Tad Williams Quotes

Men are never really willing to die except for the sake of freedom: therefore they do not believe in dying completely.

A hero cannot be a hero unless in a heroic world.

People talk about the conscience, but it seems to me one must just bring it up to a certain point and leave it there. You can let your conscience alone if you're nice to the second housemaid.

You have to do bad things in order to become a hero. You have to make sacrifices.

The paradox of courage is that a man must be a little careless of his life even in order to keep it.

What does it mean to be a superhero? We're all fighting for the better good. But, at the same time, I think what stands out is, as superheroes, you don't give up; you don't surrender. I think that's what makes a superhero.

No retreat. No retreat. They must conquer or die who’ve no retreat.

There are only two ways to come back from the battlefield: With the head of an enemy or without your own.

It was a morally representative act. Helms withheld the information because it would have cost him his job.

Necessity makes heroes of us all.

At that time I had not yet been taught the doctrine I was later to learn so hurriedly in the Lager: that man is bound to pursue his own ends by all possible means, while he who errs but once pays dearly

That is why your sacrifice was all the more difficult. You chose to be a hero not through enchantment but through your own manhood.

But you can’t put fight into a man’s guts if he hasn’t any fight in him. There are some of us so cowardly that you can’t ever make heroes of us, not even if you frighten us to death. We know too much, maybe. There are some of us who don’t live in the moment, who live a little ahead, or a little behind.

Being a hero doesn't mean you succeed in saving the day. It just means you tried.

"Each moment you fight is a gift to those in this cavern. Each second we fight is a second longer that thousands of people can draw breath. Each stroke of the sword, each koloss felled, each breath earned is another victory! It is a person protected for a moment longer, a life extended, an enemy frustrated!" There was a brief pause. "In the end they shall kill us"... "But first, they shall fear us!"

A good man knows when to sacrifice himself, a bad man survives but loses his soul.

A wicked Hero will turn his back to an innocent coward.

What good would politics be, if it didn’t give everyone the opportunity to make moral compromises?

How easily I could get rid of this and be at rest. I have only to ride along the lines and all will be over. But, it is our duty to live, for what will become of the women and children of the South if we are not here to support and protect them?'

Heroing is one of the shortest-lived professions there is.

When were the good and the brave ever in a majority?

If you follow this policy you're going to have the deaths of some brave people on your conscience.

‘Tis better to have fought and lost, Than not to have fought at all.

Magazines and newspapers commonly took to celebrating the military valor of both Confederate and Union soldiers, as though bravery, rather than morality, were the chief quality to be commemorated.