Laurell K. Hamilton Quotes

Principles and rules are binding, but when they come into conflict they must be balanced.

We live in a world of competing sorrows ... to govern is to choose.

You were given the choice between war and dishonor. You chose dishonor and you will have war.

Sometimes you have to choose between a bunch of wrong choices and no right ones. You just have to choose which wrong choices feels the least wrong.

Violence is never ever a choice that a man should make.

The complexity of the situation of having a war going on around you and what that delivers to you is that you have to figure out which side to take.

Those of us who are most genuinely repelled by war and violence are also those who are most likely to decide that some things, after all, are worth fighting for.

My old daddy used to say "kill the closest snake first".

It is a tough choice. In war, people die. But when we refuse to confront the enemy, we will face the enemy in New York and Washington, as we did on 9-11. As for responsiblity, of course we stand by our decision to go to war on Iraq. President Kennedy said that friend and foe alike should know where America stands.

Human foresight often leaves its proudest possessor only a choice of evils.

The tragedy of being both rational and animal seems to consist in having to choose between duty and desire rather than in making any particular choice

Quit saying you don't have time. You have time for what you make time for in life.

I’m afraid you’re going to have to make a choice.

I don't know whether to toss you through that window or shake your hand and say 'Well done'" Henry said in a tired voice.

Life does not give itself to one who tries to keep all its advantages at once. I have often thought morality may perhaps consist solely in the courage of making a choice.

The choice I mean is to protect our own innocents from the seraphim, instead of slaughtering theirs." "There are no innocent seraphim, said the wolf." "That's what they say when they kill our children.

When it all comes down to dust I will kill you if I must , I will help you if I can. When it all comes down to dust I will help you if I must, I will kill you if I can.

No weapon has ever settled a moral problem. It can impose a solution but it cannot guarantee it to be a just one. You can wipe out your opponents. But if you do it unjustly you become eligible for being wiped out yourself.

Three people marooned on a desert island would soon reinvent politics.

In statesmanship there are predicaments from which it is impossible to escape without some wrongdoing.

Choosing one path means abandoning others - if you try to follow every possible path you will end up following none.

Equally disquieting are the times when we do make a choice, only to later feel as though we have murdered some other aspect of our being by settling on one single concrete decision.

Put first things first and we get second things thrown in: put second things first & we lose both first and second things.

Every day we make our way through a moral forest, along pathways ever branching. Often we get lost. When the array of paths before us is so perplexing that we can't make a choice, or won't, we can hope that we will be given a sign to guide us. A reliance on signs, however, can lead to the evasion of all moral obligations, and thus earn a terrible judgment.

It is a happy thing for us that this is really all we have to concern ourselves about--what to do next. No man can do the second thing. He can do the first.