Lois McMaster Bujold: Trending quotes (page 16)

“Captains may come and captains may go, but the administration goes on forever.”

Lois McMaster Bujold Vorkosigan Saga

Source: Vorkosigan Saga, Shards of Honor (1986), Chapter 5 (p. 74)

“I had a teacher who used to reflect back my questions that way. I thought it was the Socratic method, and it impressed me immensely, until I found out he used it whenever he didn’t know the answer.”

Lois McMaster Bujold Vorkosigan Saga

Source: Vorkosigan Saga, Shards of Honor (1986), Chapter 4 (p. 60)

Way , Teachers , Question

“The old customs are dead, and we keep trying on new ones, like badly fitting clothes.”

Lois McMaster Bujold Vorkosigan Saga

Source: Vorkosigan Saga, Shards of Honor (1986), Chapter 3 (p. 50)

Clothes , Dead

“I suppose my determination to be a soldier stems from that date. I mean the real thing, not the parades and the uniforms and the glamour, but the logistics, the offensive advantage, the speed and surprise—the power. A better-prepared, stronger, tougher, faster, meaner son-of-a-bitch than any who came through that door.”

Lois McMaster Bujold Vorkosigan Saga

Source: Vorkosigan Saga, Shards of Honor (1986), Chapter 3 (pp. 43-44)

Bitch , Speed

“Save me from that! To pour your life into sons for eighteen or twenty years, and then have the government take them away and waste them cleaning up after some failure of politics—no thanks.”

Lois McMaster Bujold Vorkosigan Saga

Source: Vorkosigan Saga, Shards of Honor (1986), Chapter 3 (p. 41)

Life , Failure

“Leadership is mostly a power over imagination, and never more so than in combat. The bravest man alone can only be an armed lunatic. The real strength lies in the ability to get others to do your work.”

Lois McMaster Bujold Vorkosigan Saga

Source: Vorkosigan Saga, Shards of Honor (1986), Chapter 3 (p. 40)

Imagination

“And what is the most important leg of a three-legged stool? The one that is missing, of course.”

Lois McMaster Bujold Vorkosigan Saga

Source: Vorkosigan Saga, Falling Free (1988), Chapter 14 (p. 276)

“Shooting people was such a stupid activity, why should everybody—anybody!—be so impressed? Silver wondered irritably. You would think she had done something truly great, like discover a new treatment for black stem-rot.”

Lois McMaster Bujold Vorkosigan Saga

Source: Vorkosigan Saga, Falling Free (1988), Chapter 14 (p. 266)

Thinking , People , Stupidity

“I could bring almost nothing—I scarcely knew what to choose.”

Lois McMaster Bujold Vorkosigan Saga

“Think of the vast amounts of money we shall save on shipping charges, then.”

Chapter 14 (p. 256)
Vorkosigan Saga, Falling Free (1988)

“Clearly, you could die while waiting for other people to start your life for you.”

Lois McMaster Bujold Vorkosigan Saga

Source: Vorkosigan Saga, Falling Free (1988), Chapter 14 (p. 254)

Waiting , Life , People

“We make our own luck. And it’s my responsibility to see it’s good and not bad.”

Lois McMaster Bujold Vorkosigan Saga

Source: Vorkosigan Saga, Falling Free (1988), Chapter 11 (p. 194)

Bad luck , Making love

“We’ve run into a problem.”

Lois McMaster Bujold Vorkosigan Saga

“But of course. Who ever tracks me down to impart good news?

Chapter 10 (p. 180)
Vorkosigan Saga, Falling Free (1988)

Problem

“The trouble with you, Ti, lectured Leo kindly, is that you lack teaching experience. If you had, you’d have faith that the most unlikely people can learn the most amazing things.”

Lois McMaster Bujold Vorkosigan Saga

Source: Vorkosigan Saga, Falling Free (1988), Chapter 9 (pp. 166-167)

Faith , People , Learning

“The quaddies, he reflected, didn’t seem to have a very clear idea of private property. Probably came from a lifetime spent in a communal space habitat, with its tight ecology. Planets were communal in the same way, really, except that their enormous size put so much slack in their systems, it was disguised.”

Lois McMaster Bujold Vorkosigan Saga

Source: Vorkosigan Saga, Falling Free (1988), Chapter 9 (p. 166)

Way , Idea , Communication

“This isn’t a class. This is real life.”

Lois McMaster Bujold Vorkosigan Saga

Source: Vorkosigan Saga, Falling Free (1988), Chapter 8 (p. 152)

Life

“Even soldiers in battle have to be brought to a special state of mental excitement to shoot total strangers.”

Lois McMaster Bujold Vorkosigan Saga

Source: Vorkosigan Saga, Falling Free (1988), Chapter 8 (p. 143)

“There are weapons all around us here, we just don’t recognize them because we call them “tools.””

Lois McMaster Bujold Vorkosigan Saga

Source: Vorkosigan Saga, Falling Free (1988), Chapter 8 (p. 142)

“I don’t know whose judgement is worse, yours or the jerk’s who hired you—”

Lois McMaster Bujold Vorkosigan Saga

Source: Vorkosigan Saga, Falling Free (1988), Chapter 5 (p. 101)

Jerk

“Of all the times to pick for this outbreak of idiocy, this has gotta be the worst possible. It’s got to be deliberate. Nothing this fouled up could be by chance.”

Lois McMaster Bujold Vorkosigan Saga

Source: Vorkosigan Saga, Falling Free (1988), Chapter 4 (p. 78)

Chance , Time

“Whether you function as welders or inspectors, the laws of physics are implacable lie-detectors. You may fool men. You will never fool the metal. That’s all.”

Lois McMaster Bujold Vorkosigan Saga

Source: Vorkosigan Saga, Falling Free (1988), Chapter 2 (p. 36)

Lie , Law , Fools , Men