Top 90 Erika Johansen Quotes (2026 Update)

1. “You think of beauty only as a blessing, Majesty, but it brings its own punishments.”

— Erika Johansen

2. “Few things are more dangerous to an egalitarian ideal than the concept of a chosen people.”

— Erika Johansen

3. “Fortune favors the bold, history tells us. Therefore, it behooves us to be as bold as possible.”

— Erika Johansen

4. “Such a statement would be blasphemous, Majesty,” the Holy Father replied, his tone gently reproving. “No man can speak for God.”

— Erika Johansen

5. “Selfishness and self-destruction, riding hand in hand, as they so often did.”

— Erika Johansen

6. “Corruption begins with a single moment of weakness.”

— Erika Johansen

7. “I am Death. I come quickly, I come slowly, but I am not cheated.”

— Erika Johansen

8. “The mistake of utopia is to assume that all will be perfect. Perfection may be the definition, but we are human, and even into uopia we bring our own pain, error, jealousy, grief. We cannot relinquish out faults, even in the hope of Paradise, so to plan a new society without taking human nature into account is to doom that society to failure.”

— Erika Johansen

9. “You are special, everyone is special. But you are not better. All are valuable.”

— Erika Johansen

10. “Everyone dies eventually. I think it’s better to die clean.”

— Erika Johansen

11. “The wrongs of the past are not less significant, they’re just harder to fix. And the longer you ignore them in favor of more pressing issues, the worse the harm, until the problems of the past actually create the problems of the future.”

— Erika Johansen

12. “Only a fool blames the dealer.”

— Erika Johansen

13. “I know all about the wildness of youth, believe me. But regret has a terrible ability to follow you, long after youth has vanished.”

— Erika Johansen

14. “Even small gestures of kindness have the potential to reap enormous rewards. Only the shortsighted man believes otherwise.”

— Erika Johansen

15. “Entire countries would close their borders and build walls to keep out phantom threats. Can you imagine?”

— Erika Johansen

16. “Anger was the indulgence of a child, not a queen.”

— Erika Johansen

17. “But even if safety were somehow achievable by force, Lear, ask yourself this: how important is safety? Is it worth steadily undermining every principle on which a free nation was founded? What sort of nation will you have then?”

— Erika Johansen

18. “Kelsea saw now that there was something far worse than being ugly: being ugly and thinking you were beautiful.”

— Erika Johansen

19. “You think I don’t care about my people, but I do... – The Red Queen.”

— Erika Johansen

20. “She was unable to keep silent, even when silence would save her trouble or pain.”

— Erika Johansen

21. “There’s a better world out there, so close we can almost touch it.”

— Erika Johansen

22. “There was no quick and easy eradication of evil. There was only the passage of time, of generations, of people raising children who would hold all other lives just as valuable as their own.”

— Erika Johansen

23. “Once in a while, usually when Ewen wasn’t even trying, he would solve a mystery, and that was a great and extraordinary feeling, the way he imagined birds would feel as they swooped across the sky.”

— Erika Johansen

24. “Her old appearance had been genuine, and had gained her nothing. But her new appearance was worse, hollow and false, and anything that she gained by it would carry that falsity like a disease.”

— Erika Johansen

25. “And for all the anguish that Kelsea’s own reflection had caused her lately, she saw now that there was something far worse than being ugly: being ugly and thinking you were beautiful.”

— Erika Johansen

26. “They had found the seven volumes of Rowling with no help at all, but there was no squabbling.”

— Erika Johansen

27. “I missed you, Lazarus. More than I missed the sunlight, even.”

— Erika Johansen

28. “They had fought and starved and even died in pursuit of mankind’s oldest dream, but they hadn’t known that Tear’s vision was flawed. Too easy. Utopia was not the clean slate Tear had imagined, but an evolution. Humanity would have to work for that society, and work hard, dedicating themselves to an unending vigilance against the mistakes of the past. It would take generations, countless generations perhaps, but –.”

— Erika Johansen

29. “Pain only disables the weak.”

— Erika Johansen

30. “Memory cut infinitely deeper than swords;.”

— Erika Johansen

31. “One night she’d stayed up until dawn reading a particularly long novel, and she had been allowed to skip her chores and sleep away most of the next day.”

— Erika Johansen

32. “Always, we think we know what courage means. If I were called upon, we say, I would answer the call. I would not hesitate. Until the moment is upon us, and then we realize that the demands of true courage are very different from what we had envisioned, long ago on that bright morning when we felt brave.”

— Erika Johansen

33. “The Queen held up her hands for silence. At that moment, Javel knew for certain that she truly was the Queen, though he never knew why or how he knew.”

— Erika Johansen

34. “Majesty. The word seemed to ripple through her. “I haven’t been crowned, Lazarus.” “No matter, Lady. I see the queenship in you, and I never saw it in your mother, not one day of her life.”

— Erika Johansen

35. “Some people were simply broken, something inside them grown wrong and twisted.”

— Erika Johansen

36. “Time stretched years back and years forward, but nothing that came afterward ever had the power to wash away what came before.”

— Erika Johansen

37. “I put my trust in fiction.”

— Erika Johansen

38. “When it fails, they do call it madness, Lazarus. But when it succeeds, they call it genius.”

— Erika Johansen

39. “An upset stomach was a small price to pay for fiction made real.”

— Erika Johansen

40. “Tyler had seen village dogs trained in much the same way for the ring. When an animal was beaten hard enough, it would work just to not be beaten, and consider itself well rewarded. The status quo could shift at any time.”

— Erika Johansen

41. “Stories moved Kelsea most, stories of things that never were, stories that transported her beyond the changeless world of the cottage.”

— Erika Johansen

42. “She had been ready to kill Da, ready for years, but now she was amazed to find that she had done something even more difficult: she had spoken aloud.”

— Erika Johansen

43. “And Kelsea wondered suddenly whether humanity ever actually changed. Did people grow and learn at all as the centuries past? Or was humanity merely like the tide, enlightenment advancing and then retreating as circumstances shifted? The most defining characteristic of the species might be lapse.”

— Erika Johansen

44. “I don’t want to die, Arlen, but I would lay down my life for any of these men, or they for me. That’s a real thing, sacrifice, but you will never understand it.”

— Erika Johansen

45. “Names made a thing real.”

— Erika Johansen

46. “Tell me, Mrs. Mayhew, have you ever dreamed of a better world?” “Who hasn’t?” “Anyone who profits by keeping the world as it is.”

— Erika Johansen

47. “Utopia was not the clean slate Tear had imagined, but an evolution. Humanity would have to work for that society, and work hard, dedicating themselves to an unending vigilance against the mistakes of the past. It would take generations, countless generations perhaps, but – “We could get there,” Kelsea murmured. “And even if not, we should always be growing closer.”

— Erika Johansen

48. “Learn all the knowledge in the world, but your gut will always know best.”

— Erika Johansen

49. “He doesn’t need to be perfect, she decided suddenly. The idea is perfect, and the idea is bigger than the man.”

— Erika Johansen

50. “Your Majesty’s rescuer said a true thing, and one that’s stayed with me. Often the direct way is the right way, for reasons that can’t be foreseen.”

— Erika Johansen