Tad Williams Quotes

Fishes live in the sea, as men do a-land; the great ones eat up the little ones.

Big fish eat little fish.

That's the food chain that cricket is sometimes. You have to be at the top of it otherwise you get swept away and eaten up.

The strong were always eating the weak.

This world… belongs to the strong, my friend! The ritual of our existence is based on the strong getting stronger by devouring the weak.

We have unmistakable proof that throughout all past time, there has been a ceaseless devouring of the weak by the strong.

Men lived like fishes; the great ones devoured the small.

The strongest absorbs the weakest, and he has a right to do so.

The weak are meat the strong do eat.

That is the rule of the Wilds: You must be bigger and stronger and tougher. You must hurt or be hurt.

The strong live off the weak and the clever live off the strong.

This world belongs to the strong, my friend! The ritual of our existence is based on the strong getting stronger by devouring the weak. We must face up to this. No more than right that it should be this way. We must learn to accept it as a law of the natural world. The rabbits accept their role in the ritual and recognize the wolf as the strong. In defense, the rabbit becomes sly and frightened and elusive and he digs holes and hides when the wolf is about. And he endures, he goes on. He knows his place. He most certainly doesn't challenge the wolf to combat. Now, would that be wise? Would it?

Take, for example, the African jungle, the home of the cheetah. On whom does the cheetah prey? The old, the sick, the wounded, the weak, the very young, but never the strong. Lesson: If you would not be prey, you had better be strong.

Fishes live in the sea, as men do on land: the great ones eat up the little ones.

Freedom for the pike is death for the minnow.

I am the animal at the head of the pack. … I either get eaten, or I get the good grass.

The truth is, everything is eating and being eaten.

In the animal kingdom, the rule is, eat or be eaten; in the human kingdom, define or be defined.

With each new day in Africa, a gazelle wakes up knowing he must outrun the fastest lion or perish. At the same time, a lion stirs and stretches, knowing he must outrun the fastest gazelle or starve. It's no different for the human race. Whether you consider yourself a gazelle or a lion, you have to run faster than others to survive.

The fast fish, not the big fish, eats the small fish.

You could think of an ecosystem as a bunch of antagonistic arms races, almost: Everything that an animal depends upon for food is the body part of some other animal or plant who would just as soon keep that body part for itself.

When a lion doesn't get its prey, it remains hungry. When the prey saves himself, he has not won, but has saved his life.

Unfortunately this earth is not a fairy-land, but a struggle for life, perfectly natural and therefore extremely harsh.

They worry one another like mastiffs, scrambling for rank and pay like apes for nuts.

People are violent by nature. That’s why we rule the earth; we beat the crap out of everyone else.