Top 500 Pierce Brown Quotes (2026 Update)
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401. “Titus has failed. And so, as do those of any tyrant after a failed war, his eyes turn inward.”

— Pierce Brown

402. “Government is never the solution, but it is almost always the problem.”

— Pierce Brown

403. “Mankind was always enslaved, they’ll say. Freedom enslaves us to lust, to greed. Take freedom away, and they give me a life of dreaming. They gave you a life of sacrifice, family, community. And society is stable.”

— Pierce Brown

404. “His eyes are darker and crueler than those of the friend I remember. “This is war, boyo. Murder’s the name of the game. Don’t be sad we’re good at it.”

— Pierce Brown

405. “How sad I didn’t cherish a moment there with my son. All moments are like that sandcastle, it seems. There is no permanent happy future. There is no Vale. It all washes away.”

— Pierce Brown

406. “If you are thrown into the deep and do not swim, you will drown... so keep swimming, right?”

— Pierce Brown

407. “Half the clans are already drunk when we arrive in the Common. In addition to a dancing people, we’re a drunken people. The Tinpots let us alone in that. Hang a man for no real reason and you might get some grumblings from the townships. But force sobriety upon us, and you’ll be picking up the pieces for a bloodydamn month.”

— Pierce Brown

408. “You’re the same,” I say. “Lonely. You’re all japes and snide comments, just like Sevro, but it’s just a mask.”

— Pierce Brown

409. “We must save ourselves from ourselves before the inheritance of humanity is ash.”

— Pierce Brown

410. “I knew war was dreadful, but I did not expect to fear it. How can anyone not, when death is just a blind giant with scissors?”

— Pierce Brown

411. “Life fades in the presence of pain.”

— Pierce Brown

412. “Our worlds made us what we are, and all this pain we suffer is to fix the folly of those who came before, who shaped the world in their image and left us the ruin of their feast.”

— Pierce Brown

413. “I let fear drive my hope away. I let war become me, and my men followed.”

— Pierce Brown

414. “You will fall to ruin because you believe that exceptions to the rule make new rules. That an evil man can shed the trappings of wickedness because you want him to. Men do not Change... Learn the lesson now, so you don’t have to learn it with a knife in your back later... Reputations exist for a reason.”

— Pierce Brown

415. “When the Sovereign pushed against me, I bent like Gold should, with grace, with dignity. But now she cuts at me, and beneath the grace, beneath the aplomb, her knife will strike iron. We make for Mars, and for war.”

— Pierce Brown

416. “Everything he says is perfectly innocuous. Yet I hate him. It’s like he doesn’t think me a human; instead I’m just a chess piece and he’s waiting to move me around. No. Shove me around. He somehow forgot to be seventeen or eighteen like the rest. He is a man.”

— Pierce Brown

417. “We’ve got it raw, but at least we’re not Reds, you register?” Righto.”

— Pierce Brown

418. “It takes more to hope than to remember.”

— Pierce Brown

419. “I live for you,” I say sadly. She kisses my cheek. “Then you must live for more.”

— Pierce Brown

420. “Death isn’t empty like you say it is. Emptiness is life without freedom... Emptiness is living chained by fear, fear of loss, fear of death. I say we break those chains.”

— Pierce Brown

421. “I told myself I would be better than this. I failed that promise. But noble vanity can shine another day. This is war. And victory is the only nobility.”

— Pierce Brown

422. “No protection for the small-business owner. Only taxes and extortion.”

— Pierce Brown

423. “The world is soundless. We cannot hear, but a pack of wolves does not need words to know that it is time to hunt.”

— Pierce Brown

424. “The greatest weapon a rebellion has is its spiritus. The spirit of change. That little seed that finds a hope in the mind and flourishes and spreads.”

— Pierce Brown

425. “Goldbrows’ first loyalty is to Color, then family, then planet, then House. Most Houses are dominated by one or two powerful families. On Mars, the Family Augustus, the Family Bellona, and the Family Arcos influence all others.”

— Pierce Brown

426. “I’ve won. I hate politics. Especially in a room full of alphas.”

— Pierce Brown

427. “History is a wheel. And all mobs are the same. Full of small men with big appetites. Only way they grow is by eating men like us.”

— Pierce Brown

428. “He says a man who believes his own myth is like a drunk thinking he can dance barefoot on a razor’s edge.”

— Pierce Brown

429. “I don’t know if she understands what game I’m playing.”

— Pierce Brown

430. “It fills me with a strange emptiness knowing that I was enough for her when I was never enough for Eo.”

— Pierce Brown

431. “Mustang’s strategy is Eo’s dream.”

— Pierce Brown

432. “But business in a crony-capitalist society is the craft of sharks.”

— Pierce Brown

433. “Men call him father, liberator, warlord, Slave King, Reaper. But he feels a boy as he falls toward the war-torn planet, his armor red, his army vast, his heart heavy. It is the tenth year of war and the thirty-third of his life.”

— Pierce Brown

434. “Slaves do not have the bravery of free men. That is why Golds lie to lowReds and make them think they are brave. That is why they lie to Obsidians and make them think it is an honor to serve gods. Easier than the truth. Yet it takes only one truth to bring a kingdom of lies crashing down. Ragnar.”

— Pierce Brown

435. “Ha! The great Reaper.” She slaps her thigh. “When have you ever cared what anyone thinks?” “You’re not just anyone.”

— Pierce Brown

436. “Fitchner scratches his groin with his razor’s hilt. His manners are worse than mine.”

— Pierce Brown

437. “From a distance, death seems the end of a story. But when you are near, when you can smell the burning skin, see the entrails, you see death for what it is. A traumatic cauterization of a life thread. No purpose. No conclusion. Just snip.”

— Pierce Brown

438. “I’ve given Sevro the dregs to command because I know they might be the only people he’ll ever like. At first he ignores them. Then slowly, I begin noticing that more unearthly howls fill the night than before.”

— Pierce Brown

439. “Half of being a soldier is being able to sleep anywhere.”

— Pierce Brown

440. “Her world is alien to the horrors I know. All the child sees is love.”

— Pierce Brown

441. “You think a dream is worth dying for. I say it isn’t. You say it’s better to die on your feet. I say it’s better to live on our knees.”

— Pierce Brown

442. “The winged girl has become a carrion bird and she doesn’t seem to have noticed. I wonder if she’d smile so broadly if she had to kill all those people with a knife. How easy we make mass murder.”

— Pierce Brown

443. “It is strange. This boy likes me. He insults me, but he likes me.”

— Pierce Brown

444. “They have us here because this valley was humanity before Gold ruled. Fractured. Disunited even in our very own tribe. They want us to go through the process that our forefathers went through. Step by step, this game will evolve to teach us new lessons. Hierarchies within the game will develop. We’ll have Reds, Golds, Coppers.”

— Pierce Brown

445. “Yet I’m a Red acting like a Gold. No man is bound to his fate. I can change him. I know I can. But how?”

— Pierce Brown

446. “The Sons of Ares would drool if I became a Praetor to House Bellona.”

— Pierce Brown

447. “In his eyes I glimpse the loneliness, the longing for a life that should have been, and the glimmer of the man he wants to be underneath the man he thinks he has to be.”

— Pierce Brown

448. “Anything that believes only in itself cannot go happily into the night.”

— Pierce Brown

449. “I’m only a monster when it is practical.” Augustus smiles.”

— Pierce Brown

450. “Imagine all those unborn. If it is not me, someone else will rise. Ten years from now. Fifty. A thousand. We will break the chains, no matter the cost. You cannot stop us. We are the tide.”

— Pierce Brown