Top 300 Terry Goodkind Quotes (2025 Update)
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151. “There is no such thing as pure good or pure evil, least of all in people. In the best of us there are thoughts or deeds that are wicked, and in the worst of us, at least some virtue. An adversary is not one who does loathsome acts for their own sake. He always has a reason that to him is justification. My cat eats mice. Does that make him bad? I don’t think so, and the cat doesn’t think so, but I would bet the mice have a different opinion.”

— Terry Goodkind

152. “Truth is hard to sell; it gives no sense of purpose. It is simply truth.”

— Terry Goodkind

153. “Powerful people who lose power do not feel anguish and heartache like a jilted lover.”

— Terry Goodkind

154. “Save your anger for the enemy. Here it will do you no good; there, it can overcome fear. Use this time now to teach your sword what to do, so later it will do it without conscious thought.”

— Terry Goodkind

155. “Safety is only an illusion when evil is on the hunt. I can’t stand by and watch. I have to act. It isn’t easy to absolve one’s self of guilt.”

— Terry Goodkind

156. “I’m going to do the worst possible thing I could do to you and your people – what my grandfather would have done to you. “I’m going to leave you all to suffer the consequences of your own actions.”

— Terry Goodkind

157. “If we timidly submit to tyranny, we will never have the chance to test our wings.”

— Terry Goodkind

158. “A Grace connected creating the World of life, and the world of the dead in pathways of magic.”

— Terry Goodkind

159. “Maybe I would like to see beauty again before I die.” “Bah. What would you carve? What would you see before you die? What could be worth your life?” “Man’s nobility – the most sublime form of beauty.”

— Terry Goodkind

160. “Intent is guilt. Failure to successfully carry out the intent does not absolve the guilt.”

— Terry Goodkind

161. “You can never stop all wrongdoing, but if you don’t punish it, then it proliferates until anarchy wears the robes of tolerance and understanding.”

— Terry Goodkind

162. “In the end, people believed what they wanted to believe. The truth had very little to do with it.”

— Terry Goodkind

163. “Take care, Seeker. You have the gift. Use it. Use everything you have to fight. Don’t give in. Don’t let him rule you. If you are to die, die fighting with everything you have, everything you know. That is the way of a dragon.”

— Terry Goodkind

164. “Death, though, was part of life. There could not be life without death always shadowing it.”

— Terry Goodkind

165. “History is rarely made by reasonable men.”

— Terry Goodkind

166. “The good in life is what quenches hatred in normal people, the way a smile can calm a quarrel. But in those people who carry this flaw, their hatred burns so hot they come to hate what is good in life specifically because they don’t want to stop hating. Hatred becomes the driving purpose of their lives. They live to hate.”

— Terry Goodkind

167. “It’s so good to see you,” she whispered privately in the midst of the crowd. When she held him, there was no crowd, there was only him. There was always only him in her heart and soul.”

— Terry Goodkind

168. “Killing is a terrible thing, too. I hate killing. But killing isn’t necessarily wrong.”

— Terry Goodkind

169. “Hatred has such powerful emotions attached to it that others take it up out of fear. In that way, hate spreads like panic in a crowd.”

— Terry Goodkind

170. “Being afraid something is true is accepting the possibility. Accepting the possibility is the first step to believing.”

— Terry Goodkind

171. “Your destiny is to find the truth.”

— Terry Goodkind

172. “Anger made a better warrior than fear.”

— Terry Goodkind

173. “Better to see the dangers in the world and be ready when someone inevitably turns on you. It is a far preferable surprise to find that a person is kinder than you think, than to discover he is secretly a traitor.”

— Terry Goodkind

174. “Being afraid something is true is accepting the possibility. Accepting the possibility is the first step to believing. At least you are smart enough to question. Think of how easy it is to believe, for people who don’t question, who don’t even know how to question. For most people, it’s not the truth that is important, it’s the cause. Rahl is intelligent; he has given them a cause.”

— Terry Goodkind

175. “People’s heads are full of knowledge, facts, and beliefs, and most of it is false, yet they think it all true. People are stupid; they can only rarely tell the difference between a lie and the truth, and yet they are confident they can, and so are all the easier to fool.”

— Terry Goodkind

176. “Of course, disinformation,” Quinn said. “I can do that. I’ll leave out critical events, then I’ll put in false information and twist everything that has happened around into a vague, shadowy history that obscures what really took place.”

— Terry Goodkind

177. “Life could be brutal, but that such brutality did not define life or its purpose, and that the sexes were not rivals, but meant to share together in the work and joys of life.”

— Terry Goodkind

178. “Not all choices in life are ones you would like, but those are all that are presented to you. Sometimes you must choose what is better for the ones you love than yourself.”

— Terry Goodkind

179. “A book is read one page at a time. A shelf is read one book at a time. A library is read one shelf at a time.”

— Terry Goodkind

180. “No one is as fanatical as a convert.”

— Terry Goodkind

181. “The time for desperation is upon us. Let’s play.” – Zedd.”

— Terry Goodkind

182. “Civilization must always defend itself.”

— Terry Goodkind

183. “The truth has value.”

— Terry Goodkind

184. “I know you and I know the way you feel, but you have to listen to me. The time has not yet come. It may never come. You may think I’m wrong in this, but if you close your eyes to the reality of what is, in favor of what you would wish just because you’re the Mother Confessor and feel responsible for the people of the Midlands, then there is no reason for us to bother hoping we’ll be together again because we won’t. We will be dead, and the cause of freedom will be dead.”

— Terry Goodkind

185. “It’s easy to lead people when they have a sense of purpose. Sense of purpose is more important by far than the truth.”

— Terry Goodkind

186. “No amount of telling is worth doing it once.”

— Terry Goodkind

187. “He wanted this to show the raw power of volition. The man and woman he carved were his refuge against his despair over his captivity. They embodied freedom of spirit. They embodied reason rising up to triumph.”

— Terry Goodkind

188. “If you want to be a slave in life, then continue going around asking others to do for you. They will oblige, but you will find the price is your choices, your freedom, your life itself. They will do for you, and as a result you will be in bondage to them forever, having given your identity away for a paltry price. Then, and only then, you will be a nobody, a slave, because you yourself and nobody else made it so.”

— Terry Goodkind

189. “Leadership is a nurturing of those under your command.”

— Terry Goodkind

190. “I love you, Kahlan. Never anyone before you, nor ever after. Only you.” His eyes said it even better.”

— Terry Goodkind

191. “War Wizards don’t give up. They find a way around any obstacle, even if that way results in their own death. He called the way of the wizard the dance with death.”

— Terry Goodkind

192. “If I was a nobody you wouldn’t be so eager to see me dead. Just like these people you know that I am devoted to the truth. That is why you want to eliminate me.” – Magda Searus.”

— Terry Goodkind

193. “Emotion did not play a part in truth, only reality did.”

— Terry Goodkind

194. “We teach our children to help those in need because one day we might be the ones in need, and we can only hope to earn such help if we are worthy, if we are the kind who would give it and not just receive it. We believe in treating others as we would want to be treated.”

— Terry Goodkind

195. “You envisioned the idea of a Confessor for the right reasons. Life is truth. Truth is Life. You wanted a way to seek truth. Such a cause, in the promotion of life, is noble.”

— Terry Goodkind

196. “Even a good person can be swept up with the sentiments of a crowd and come to hold perverse beliefs.”

— Terry Goodkind

197. “Slaves, slaves to anything or anyone, despite how much they abhor it, will often cling to that slavery out of fear the alternative would be insufferable.”

— Terry Goodkind

198. “Confidence can be a dangerous thing. Fear can keep you safe, sometimes.”

— Terry Goodkind

199. “I have found that people do not often want to believe the truth. It is of little value to them.”

— Terry Goodkind

200. “The power is neither evil not good; it simply exists. It is up to the mind of man to put it to use.”

— Terry Goodkind