Patrick Ness Quotes

We speculate as to what is in store for us. But we not only undergo events, we in part cause them or at least influence their course. We have not only to study them but to act.

What it lies in our power to do, it lies in our power not to do.

What you can do is a matter of what you will do.

The empty gun spares, but the loaded gun slays.

The issue is not whether or not you have that power, the issue is whether or not you use it.

No. Not really. A weapon didn't come to an agreement with the hand that held it.

Where it is in our power to act, it is also in our power to not act.

When you choose an action, you choose the consequences of that action. When you desire a consequence you had damned well better take the action that would create it.

Does not the possibility or the power to do something about the situation at hand confer on one the responsibility to do it?

Is a knife evil? Only if the wielder is evil.

It is not love that matters, Mistress Boy, it is what you choose to do with it. What’d you choose to do with yours?

The history of the world shows that when a mean thing was done, man did it; when a good thing was done, man did it.

If nothing we do matters... , then all that matters is what we do

We do what we can. The results are none of our business.

Sometimes I feel like God…when I order someone killed – they die the same day.

We can now destroy or we can cherish-the choice is ours.

Nature consists of facts and of regularities, and is in itself neither moral nor immoral. It is we who impose our standards upon nature, and who in this way introduce morals into the natural world, in spite the fact that we are part of this world. We are products of nature, but nature has made us together with our power of altering the world, of foreseeing and of planning for the future, and of making far-reaching decisions for which we are morally responsible. Yet, responsibility, decisions, enter the world of nature only with us

I don't know whether the bird you are holding is dead or alive, but what I do know is that it is in your hands. It is in your hands.

Of course I believe in free will. Do we have a choice?

Omissions are not accidents.

T is the will that makes the action good or ill.

There is no such crime as a crime of thought; there are only crimes of action.

But they who are unconcerned about the consequences of their actions are not therefore unconcerned about their actions.

Decision is the ultimate power. Decisions shape destiny.