Top 300 Terry Goodkind Quotes (2025 Update)
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201. “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

202. “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

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

— Terry Goodkind

204. “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

205. “Civilization must always defend itself.”

— Terry Goodkind

206. “That smile might have been on his lips, but it was not in his eyes.”

— Terry Goodkind

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

— Terry Goodkind

208. “The best we can to the best of our ability based on what we know. That’s why the truth is so important. Evil abhors those with the ability.”

— Terry Goodkind

209. “To love another, you must first love yourself. Love yourself, Magda, so that you can love him. Love yourself enough to let your memories of me ease away from closing your heart. “Love yourself enough to know that you deserve happiness.”

— Terry Goodkind

210. “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

211. “Baraccus had told her that while a number of wizards could make things, the same as the ungifted could make things, it was this component of artistic ability in creating new things that took to to another level and made the makers more than true prophets. Magda remembered the passion in his voice as he told her about such things. Making things was in his soul. Creating new things seemed to be his spark of life.”

— Terry Goodkind

212. “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

213. “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

214. “She had thought she could make a difference. She had thought she could drive back the advancing horde – by the sheer weight of her will, if need be. It was arrogance on her part. The forces of freedom were lost.”

— Terry Goodkind

215. “Zedd had taught him that the creator was simply another name for the force of balance in all things, and not some wise man sitting in judgment.”

— Terry Goodkind

216. “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

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

— Terry Goodkind

218. “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

219. “I have to do this, Merrit. I trust you to take care with my life, but if I lose it in the attempt, then I will have died trying to save all life and I don’t want you to blame yourself. This is worth doing. I’d rather die trying to preserve the value of life than watch it all end because I failed to do what only I can.” – Magda Searus.”

— Terry Goodkind

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

— Terry Goodkind

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

— Terry Goodkind

222. “Your loveliness is not a mask, layered over a rotten core. It blossoms from the beauty inside.”

— Terry Goodkind

223. “There are times when there is no choice but to act immediately; even then it must be with your best judgment, using all your experience and everything you do know.”

— Terry Goodkind

224. “I think old age is nature’s way of preparing us for death, making us more willing to take our leave of this world.”

— Terry Goodkind

225. “We all have to die, Johnrock – every one of us. It is how we choose to live that matters. After all, it’s the only life each one of us will ever have, so how we live is of paramount importance.”

— Terry Goodkind

226. “Kahlan stood quietly in the shadows, watching, as evil knocked softly on the door.”

— Terry Goodkind

227. “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

228. “People whose magic could affect others in an overt manner didn’t need to bite, he imagined, nor would they allow themselves to be held captive.”

— Terry Goodkind

229. “You’ve a thing or two to learn, dear one, if you don’t know how important fussing is.”

— Terry Goodkind

230. “Surprise was their greatest weapon. He didn’t want to give it up without a very good reason.”

— Terry Goodkind

231. “She had never asked why it was right for her to be a slave to another’s desires, but not evil for them to enslave her. She was not contributing to the betterment of mankind, but was merely a servant to countless puling little tyrants. Evil was not one large entity, but a ceaseless torrent of small wrongs left unchallenged, until they festered into monsters.”

— Terry Goodkind

232. “We have people like that in our world, too. People who say that freedom is no longer practical, that we must surrender it for a greater common good.” “Fear them,” she whispered. “They are the heart of evil. They tolerate tyranny, excuse it, compromise with it. In so doing they always bring savagery and death upon the rest of us.”

— Terry Goodkind

233. “Don’t try to fix the past, dear one – it can’t be done.”

— Terry Goodkind

234. “Free people were not ruled. Freedom had first to be valued before its existence could be demanded.”

— Terry Goodkind

235. “They look at me and I kind of back up in case they go for my throat.”

— Terry Goodkind

236. “Why people wanted to dance whenever it got dark was beyond him. Somehow, the two seemed to go together, like bees and flowers, or flies and dung. Darkness and dancing.”

— Terry Goodkind

237. “Get your priorities straight, young man. When a victim is staring at a blade that has just plunged through his chest, the last thing on his mind is criticism about the lack of ornamentation on your hilt.”

— Terry Goodkind

238. “He remembered Zedd telling him that old age meant that the only thing he really knew was that he would never know it all, much less know enough.”

— Terry Goodkind

239. “They don’t, exactly. The threat of their intervention makes it unnecessary. Wizards call it the paradox of power: if you have power, and are ready, able, and willing to use it, you don’t need to exercise your power.”

— Terry Goodkind

240. “This was life as it should be lived – proud, reasoned, and a slave to no other man. This was the rightful exaltation of the individual, the nobility of the human spirit.”

— Terry Goodkind

241. “Surprise is sometimes the best advantage a warrior can have.”

— Terry Goodkind

242. “The chicken thing let out a whispering cackle.”

— Terry Goodkind

243. “Franca smiled to herself for a time before she spoke. “My heart belongs to someone.”

— Terry Goodkind

244. “Really? A Confession flower. Why would it be called that? Because a confession is a revelation of the truth. Truth is pure. White is pure. Thus the name.”

— Terry Goodkind

245. “She understood, now, why life had seemed so empty, so pointless: she herself had rendered it so in refusing to think.”

— Terry Goodkind

246. “This was the threshold to the place of the dead.”

— Terry Goodkind

247. “Knowledge comes as it will. Life’s lessons come at the most surprising times.”

— Terry Goodkind

248. “Little things are a good place to start. Larger understanding is built on little things. We put those little things we learn together into larger concepts.”

— Terry Goodkind

249. “Without delay, Tilly entered the ninth opening, a number that she knew from Baraccus had great meaning on things having to do with magic.”

— Terry Goodkind

250. “You mean that it’s not only what he does that makes him dangerous, but also what he feels justified in doing?”

— Terry Goodkind