere

After that, I came back every year. Everyone said, 'Well, when you retire you can move there.' But I said, 'Why should I live my whole life where I don't want to be.'
-- Terry Goodkind

#Moving #Years #Want

I hate telling that story to people who've been struggling for years.
-- Terry Goodkind

#Hate #Struggle #Years

The mice think they are right, but my cat eats them anyways. This is the point, reality is nothing, perception is everything.
-- Terry Goodkind

#Cat #Reality #Thinking

Reasons are the spoils of victory. When you've destroyed the enemy, then your leaders write down the reasons in books, and give moving speeches about them. If you've done your job, then there aren't any of the enemy left to dispute your leader's reasons. At least not until the next war.
-- Terry Goodkind

#Jobs #War #Moving

Sometimes that's all life is... One desperate act after another.
-- Terry Goodkind

#Sometimes #Life Is #Desperate

Enemies,' the wizard said, 'are the price of honour.
-- Terry Goodkind

#Enemy #Wizards #Said

Everyone has an effect on others. Some people inspire others to do great things. Some take people into crime with them. Those with the gift affect those around them even more.
-- Terry Goodkind

#People #Inspire #Crime

Knowledge comes as it will. Life's lessons come at the most surprising times.
-- Terry Goodkind

#Lessons #Surprising

You can't love anyone or anything until you love your own existence first. Love can only grow out of a respect for your own life.
-- Terry Goodkind

#First Love #Firsts #Existence

We can't live our lives according to what might have been. We have to live by what is.
-- Terry Goodkind

#Might #Might Have Been #Live By

Standing for truth is everything. Truth is power. Don't ever forget that.
-- Terry Goodkind

#Forget #Truth Is #Standing

There would be nothing I could do to you that would harm you more than what you're already doing to harm yourself...You are never going to amount to anything. You will always be the worthless muck people scrape from their shoes. You only get one life and you are wasting yours. That's a terrible shame. I doubt you will ever know what it is to be truly happy, to achieve anything of worth, to have genuine pride in yourself. You bring it all on yourself, and I could do no worse to you.
-- Terry Goodkind

#Pride #Shoes #People

No amount of telling is worth doing it once.
-- Terry Goodkind

You have one Mord-Sith and one Mother Confessor, here, both in very bad moods. I would suggest you not give us an excuse to lose our temper, or we may never find it again in your lifetime." -Kahlan Amnell
-- Terry Goodkind

#Mother #Giving #Bad Mood

The worse you are at thinking, the better you are at drinking.
-- Terry Goodkind

#Drinking #Thinking

One of the things that defines our character is how we handle mistakes.
-- Terry Goodkind

#Mistake #Character #Handle

Wizard's Third Rule Passion rules reason, For better or for worse.
-- Terry Goodkind

#Passion #Wizards #Reason