#don condor

[cosmic-navel-gazin]

“I don’t like how you sound, Anton,” he said in Russian.

“I don’t like a lot of things, Alexander Vasilievich,” said Rumata.

“I don’t like that we’ve tied our hands and feet with the very formulation of the problem. I don’t like that it’s called the Problem of Nonviolent Impact. Because under my conditions, that means a scientifically justified inaction. I’m aware of all your objections! And I’m aware of the theory. But here there are no theories, here there are typical fascist practices, here animals are murdering humans every minute! Here everything is pointless. Knowledge isn’t enough, and gold is worthless, because it comes too late.”

— Arkady and Boris Strugatsky, Hard to be a God  

[cosmic-navel-gazin]

“Don’t talk to me as if I were a child,” Rumata said.

“You’re impatient like a child,” Don Condor declared. “And we must be very patient.”  (...)

“I understand,” he said. “I’ve gone through it myself. There was a time when this feeling of helplessness and my own culpability seemed to be the worst thing. Some of us, the weakest ones, went crazy from it, were sent back to Earth, and are now being treated. It took me fifteen years, dear boy, to understand what the worst thing really is.

The worst thing is to lose your humanity, Anton. To sully your soul, to become hardened. We’re gods here, Anton, and we need to be wiser than the gods from the legends the locals have created in their image and likeness as best they could.

And yet we walk along the edge of a swamp. One wrong step—and down you go in the dirt, and you won’t be able to wash it off your whole life.”

— Arkady and Boris Strugatsky, Hard to be a God

[cosmic-navel-gazin]

“We have excellent nerves; we know how not to flinch when faced with beatings and executions.

We have amazing self-control; we’re capable of putting up with the blathering of the most hopeless idiots.

We’ve forgotten how to be fastidious—we can make do with dishes that, according to the custom, have been licked by dogs and then wiped with a dirty hem for the sake of beauty.

We’re fantastic impersonators—even in our dreams we do not speak the languages of Earth.

We have a foolproof weapon—the basis theory of feudalism, developed in quiet offices and laboratories, at dusty archaeological digs, in thoughtful discussions.”

(...)

“Let us remain humane, forgive everyone, and be calm like the gods.

Let them slaughter and desecrate, we’ll be calm like the gods.

The gods need not hurry, they have eternity ahead.”

— Arkady and Boris Strugatsky, Hard to be a God

[dalami]

wrow...