Top 300 Terry Goodkind Quotes (2026 Update)
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201. “Moral compromise rejects the concept of right and wrong. It says that everyone is equal, all desires are equally valid, all action is equally valid, so everyone should compromise to get along.”

— Terry Goodkind

202. “When you are facing superior strength, you must use your wits.”

— Terry Goodkind

203. “My mother always said that if you predicted rain long enough, sooner or later you would get wet and be proven right.”

— Terry Goodkind

204. “You are not destined for anything. You make your own destiny.”

— Terry Goodkind

205. “Like all power, it simply exists. It’s the user who determines what use it will be put to.”

— Terry Goodkind

206. “Your only chance is to let the truth escape.”

— Terry Goodkind

207. “That is what we believe in and what we are fighting for. The right to the joy of life. The right to our own life. The right to love.”

— Terry Goodkind

208. “Ever since I was really little, I’ve had characters that were in my mind.”

— Terry Goodkind

209. “Only when all must bow to the same law is every person free.”

— Terry Goodkind

210. “There seemed to be some inner need in many people to believe that the world would end in some cataclysmic event. Usually in the very near future.”

— Terry Goodkind

211. “Information is the coin of war.”

— Terry Goodkind

212. “Fear triggers need, need powers sincerity. Sincerity is the required element.”

— Terry Goodkind

213. “Every war is a murderous struggle between foes. And yet, no army has ever marched into battle believing that the Creator had sided with their enemy.”

— Terry Goodkind

214. “If we are to survive, we need magic now more than ever to defend ourselves from those in the Old World. We need to learn, discover, create. We need to use our reasoning minds and truth.”

— Terry Goodkind

215. “Emotions are the end result, the sum, of things learned.”

— Terry Goodkind

216. “Life was not fair, it simply existed. If you accidentally stepped on a poison snake, you got bitten. Intentions were irrelevant.”

— Terry Goodkind

217. “We all can be only what we are, nothing more, or less.”

— Terry Goodkind

218. “You either had to fight evil as you encountered it, or evil would come to control your life.”

— Terry Goodkind

219. “Books served to keep hard-won knowledge safe. They endured. Books could almost be immortal.”

— Terry Goodkind

220. “Something in this world always wants to kill you. Don’t forget that.”

— Terry Goodkind

221. “I had to live this long, have the experiences I’ve had, to create what I do. I knew I wanted to write for years, but I had to be ready so I wouldn’t blow it. The move to Maine was the final step.”

— Terry Goodkind

222. “Wishing gets people killed,” he often said. “Using your head gets you home.”

— Terry Goodkind

223. “Emotions are the sums created by details, whether those details are true or not.”

— Terry Goodkind

224. “Because, Richard, many people must be ruled to thrive. In their selfishness and greed, they see free people as their oppressors. They wish to have a leader who will cut the taller plants so the sun will reach them. They think no plant should be allowed to grow taller than the shortest, and in that way give light to all. They would rather.”

— Terry Goodkind

225. “A Seeker is a person who answers to no one but himself; he is a law unto himself. The Sword of Truth is his to wield as he wishes, and within the limits of his own strength, he can hold anyone to answer for anything.”

— Terry Goodkind

226. “We are not our bodies; we are our thoughts. As they form, they define who we are, and create the reality of our existence. Between those thoughts, there is nothing, simply the body, waiting for our thoughts to make us who we are.”

— Terry Goodkind

227. “Sometimes letting out the anger is an even more grievous mistake than holding it in.”

— Terry Goodkind

228. “Every murderer thinks the victim needed killing.”

— Terry Goodkind

229. “In a time of peace, you have the luxury of order, but in war you must act. Hesitation is death.”

— Terry Goodkind

230. “The mark of a wise person is being able to reach beyond for the truth, to admit they can learn more than they already know.”

— Terry Goodkind

231. “Life is about change. Change has both good and bad elements to it. You can either deal with the way things have changed and move forward, or you can let bitterness about what’s lost in the past rob you of your future.”

— Terry Goodkind

232. “Zeddicus Zu’l Zorander, the great and honorable wizard, stood alone on the wizard’s rock his father had given him, and stared out into the night, thinking wizard’s thoughts. “Nothing is ever easy,” he whispered.”

— Terry Goodkind

233. “Their conscious, deliberate act of murder takes the irreplaceable value of life from another. A murderer, by his own choice to kill, forfeits the right to his own life.”

— Terry Goodkind

234. “A true Seeker, one who can make a difference, must show himself to be a Seeker. The wizard doesn’t point to someone and say, ‘Here is the Sword of Truth, you will be the Seeker.’ He doesn’t really have a choice in the matter.”

— Terry Goodkind

235. “Appearance, after all, was a reflection of what a person thought of themselves and therefore, by extension, of others.”

— Terry Goodkind

236. “My brother always says that real power is not brokered in public.”

— Terry Goodkind

237. “Richard’s mind was filled with the flow and form of the dance with death, the way of a war wizard. He was lost in that dance he had come to know so well.”

— Terry Goodkind

238. “Thunder without sound jolted the air around her. The violence of it was magnificent, immaculate, glorious.”

— Terry Goodkind

239. “I asked him what the amulet meant to him, what its meaning was. At first, I thought he wasn’t going to answer. But then, in a haunting voice, he said that it represented the dance with death. I was horrified by that. He said the dance with death was the way of the War Wizard.”

— Terry Goodkind

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

— Terry Goodkind

241. “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

242. “Oftentimes it’s easier for lunatics to attract impassioned followers than it is for sensible people to get people to listen to reason. People are often more willing to believe lies than the truth. Lies can be made to sound pleasant. The truth, by its very nature, isn’t always so attractive.”

— Terry Goodkind

243. “I know, Magda, your heart, and your loyalty to your love for me. But don’t let that be the end of your ability to love. That love wouldn’t harm me, or diminish me, or change what we had. It can only add to you and who you are. You need to embrace the reality of what is, not what was.”

— Terry Goodkind

244. “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

245. “You are not struggling to rule, but to give others a chance at ruling their own lives. So stop ruling and let them live those lives.”

— Terry Goodkind

246. “Books were links that spanned such missing human bonds or even times of savagery and its resulting ages of ignorance.”

— Terry Goodkind

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

— Terry Goodkind

248. “Create a better idea of what the key should be. One that makes more sense to people, so that they believe in the diversion we create.”

— Terry Goodkind

249. “Ah, but Sorceress, on such a journey as ours, is one ever truly done with saving the world?”

— Terry Goodkind

250. “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