
Source: Song lyrics, The Sensual World (1989)
Sir William Douglas, to Bernard de Taillebourg of the Inquisition, p. 17
The Grail Quest, Vagabond (2002)
Source: Song lyrics, The Sensual World (1989)
[L]e philosophe n'a jamais tué de prêtres et le prêtre a tué beaucoup de philosophes...
Observations on the Drawing Up of Laws (1774)
Source: Political Writings
Shouted out at the end of a televised public humiliation in the People's Stadium of Shanghai, during the "Cultural Revolution" (20 June 1968), as quoted in Pioneers of Modern China : Understanding the Inscrutable Chinese (2005) by Khoon Choy Lee
“You are a fool, sir priest. Ignorance may excuse you. It will certainly kill you.”
Source: Ars Magica (1989), Chapter 2 (p. 18)
Source: Structures (or, Why Things Don't Fall Down) (1978), Chapter 15, A Chapter of accidents
Context: In the course of a long professional life spent, or misspent, in the study of the strengths of materials and structures, I have had cause to examine a lot of accidents, many of them fatal. I have been forced to the conclusion that very few accidents just "happen" in a morally neutral way. Nine out of ten accidents are caused, not by more or less abstruse technical effects, but by old-fashioned human sin — often verging on plain wickedness. Of course I do not mean the more gilded and juicy sins like deliberate murder, large-scale fraud, or Sex. It is squalid sins like carelessness, idleness, won't-learn-and-don't-need-to-ask, you-can't-tell-me-anything-about-my-job, pride, jealousy and greed that kill people.
Interview with Joe Hagan appearing in Vanity Fair, October 2020