Top 500 Pierce Brown Quotes (2026 Update)
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201. “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

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

— Pierce Brown

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

— Pierce Brown

204. “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

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

— Pierce Brown

206. “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

207. “For seven hundred years, my people have been enslaved without voice, without hope. Now I am their sword. And I do not forgive. I do not forget. So let him lead me onto his shuttle. Let him think he owns me. Let him welcome me into his house, so I might burn it down.”

— Pierce Brown

208. “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

209. “Dancer, Darrow is like a stallion, one of the old stallions of Earth. Beautiful beasts that will run as hard as you push them. They will run. And run. And run. Until they don’t. Until their hearts explode.”

— Pierce Brown

210. “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

211. “For seven hundred years, we have been enslaved. Your people. My people. We have languished in the darkness. Bu there will come a day when we walk in the light. It will not come from their mercy. It will not come by fate. It will come when brave hearts rise and choose to break the chains.”

— Pierce Brown

212. “Fear rides in me. Fear of so many things. Fear of letting down my friends, of losing my friends.”

— Pierce Brown

213. “And when you hang from the gallows. When the door beneath you opens, when your feet do the Devil’s Dance, then you will realize in that moment that this has all been for nothing, because there will be no one left to pull your feet.”

— Pierce Brown

214. “You make one tribe out of twelve,” I finally say. “By taking slaves.” Just like the Society. Build on the backs of others. It isn’t cruel. It is practical. Fitchner claps mockingly. “Prime, Reaper. Prime. Looks like someone is bucking for Primus.”

— Pierce Brown

215. “How sad, the dependability of greed to make men fools.”

— Pierce Brown

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

— Pierce Brown

217. “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

218. “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

219. “They can’t stop the signal.”

— Pierce Brown

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

— Pierce Brown

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

— Pierce Brown

222. “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

223. “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

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

— Pierce Brown

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

— Pierce Brown

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

— Pierce Brown

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

— Pierce Brown

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

— Pierce Brown

234. “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

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

— Pierce Brown

236. “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

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

— Pierce Brown

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

— Pierce Brown

239. “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

240. “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

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

— Pierce Brown

242. “I hope his pain fades in death. I did not love him till he was dead; and he should be dead, but he is still my brother. So I pray he finds peace in the vale and that I will see him again one day and we’ll embrace as brothers as he forgives me for what I did to him, because I did it for a dream, for our people.”

— Pierce Brown

243. “He tells us how the Persians were felled, how the Romans collapsed because their rulers forgot how their parents gained them an empire. He prattles about Muslim dynasties and European effeminacy and Chinese regionalism and American self-loathing and self-neutering. All the ancient names.”

— Pierce Brown

244. “Love may give one wings, but everything burns when it flies too close to the sun.”

— Pierce Brown

245. “On distant Luna, buildings rise seven miles high; there the Sovereign Consul, Octavia au Lune, rules with her Imperators and Praetors. The Ash Lord, who made the world of Rhea cinders, is her minion. She controls the twelve Olympic Knights, legions of Peerless Scarred, and Obsidians as innumerable as the stars.”

— Pierce Brown

246. “They want a leader, and if the Reaper of Mars decides to come back from the dead here... you won’t have an army, you’ll have a tide at your heels.”

— Pierce Brown

247. “I can’t hate him any more than I can hate myself. Maybe that isn’t forgiveness, but it’s all I have to give.”

— Pierce Brown

248. “Mother bid me to tell you: a pauper can never be a prince. Every time you look in the mirror, remember what we did to you. Remember you breathe because we let you. Remember your heart will one day be on our table. Rise so high, in mud you lie.”

— Pierce Brown

249. “No animal but man throws themselves willingly into the flames, Copper. Relish the sight. You’ll not see it again.”

— Pierce Brown

250. “Yet how many times have I already been pieced back together? How much longer can all these stitches hold? In the end, will there even be pieces left of me?”

— Pierce Brown