“And none at all has ridden at the king's side since Aerinha, goddess of honor and flame, first taught men to forge their blades. You'd think Aerinha would have had better sense.”

Implosion Magazine, No. 35, p. 16 (Callum Coats: Energy Evolution (2000))
Implosion Magazine

The Great Wall of China.
Song lyrics, River of Dreams (1993)

Source: The Fountains of Paradise (1979), Chapter 10 “The Ultimate Bridge” (p. 52)

Les hommes sont fort à plaindre d'avoir à être gouvernés par un roi, qui n'est qu'homme semblable à eux; car il faudroit des dieux pour redresser les hommes. Mais les rois ne sont pas moins à plaindre, n'étant qu'hommes, c'est-à-dire foibles et imparfaits, d'avoir à gouverner cette multitude innombrable d'hommes corrompus et trompeurs.
Bk. 10, p. 72; translation p. 174.
Les aventures de Télémaque (1699)

Source: Dreams of Steel (1990), Chapter 10 (p. 261)

Speech in Leeds (13 March 1925), quoted in On England, and Other Addresses (1926), p. 62.
1925
Context: We were not peculiarly impressed with speeches that talked of the glorious time that was coming after the war. We realised what the war meant in the world. We felt the foundations of civilisation in Europe cracking. We knew as business men that for a generation this country and the world would be as a whole far, far poorer, and we realised early the struggle that must result to repair the cracks in the foundations of our civilisation and to restore to the country that level of prosperity which she had enjoyed before the war. I think, too, many of us had little faith in supermen. I think that our experience in business had taught us that, as a matter of fact, there are no such things as supermen, and that we should have to rely on the innate common-sense, integrity, courage and faith of the common men and women of this country if we were to make good.

Source: Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson (1990), p. 8

As quoted in http://www.columbia.edu/itc/mealac/pritchett/00ambedkar/txt_ambedkar_salvation.html

al'Lan Mandragoran
Variant: There is an old saying here in the Borderlands: "Better to have one woman on your side than ten men."
Source: The Great Hunt (15 November 1990)