Top 500 Pierce Brown Quotes (2026 Update)
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201. “I no longer trust stillness. Stillness is the enemy taking careful aim.”

— Pierce Brown

202. “Imagine there was a table covered with fleas,” he explains. “The fleas would jump and jump to heights unknown. Then a man came along and upturned a glass jar over the fleas. The fleas jumped and hit the top of the jar and could go no farther. Then the man removed the jar and yet the fleas did not jump higher than they had grown accustomed, because they believed there to still be a glass ceiling.”

— Pierce Brown

203. “You were picked because you were the smallest boy. The weakest-looking. Terrible scores and so small. They drafted you like they drafted all the other lowDrafts, because you’d be easy to kill in the Passage. A sacrificial lamb for someone they had plans for, big plans. You killed Priam, Sevro. That’s why they won’t let you be Primus. Am I on target?”

— Pierce Brown

204. “He’s near enough my height, which is rare. But he’s thick and terribly old, maybe in his forties. White.”

— Pierce Brown

205. “We grew together, and now are grown. In her eyes, I see my heart. In her breath, I hear my soul. She is my land. She is my kin. My love.”

— Pierce Brown

206. “I am ready for the enemy to come. I have more reasons to fight then they do. My armor is my love.”

— Pierce Brown

207. “There is no greater plague to an introvert than the extrovert.”

— Pierce Brown

208. “You tell anyone I cried, I’ll find a dead fish, put it in a sock, hide it in your room, and let it putrefy.”

— Pierce Brown

209. “Pride is just a shout into the wind.”

— Pierce Brown

210. “Silenius walked his stiletto. I’ve no doubt we’ll walk ours.” “What makes you so confident?” “Well, for starters, we have smaller feet.”

— Pierce Brown

211. “Pandora was a fiction written by men to blame the miseries of the world on women. I am not a fiction.”

— Pierce Brown

212. “You cannot stop this. The reason I tell you all this is to disabuse you of that delusion of grandeur. You are small, as am I. But you can be a part of something, Mr. Horn. A part of the solution to this dark age.”

— Pierce Brown

213. “Look into yourself, Darrow, and you’ll realize that you are a good man who will have to do bad things.”

— Pierce Brown

214. “Forget malice or anger. All should beware the wrath of an offended soul.”

— Pierce Brown

215. “The dead can always hear us, my love. Why else do you think we sing? We want them to know that even though they are gone, we can still find joy.”

— Pierce Brown

216. “We are the new age. The new world. And if we’re to show the way, then we better damn well make it a better one. I am Sevro au Barca. And I am no longer afraid.”

— Pierce Brown

217. “Manners, brother; when at the mercy of your enemies, petulance demeans your entity.”

— Pierce Brown

218. “Well, I do believe I am the lightning,” Cassius declares. “And you, my brooding friend, are the thunder.”

— Pierce Brown

219. “There are things you know, but when revealed to be known by others can make the world shine in a peculiar way.”

— Pierce Brown

220. “Chains might be made by others, but we tend them.”

— Pierce Brown

221. “Nothing has ever been enough for you, nor will it be. You’re trying to matter to yourself. Because you’re broken inside. Because you hate what you are.”

— Pierce Brown

222. “They knew I was something dangerous, something different. Sooner or later, they had to know I would snap and come to cut them down. Or perhaps they think I’m still a child. The fools. Alexander was a child when he ruined his first nation. We.”

— Pierce Brown

223. “How can we promise freedom and then be the arbiter of a people’s choices? That is not freedom. That is social engineering. That is the long road to tyranny.”

— Pierce Brown

224. “I learn more when I make mistakes, so long as they don’t kill me.”

— Pierce Brown

225. “I suppose that is what every man must tell himself in war.” His voice rasps and he sucks again on the water tube. “That there will be an end, and when it is done, enough of himself will remain. Enough to be a father. A brother. A lover. But we know it isn’t true. Don’t we, Darrow? War eats the victors last.”

— Pierce Brown

226. “Have we arrived?” “Just.” “Verdict?” “My goodman, do I look like your valet?” “No. She was much fairer. With better bedside manner.” “Adorable, pretending you just had one.” I raise an eyebrow. “You should talk, prince of Mars.” Cassius au Bellona grunts.”

— Pierce Brown

227. “War is chaos. It always has been. But technology makes it worse. It changes the fear.”

— Pierce Brown

228. “Amazing the power you have when you’re bloody up to the sleeves and none of it is your own.”

— Pierce Brown

229. “Don’t be so dramatic. Ass sweat never killed a soul.”

— Pierce Brown

230. “But I remember when the Gamma Helldiver, Dago, took a deep pull from his burner, turning it bright but dead in a few quick moments. He said, This is you.”

— Pierce Brown

231. “The monsters. They go with the wind, chasing power. But they don’t realize power doesn’t shift. Power is resolute. It is the mountain, not the wind.”

— Pierce Brown

232. “I admire one to my left, the bronze sun is behind him as he falls, silhouetting him, immortalizing him in that singular moment – one I know I shall never forget – so that he looks like a Miltonian angel falling with wrath and glory.”

— Pierce Brown

233. “Devoid of mystery, a man must have dignity. I find the lack of either boorish.”

— Pierce Brown

234. “Fear no more the heat o’ the sun Nor the furious winter’s rages, Thou thy worldly task hast done, Home art gone, and ta’en thy wages; Golden lads and girls all must As chimney sweepers come to dust “Per aspera, ad astra,” my Golden friends whisper, even Sevro. And with a press of a button, Roque disappears from our lives to begin his last journey to join Ragnar and generations of fallen warriors in the sun.”

— Pierce Brown

235. “One must worry about the strength of a principle when it must compromise itself so often to survive.”

— Pierce Brown

236. “Stories are the wealth of humanity!”

— Pierce Brown

237. “They create goods to grant us a semblance of liberty. If violence is the Gold sport, manipulation is their art form.”

— Pierce Brown

238. “Seeing the joy in my wife’s face, I am witnessing another miracle. One, for a long time, I believed I would never see again. Love so potent, so whole and true, that it hurts, because even when you convince yourself that it will last forever, you know enough of the world to see how things break and fade, but somehow, some way, you believe this love will be the exception. That it alone will last.”

— Pierce Brown

239. “This hurts so much. Eo. I miss her. I miss home. What was her second gift? I never found out. Her sister never told me.”

— Pierce Brown

240. “Farmers make culture. Nomads make war.”

— Pierce Brown

241. “Is a man a coward if he realizes that bravery is just a myth the old tell the young so they line up for the meatgrinder?”

— Pierce Brown

242. “A man is never too young to kill, never too wise, never too strong, but he can damn well be too rich.”

— Pierce Brown

243. “He looks like a Miltonian angel falling with wrath and glory. His exoskeleton sheds its friction armor, as Lucifer might have shed the fetters of heaven, feathers of flame peeling off, fluttering behind. Then a missile slashes the sky and high-grade explosives christen him mortal once again.”

— Pierce Brown

244. “You’re the bloodydamn messiah the Reds have been waiting for their entire lives.”

— Pierce Brown

245. “If this is the end, I will rage toward it.”

— Pierce Brown

246. “They can’t stop the signal.”

— Pierce Brown

247. “The Gold spits. “You send a dog to do your fighting?” “I am a man!” Ragnar roars louder than the screaming engines of a passing ship.”

— Pierce Brown

248. “You’re acting like you share a secret language all of a sudden.” “Isn’t that always the case with those who’ve read the same books?”

— Pierce Brown

249. “I know magic isn’t real. I know it’s all science. But if I don’t know the science, it might as well be magic.”

— Pierce Brown

250. “Kill or be killed. Cheat or be cheated.”

— Pierce Brown