Top 300 Terry Goodkind Quotes (2025 Update)
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201. “You mean that it’s not only what he does that makes him dangerous, but also what he feels justified in doing?”

— Terry Goodkind

202. “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

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

— Terry Goodkind

204. “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

205. “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

206. “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

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

— Terry Goodkind

208. “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

209. “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

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

— Terry Goodkind

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

— Terry Goodkind

212. “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

213. “But who I was, who you loved, no longer exists. I have passed on. In your world, only my memory can exist. Your loyalty to me because of that memory is a part of life, but it can become disloyalty to yourself if you hold it so closely that it crowds out the rest of life.”

— Terry Goodkind

214. “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

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

— Terry Goodkind

216. “Don’t make promises, because circumstances have a way of making you regret them.”

— Terry Goodkind

217. “My past is my story to keep, and my future will be written by me, in my own way, not through the control or influence of you or anyone else.”

— Terry Goodkind

218. “If an idea was sound, it had to have a life beyond a leader, or the leader had failed.”

— Terry Goodkind

219. “Faith itself, you see, is the key-the magic wand that they wave over the bubbling brew they have concocted to render it ‘self-evident’.”

— Terry Goodkind

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

— Terry Goodkind

221. “You can’t expect to walk through life without stepping in the muck now and again. The important thing is to maintain your footing when you do, and not fall on your face and make it worse.”

— Terry Goodkind

222. “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

223. “As it turns out, that persistence is a requirement. Thus, he would tell me, you need the dark to show the light, so you shouldn’t curse darkness. You needed death to define life.”

— Terry Goodkind

224. “Sometimes lunatics are so driven, they can take the whole world into madness with them.”

— Terry Goodkind

225. “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

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

— Terry Goodkind

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

— Terry Goodkind

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

— Terry Goodkind

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

— Terry Goodkind

230. “We believe in treating others as we would want to be treated.”

— Terry Goodkind

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

— Terry Goodkind

232. “It was important for a person not to let their body or mind become slow and dull. Oba believed it was important to learn new things. He believed it was important to grow. He thought it was important for a person to use what they had learned. That was how people grew.”

— Terry Goodkind

233. “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

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

— Terry Goodkind

235. “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

236. “Information is the coin of war.”

— Terry Goodkind

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

— Terry Goodkind

238. “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

239. “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

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

— Terry Goodkind

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

— Terry Goodkind

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

— Terry Goodkind

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

— Terry Goodkind

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

— Terry Goodkind

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

— Terry Goodkind

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

— Terry Goodkind

247. “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

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

— Terry Goodkind

249. “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

250. “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