Top 500 Pierce Brown Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Momentum is everything to a Helldiver, to military endeavors, to life. Keep moving and dare someone to get in your path.”

— Pierce Brown

2. “I once thought the greatest sin of war was violence. It isn’t. The greatest sin is it requires good men to become practical.”

— Pierce Brown

3. “Per aspera ad astra.” “Through the thorns to the stars.”

— Pierce Brown

4. “A fool pulls the leaves. A brute chops the trunk. A sage digs the roots. – LORN AU ARCOS.”

— Pierce Brown

5. “A hand is a peasant’s tool. A Gold’s tool is his mind.”

— Pierce Brown

6. “In a storm, you don’t tie two boats together. They’ll drag each other down.”

— Pierce Brown

7. “Liars make the best promises.”

— Pierce Brown

8. “I am Cassius Bellona, son of Tiberius, son of Julia, brother of Darrow, Morning Knight of the Solar Republic, and my honor remains.”

— Pierce Brown

9. “The tragedy of the gifted is the belief they are entitled to greatness, Lysander. As a human, you are entitled only to death.”

— Pierce Brown

10. “The Peerless Scarred know that dark deeds are carried through life. They cannot be outrun. They must be worn if one is to rule. This is their first lesson.”

— Pierce Brown

11. “Death isn’t empty like you say it is. Emptiness is life without freedom, Darrow. Emptiness is living chained by fear, fear of loss, of death. I say we break those chains. Break the chains of fear and you break the chains that bind us.”

— Pierce Brown

12. “Those you protect will not see you. They will not understand you. But you are the Gray wall between civilization and chaos. And they stand safe in the shadow you cast. Do not expect praise or love. Their ignorance is proof of the success of your sacrifice. For we who serve the state, duty must be its own reward.”

— Pierce Brown

13. “Honor is not what you say. Honor is what you do.”

— Pierce Brown

14. “The destroyer of a civilization too often resembles its founders.”

— Pierce Brown

15. “No one grasps the game, because no one knows the rules. No one follows the same set of rules. It is like life. Some think honor universal. Some think laws binding. Others know better. But in the end, don’t those who rise by poison die by poison?” I shrug. “In the storybooks. In life there’s no one left to poison them, often.”

— Pierce Brown

16. “They don’t care that the math doesn’t work. They don’t care that the young scream in protest and the old moan their same tired wisdoms. This is just a demonstration of their power. It is their power. They decide the winner. A game of merit won by birth. It keeps the hierarchy in place. It keeps us striving, but never conspiring.”

— Pierce Brown

17. “Omnis vir lupus.” Everyone a wolf.”

— Pierce Brown

18. “Everything she does, she means. There’s no falseness to her. No deception. So when she tells me she loves me, I know she means it with every part of her.”

— Pierce Brown

19. “Do not let fear touch you. Fear is the torrent. The raging river. To fight it is to break and drown. But to stand astride it is to see it, feel it, and use its course for your own whims.”

— Pierce Brown

20. “How could any boy know that freedom is lost the moment you become a man. Things start to count. To press in. Constricting slowly, inevitably, creating a cage of inconveniences and duties and deadlines and failed plans and lost friends.”

— Pierce Brown

21. “To free them, to protect them, we must be savages. So give me evil. Give me darkness. Make me the bloodydamn devil if we can bring even the faintest ray of light.”

— Pierce Brown

22. “The game is afoot. And finally, I begin to smile.”

— Pierce Brown

23. “You want respect? Earn it.”

— Pierce Brown

24. “Red is rising, Mickey.”

— Pierce Brown

25. “El poder hay que reclamarlo. Y la riqueza ganarla. El reinado, el dominio y el imperio se compra con sangre.”

— Pierce Brown

26. “That darling boy is so vain he could make a thunderstorm be about him.”

— Pierce Brown

27. “Death begets death begets death.”

— Pierce Brown

28. “If you’re watching, Eo, it’s time to close your eyes. The Reaper has come. And he’s brought hell with him.”

— Pierce Brown

29. “But in the kingdom of death, amidst ramparts of bodies and wind all of screams, there is a king, and his name is not Lune. It is Reaper.”

— Pierce Brown

30. “The path is made of many stones that look all the same. When you trod upon evil, do not rest or look down because goodness is only a step away. The next may bring ruin, the next joy, but these stones are not your destination, they are but your journey to the path’s end.”

— Pierce Brown

31. “Tell all who will hear, the Reaper sails to Mars. And he calls for an Iron Rain.”

— Pierce Brown

32. “The Colors, The Iliad, Ulysses, Metamorphosis, the Theban plays, The Draconic Labels, Anabasis, and restricted works like The Count of Monte Cristo, Lord of the Flies, Lady Casterly’s Penance, 1984, and The Great Gatsby. I.”

— Pierce Brown

33. “I am the Reaper and death is my shadow. -Darrow.”

— Pierce Brown

34. “Pride is just a shout into the wind.” He shakes his head, voice deepening. “I will die. You will die. We will all die and the universe will carry on without care. All that we have is that shout into the wind – how we live. How we go. And how we stand before we fall.” He leans forward. “So you see, pride is the only thing.” His eyes leave mine and look across the room. “Pride, and women.”

— Pierce Brown

35. “It is a sword of the first overlord, a razor belonging to the great bastard, hero of the Conquerors, Silenius au Lune. The Lightbringer. “That don’t look so scary,” Dano said when we first got the contract. I smiled and nodded to Volga. “What if she were holding it?” “She’d look scary waving a bloodydamn muffin.” “If I had a muffin, I would eat it,” Volga said.”

— Pierce Brown

36. “I will love you until the sun dies. And when it does, I will love you in the darkness.”

— Pierce Brown

37. “Friendships take minutes to make, moments to break, years to repair,” he says, turning to glance over his shoulder.”

— Pierce Brown

38. “I’m going to kill you, Aja! I’m going to kill you in your face!”

— Pierce Brown

39. “Lorn au Arcos. The Rage Knight, the third-greatest man on Mars, who chose to serve the Society by safeguarding the Society’s Compact, instead of reaching for crowns in politics. When he points to me, Fitchner grins.”

— Pierce Brown

40. “Maybe that’s just the nature of us, ever wishing for things that were and could be rather than things that are and will be. It takes more to hope than to remember.”

— Pierce Brown

41. “The Reaper has come. And he’s brought hell with him.”

— Pierce Brown

42. “Self-pity is the plebeian’s luxury. All that occurs is either endurable or unendurable. If it is endurable, endure it. If it is unendurable, follow your mother.”

— Pierce Brown

43. “You meet a man, you know him. You meet a woman, she knows you.”

— Pierce Brown

44. “It is the food that keeps my army content. As the great Corsican once said, “An army marches on its stomach.” Then again, he didn’t fare so well in the winter.”

— Pierce Brown

45. “I am the spark that will set the worlds afire. I am the hammer that cracks the chains.”

— Pierce Brown

46. “Matter, how tiny my share Time, how brief my allotment Fate, how small my roll to play Self, all that can be mastered.”

— Pierce Brown

47. “For those who dine with war and empire, the bill always comes at the end.”

— Pierce Brown

48. “Evil feeds on mercy.”

— Pierce Brown

49. “You asked, what do I fear? I fear a man who believes in good. For he can excuse any evil.”

— Pierce Brown

50. “Steel is power. Money is power. But of all the things in all the worlds, words are power.”

— Pierce Brown