Top 500 Brandon Sanderson Quotes (2025 Update)
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201. “Though most expect young men to be fools, I’ve noticed that just a little bit of age can make a man far more foolish than he was as a child.”

— Brandon Sanderson

202. “Priests are always easy to blame. They make convenient scapegoats – after all, anyone with a strong faith different from your own must either be a crazy zealot or a lying manipulator.”

— Brandon Sanderson

203. “Dalinar said. “You’ve grown, soldier. Few men have the wisdom to realize when they need help. Fewer still have the strength to go get it. Well done. Very well done.”

— Brandon Sanderson

204. “I was thinking that work is like fertilizer in that I’m glad it exists; I just don’t ever want to get stuck in it.”

— Brandon Sanderson

205. “Welcome, Ruin said, to godhood.”

— Brandon Sanderson

206. “The first step to being in control was to see yourself as capable of being in control.”

— Brandon Sanderson

207. “People are elastic, Wax thought. We can keep reshaping ourselves. And if we’re not quite the same as before, well, that’s good. It means we can grow.”

— Brandon Sanderson

208. “Two blind men waited at the end of an era, contemplating beauty. They sat atop the world’s highest cliff, overlooking the land and seeing nothing.”

— Brandon Sanderson

209. “I think given the choice between loving Mare – betrayal included – and never knowing her, I’d chose love. I risked, and I lost, but the risk was still worth it.”

— Brandon Sanderson

210. “So I can but repeat what has been done before?’ “ ‘In some things, yes. You will love. You will hurt. You will dream. And you will die. Each man’s past is your future.’ “ ‘Then what is the point?’ I asked. ‘If all has been seen and done?’ “ ‘The question,’ she replied, ’is not whether you will love, hurt, dream, and die. It is what you will love, why you will hurt, when you will dream, and how you will die. This is your choice. You cannot pick the destination, only the path.”

— Brandon Sanderson

211. “Life before death, strength before weakness, journey before pancakes -Lopen.”

— Brandon Sanderson

212. “Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”

— Brandon Sanderson

213. “You don’t stop loving someone just because they hurt you” he said. “It would certainly make things easier if you did.”

— Brandon Sanderson

214. “Szeth-son-son-Vallano, Truthless of Shinovar, sat atop the highest tower in the world and contemplated the End of All Things.”

— Brandon Sanderson

215. “I strive for nothing if not consistency.”

— Brandon Sanderson

216. “And Vin liked solitude. When you’re alone, no one can betray you.”

— Brandon Sanderson

217. “This is not an easy time in which to live. That does not mean that it has to be a difficult time to love...”

— Brandon Sanderson

218. “The means by which we achieve victory are as important as the victory itself.”

— Brandon Sanderson

219. “Some mistakes, though, you can’t fix by being sorry. Can’t fix them, no matter what you do.”

— Brandon Sanderson

220. “Can you feel it? Something just changed. I believe that’s the sound the world makes when it pisses itself.”

— Brandon Sanderson

221. “Syl was silent for a moment. “Do you want to be a miracle?” “No,” Kaladin whispered. “But for them, I will be.”

— Brandon Sanderson

222. “We follow the codes not because they bring gain, but because we loathe the people we would otherwise become.”

— Brandon Sanderson

223. “I am mountains that crush. I am waves that crash. I am storms that shatter. I am the end.”

— Brandon Sanderson

224. “My dear, did you just try to prove the existence of God through the use of your cleavage?”

— Brandon Sanderson

225. “Unknowing ignorance is preferable to informed stupidity.”

— Brandon Sanderson

226. “The world just changed, Gaz,” Kaladin said, leaning in close. “I died down at that chasm. Now you’ve got my vengeful spirit to deal with.”

— Brandon Sanderson

227. “A story doesn’t live until it is imagined in someone’s mind.”

— Brandon Sanderson

228. “You’ve managed – in our short three years together – to kill not only my god, but my father, my brother, and my fiance. That’s kind of like a homicidal hat trick. It’s a strange foundation for a relationship, wouldn’t you say?”

— Brandon Sanderson

229. “They were the lowest in the army, and yet they bore the weight of kings.”

— Brandon Sanderson

230. “Weakness can imitate strength if bound properly, just as cowardice can imitate heroism if given nowhere to flee.”

— Brandon Sanderson

231. “The life of a person is more than the chaos of its passing.”

— Brandon Sanderson

232. “He’d once believed he had been four men in his life, but he now saw he’d grossly underestimated. He hadn’t lived as two, or four, or six men – he had lived as thousands, for each day he became someone slightly different. He hadn’t changed in one giant leap, but across a million little steps.”

— Brandon Sanderson

233. “I’m not odd! I’m beautiful and articulate.”

— Brandon Sanderson

234. “Here, in Alethkar, men often spoke of the legends – of mankind’s hard-won victory over the Voidbringers. But when weapons created to fight nightmares were turned against common soldiers, the lives of men became cheap things indeed.”

— Brandon Sanderson

235. “Being in charge isn’t always about telling people what to do. Sometimes, it’s about knowing when to step out of the way of people who know what they’re doing. – Tam al’Thor.”

— Brandon Sanderson

236. “Jasnah raised an eyebrow. “You will find wise men in any religion, Shallan, and good men in every nation. Those who truly seek wisdom are those who will acknowledge the virtue in their adversaries and who will learn from those who disabuse them of error. All others – heretic, Vorin, Ysperist, or Maakian – are equally closed-minded.”

— Brandon Sanderson

237. “I consider myself to be a man of principle. But, what man does not? Even the cutthroat, I have noticed, considers his actions “moral” after a fashion.”

— Brandon Sanderson

238. “You can’t put a price on a person’s life,” Kaladin.”

— Brandon Sanderson

239. “You must love him enough to trust his wishes, even if you disagree with them. You must respect him – no matter how wrong you think he may be, no matter how poor you think his decisions, you must respect his desire to make them. Even if one of them includes loving you.”

— Brandon Sanderson

240. “Thievery was the most authentic form of flattery. What could be more satisfying than knowing the things you possessed were intriguing, captivating, or valuable enough to provoke another man to risk everything to obtain them? This was Kelsier’s purpose in life, to remind people of the value of the things they loved. By taking them away.”

— Brandon Sanderson

241. “Everything costs money,” Ham said. “But, what is money? A physical representation of the abstract concept of effort.”

— Brandon Sanderson

242. “Passionate, with an intense, smoldering resolve. A leashed anger that he used, because he had dominated it. And a certain tempting arrogance. Not the haughty pride of a highlord. Instead, the secure, stable sense of determination that whispered that no matter who you were – or what you did – you could not hurt him. Could not change him. He was. Like the wind and rocks were.”

— Brandon Sanderson

243. “But still, my ‘freedom’ is that of a leaf. Dropped from the tree, I just blow on the wind and pretend I’m in charge of my destiny.”

— Brandon Sanderson

244. “Harmony protect us from small-minded men with too much power.”

— Brandon Sanderson

245. “In all the history of mankind, has any conqueror decided they had enough? Has any man just said, ‘This is good. This is what I wanted,’ and gone home?”

— Brandon Sanderson

246. “Oh, but I’m a scholar. I enjoy things with curious properties, and stupidity is most interesting. The more you study it, the further it flees – and yet the more of it you obtain, the less you understand about it!”

— Brandon Sanderson

247. “What they do not realize – and what you must realize – is that manipulating others is something that all people do. In fact, manipulation is at the core of our social interaction.”

— Brandon Sanderson

248. “What was a prayer, if not creation? Making something where nothing existed. Creating a wish out of despair, a plea out of anguish. Bowing one’s back before the Almighty, and forming humility from the empty pride of a human life.”

— Brandon Sanderson

249. “Truth can never be defeated, Sarene. Even if people do forget about it occasionally.”

— Brandon Sanderson

250. “There will be people like this in any culture, for every society is made of individuals. You must learn this. Do not let your assumptions about a culture block your ability to perceive the individual, or you will fail.”

— Brandon Sanderson