Knight in Sour Armor/Quotes

You have to be pretty goddamn tough to be an optimist, and you have to be an asshole to stay completely apathetic. Find the middle ground. It's the best you can do.
A good game's gonna have both. In a good game, you fight for a dozen reasons, against men with similar drives and goals. You play politics, you fuck up. You try to do good, but often settle for trying not to make things any worse. You do your best, and hope that's enough.
And then one day you're on patrol, fighting in a war you've forgotten the reasons for, on a side that you can't say for sure is better than any other, and you come to a town. Someone's been there first. The men are dead. The children are crying. The women have been taken. And you remember who the hell you are, and you ride out and kick ass and bring those kids' mothers back to them.

—/tg/

Sometimes cynicism is the last refuge of the idealist.

—L.E. Modesitt, Jr., The Ethos Effect

Woman in alley: Thank you! Thank you! That thing was going to kill me!
Spike: Well, what did you expect? Out alone in this neighborhood -- I've got half a mind to kill you myself, you half-wit.
Woman in alley: What?
Spike: I mean honestly, what kind of retard wears heels like that in a dark alley? Take two steps and break your bloody ankle.
Woman in alley: [annoyed] I was just trying to get home.
Spike: Well, get a cab, you moron, and on the way, if a stranger offers you candy, don't get in the van!

—Angel, "Soul Purpose"

What if I told you it doesn't help? What would you do if you found out that none of it matters? That it's all controlled by forces more powerful and uncaring than we can conceive and they will never let it get better down here? What would you do?

—Gunn, Angel

John McClane: You know what you get for being a hero? Nothin'. You get shot at. You get a little pat on the back, blah, blah, blah, attaboy. You get divorced. Your wife can't remember your last name. Your kids don't want to talk to you. You get to eat a lot of meals by yourself. Trust me, kid, nobody wants to be that guy.
Matt Farrell: Then why you doing this?

John McClane: Because there's nobody else to do it right now, that's why. Believe me, if there were somebody else to do it, I'd let them do it, but there's not. So we're doing it.

—Live Free or Die Hard

People are illogical, unreasonable, and self-centered.
Love them anyway.
If you do good, people will accuse you of selfish ulterior motives.
Do good anyway.
If you are successful, you will win false friends and true enemies.
Succeed anyway.
The good you do today will be forgotten tomorrow.
Do good anyway.
Honesty and frankness make you vulnerable.
Be honest and frank anyway.
The biggest men and women with the biggest ideas can be shot down by the smallest men and women with the smallest minds.
Think big anyway.
People favor underdogs but follow only top dogs.
Fight for a few underdogs anyway.
What you spend years building may be destroyed overnight.
Build anyway.
People really need help but may attack you if you do help them.
Help people anyway.
Give the world the best you have and you'll get kicked in the teeth.
Give the world the best you have anyway.

—The Paradoxical Commandments, words for the Knight in Sour Armor to live by

I used to think it was awful that life was so unfair. Then I thought, "Wouldn't it be much worse if life were fair, and all the terrible things that happen to us come because we actually deserve them?" So now I take great comfort in the general hostility and unfairness of the universe.

—Marcus Cole, Babylon 5

Liara: So tell me, Shepard, what are you fighting for?
Shepard: I guess I'm fighting for us. All of us.
Liara: That's a pretty big responsibility.
Shepard: People are messy, awkward, sometimes selfish and cruel. But they're trying, and I'm going to make sure they have a chance.

—Mass Effect 2

I'm no hero. Never was, never will be. Just an old killer, hired to do some wet-work.

—Solid Snake, Metal Gear Solid

Do not be deceived, Wormwood. [[[Satan]]'s] cause is never more in danger, than when a human, no longer desiring, but intending, to do our Enemy [[[God]]]'s will, looks round upon a universe from which every trace of Him seems to have vanished, and asks why he has been forsaken, and still obeys.

—The Demon Screwtape, The Screwtape Letters

The future is an inherently good thing. And we move into it one winter at a time. Things get better one winter at a time. If you're going to celebrate anything, then have a drink on this: The world is, generally and on balance, a better place to live this year than it was last year.

—Spider Jerusalem, Transmetropolitan

Hey! Mother Theresa! I was gonna do it anyway. I just hate being lectured.

—Gene Ryack, Air America