Top 300 Terry Goodkind Quotes (2025 Update)
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251. “In a time of peace, you have the luxury of order, but in war you must act. Hesitation is death.”

— Terry Goodkind

252. “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

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

— Terry Goodkind

254. “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

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

— Terry Goodkind

256. “I hate telling that story to people who’ve been struggling for years.”

— Terry Goodkind

257. “Life connects us all to magic, as illustrated through the design of the Grace. So, for a Confessor, I don’t need a gifted person, just a living one.”

— Terry Goodkind

258. “Standing there, chisel and mallet in hand, gazing at the statue that was his vision in stone, was a moment when Richard could savor the supreme achievement of having his creation exist exactly as he had originally conceived it. For this singular moment in time, it was complete, and it was his alone.”

— Terry Goodkind

259. “The power of Orden predates the star shift.”

— Terry Goodkind

260. “Chickens can move and flop for hours after their heads are cut off. They have no heartbeat either,” Naja said, “and that doesn’t involve magic.”

— Terry Goodkind

261. “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

262. “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

263. “And right now you’re doing it backwards. You are only concentrating on why the problem is impossible. You are not thinking of the solution.”

— Terry Goodkind

264. “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

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

— Terry Goodkind

266. “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

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

— Terry Goodkind

268. “When you hear the word ‘tyranny of magic’ as we heard from Elder Caldell, you will know that it is the calling card of killers. Don’t be fooled by their platitudes that is for the common good. Their real power is to strip us of our abilities so that they may easily conquer and rule us.”

— Terry Goodkind

269. “He had sometimes looked into her eyes and whispered to himself how bewitching she was, as if she weren’t there hearing him, as if he were all alone looking upon some exceptional specimen rather than his wife.”

— Terry Goodkind

270. “Teasingly she took the apple from his mouth. Juice ran down his chin. Slowly, deliberately, she leaned over and licked the sweet juice from his chin. I will have to admit though, that I will never look at an apple in quite the same way.”

— Terry Goodkind

271. “She had lived her whole life on shifting quicksand, where reason and the intellect were not to be trusted, where only faith was valid, and blind faith was sacred. She, herself, had enforced mindless conformity to that empty evil.”

— Terry Goodkind

272. “It is not a weakness, child, to be a victim.”

— Terry Goodkind

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

— Terry Goodkind

274. “Have you heard the old adage advising to always grow oleanders at your back door?” Nicci asked.”

— Terry Goodkind

275. “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

276. “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

277. “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

278. “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

279. “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

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

— Terry Goodkind

281. “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

282. “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

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

— Terry Goodkind

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

— Terry Goodkind

285. “Your forces will try to use shields, but I can tell you from experience that shields don’t work. Shields key off life. They have nothing to latch on to with the dead.”

— Terry Goodkind

286. “Duty?” Kahlan wiped a hand across her face. “Harold, you can’t blindly follow that woman’s whim. The route to life and liberty exists only through reason. She may be queen, but reason can be your only true sovereign. To fail to use reason in this, to fail to think, is intellectual anarchy.”

— Terry Goodkind

287. “Of all the people who came before us, Magda, you were the only one who represented truth. I want you to know that. – Councilman Sadler.”

— Terry Goodkind

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

— Terry Goodkind

289. “Boundary wardens, Zedd thought, were tougher than they had a right to be.”

— Terry Goodkind

290. “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

291. “Don’t give up the calling, Magda. Know yourself. Know what you are. Though few would admit it, even those on the council, I truly believe we all need you. – Councilman Sadler.”

— Terry Goodkind

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

— Terry Goodkind

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

— Terry Goodkind

294. “He wanted to know things, not reveal them.”

— Terry Goodkind

295. “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

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

— Terry Goodkind

297. “I want you to use me to create a Confessor.”

— Terry Goodkind

298. “But you know how Richard feels. He thinks it would be wrong – more than that, he thinks it would be irresponsible to give in to such a wish when reason tells him he must not.”

— Terry Goodkind

299. “The tightly focused battle was an orgy of slaughter. Limbs, heads, and parts of bodies from men and women alike littered the ground.”

— Terry Goodkind

300. “She looked so beautiful in the moonlight, but it wasn’t only the way she looked, it was what was inside her, everything from her intelligence and courage to her wit, and the special smile she gave only to him. He would slay a dragon, if there were such a thing, just to see that smile. He knew he would never want anyone else for as long as he lived. He would rather spend the rest of his life alone than with someone else. There could be no one else.”

— Terry Goodkind