Quotes From "Red Rising" By Pierce Brown

Dreamers like your wife are limited, little Helldiver.” She makes sure I don’t speak.“ Understand that. The only power they have is in death. The harder they die, the loudertheir voice, the deeper the echoes. But your wife served her purpose. Pierce Brown

Death isn't empty like you say it is. Emptiness is life without freedom, Darrow. Emptiness is living chained by fear, fear of loss, of death. I say we break those chains. Break the chains of fear and you break the chains that bind us to the Golds, to the Society. Could you imagine it? Mars could be ours. It could belong to the colonists who slaved here, died here." Her face is easier to see as the night fades through the clear roof. It is alive, on fire. "If you led the others to freedom. The things you could do, Darrow. The things you could make happen." She pauses and I see her eyes are glistening. "It chills me. You have been given so, so much, but you set your sights so low."" You repeat the same damn points, " I say bitterly. "You think a dream is worth dying for. I say it isn't. You say it's better to die on your feet. I say it's better to live on our knees."" You're not even listening! " she snaps. "We are machine men with machine minds, machine lives …" "And machine hearts?" I ask. "That's what I am?"" Darrow …" "What do you live for?" I ask her suddenly. "Is it for me? Is it for family and love? Or is it just for some d . Pierce Brown

Life is the most effective school ever created. Once upon a time they made children bow their heads and read books. It would take ages to get anything across." He taps his head. "But we have widgets and datapads now, and we Golds have the lower Colors to do our research. We need not study chemistry or physics. We have computers and others to do that. What we must study is humanity. In order to rule, ours must be the study of political, psychological, and behavioral science - how desperate human beings react to one another, how packs form, how armies function, how things fall apart and why. You could learn this nowhere else but here. Pierce Brown

In the densest places of man, humanity most easily breaks down Pierce Brown

I look at him for a moment. Words are a weapon stronger than he knows. And songs are even greater. The words wake the mind. The melody wakes the heart. I come from a people of song and dance. I don’t need him to tell me the power of words. But I smile nonetheless. Pierce Brown

Words are weapons stronger than he knows. And songs are even greater. The words wake the mind. The melody wakes the heart. Pierce Brown

Life. All this. Why do they need to make us do this? Why do they treat us like we're their slaves?"" Power."" Power isn't real. It's just a word. Pierce Brown

Society has three stages: Savagery, Ascendance, Decadence. The great rise because of Savagery. They rule in Ascendance. They fall because of their own Decadence."He tells how the Persians were felled, how the Romans collapsed because their rulers forgot how their parents gained them an empire. He prattles about Muslim dynasties and European effeminacy and Chinese regionalism and American self-loathing and self-neutering. All the ancient names." Our Savagery began when our capital, Luna, rebelled against the tyranny of Earth and freed herself from the shackles of Demokracy, from the Noble Lie - the idea that men are brothers and are created equal." Augustus weaves lies of his own with that golden tongue of his. He tells of the Goldens' suffering. The Masses sat on the wagon and expected the great to pull, he reminds. They sat whipping the great until we could no longer take it. I remember a different whipping. "Men are not created equal; we all know this. There are averages. There are outliers. There are the ugly. There are the beautiful. This would not be if we were all equal. A Red can no more command a starship than a Green can serve as a doctor! " There's more laughter across the square as he tells us to look at pathetic Athens, the birthplace of the cancer they call Demokracy. Look how it fell to Sparta. The Noble Lie made Athens weak. It made their citizens turn on their best general, Alcibiades, because of jealousy. "Even the nations of Earth grew jealous of one another. The United States of America exacted this idea of equality through force. And when the nations united, the Americans were surprised to find that they were disliked! The Masses are jealous! How wonderful a dream it would be if all men were created equal! But we are not. It is against the Noble Lie that we fight. But as I said before, as I say to you now, there is another evil against which we war. It is a more pernicious evil. It is a subversive, slow evil. It is not a wildfire. It is a cancer. And that cancer is Decadence. Our society has passed from Savagery to Ascendance. But like our spiritual ancestors, the Romans, we too can fall into Decadence. Pierce Brown

My people sing, we dance, we love. That is our strength. But we also dig. And then we die. Seldom do we get to choose why. That choice is power. That choice has been our only weapon. But it is not enough. Pierce Brown

The foolish families worry over blood. I care nothing for purity of family or ancestry. That is a vain thing. I care only for strength. What a man can do to other men, women. Pierce Brown

She will not come back, but her beauty, her voice, will echo until the end of time. She believed in something beyond herself, and her death gave her voice power it didn’t have in life. She was pure, like your father. We, you and I” – he touches my chest with the back of his index finger – “are dirty. We are made for blood. Rough hands. Dirty hearts. We are lesser creatures in the grand scheme of things, but without us men of war, no one except those of Lykos would hear Eo’s song. Without our rough hands, the dreams of the pure hearts would never be built. Pierce Brown

I will learn to lead �eets. I will win. I will sharpen myself into asword. I will give my soul. I will dive to hell in hopes of one day rising to freedom. I willsacri�ce. And I will grow my legend and spread it amongst the peoples of all the worldsuntil I am �t to lead the armies that will break the chains of bondage, because I am notsimply an agent of the Sons of Ares. I am not simply a tactic or a device in Ares’sschemes. I am the hope of my people. Of all people in bondage. . Pierce Brown

... You have to pull the feet to break the neck. They let the loved ones do it. Pierce Brown

I am so small. A billion tons of durosteel and nanometal move through the heavens, and I have never been beyond Mars's atmosphere. They are like specks of silver in an ocean of ink. And I am so much less. But those specs could ravage Mars. They could destroy a moon. Those specks rule the ink. Pierce Brown

I cannot escape it, what I’ve done, no matter how far Ifollow the tunnel. I am alone with my sin. This is why they rule. The Peerless Scarredknow that dark deeds are carried through life. They cannot be outrun. They must beworn if one is to rule. This is their �rst lesson. Pierce Brown

There is a festival where we wear the faces of demons to ward evil spirits from our dead in the vale. Sometimes wefail. Pierce Brown

Man cannot be freed by the same injustice that enslaved it. Pierce Brown

They believe civilization weakens natural selection. They do nature’s work so that we do not become a soft race. Pierce Brown

I still remember the flush of blood in her cheeks as she danced. She was all the raw colours of life, the crude beauty of nature. I am the human concept of beauty. Gold made soft and supple in man's form. Pierce Brown

Rather a drink be my master than a man. Pierce Brown

It is strange being in a crowd where no one knows your face or cares for your purpose. In Lykos, I would have been jostled by men I'd grown up with, run across girls I'd chased and wrestled with as a child. Here, other Colors slam into me and offer not even a faint apology. This is a city, and I do not like it. I feel alone. Pierce Brown