Quotes of People in Your Nation Mk. VI

[Blakullar]

"There is no better a hand to guide the inherently-evil Mankind away from the allure of evil than that of the State."

~ General Elena Trotskaya.

[Ashkera]

"The ideas of Capitalism and Socialism in the public imagination are fundamentally caught up in moral tales about who 'deserves' what, about noble intentions and greed, the Just World Hypothesis applied to hard work, and the like. The two are simply different algorithms for the allocation and distribution of resources, which work better or worse in different contexts depending on the available incentives, flow of information, required level of specialization in order to make wise choices, and so on. Each material or service need of society must be analyzed and the appropriate economic allocation algorithm applied in order to achieve the best result.

Some will tell you that businesses are always the correct algorithm for every service. Those people are wrong, which is why states dominate all land on this world that is worth having."
- Theodore Hobbes, bureaucrat of the censorship bureau

"They're calling it 'The Thawing of Ashkera', but really, the reason we're down-scheduling so many previously-forbidden texts is that there are no longer guerrillas in the mountains. The average Ashkeran now reads the call to overthrow the government, and she asks 'why?' There is nothing in it for her. That was the entire point of GAJRA."
- Theodore Hobbes

"The constitution on which the Cooperative Technocratic State is founded mandates the formation of a new government in the event that approval ratings remain below 40% for four consecutive polling periods (that is, one year). The army would oversee this process. There have been a few times that it has come close, most notably during the economic slowdown in the mid-80's. It is believed this was a compromise that dates back to the formation of GAJRA, when the more populist factions such as the Liberal Democrats and the Social Democrats believed this would inevitably happen after the end of the civil war."
- foreign historian

[Singaporean Transhumans]

"How could one man be possibly spouting all those wise words? Something fishy is definitely going on."
-AI

[United Massachusetts]

We are all people. We all fall down. But through the grace of Christ and our works in life, he can lift us up.
- Father Jonathan James
Priest at New Boston Church

Knowledge. The greatest weapon of all. He who has knowledge has the world.
- Professor Emily Donahue
(new) President of Harvard University

I am not wrong. You, sir, are incorrect.
-Mayor Walker
(new) Mayor of Springfield

It is time we treat health care as right, to be enjoyed by all Bay Staters: rich or poor, woman or man, black or white.
-President McNally
President of United Massachusetts

Peace is power. There are those who wish for war. If you want war, prepare for peace.
-General Hill
Former General of the No-Longer Existing United Massachusetts Army

May God give us strength. May the liberties we enjoy live forever.
-Thomas Pierce
Founding Father

It is time to advance our republic through the conflict, through the terror of our civilization, through the hardships we endure: We must arise. We we succeed, a new beacon of freedom and light will shine throughout the world for all to see: if not, our world shall fall to the chains of tyranny. Let us ever move forward. Let us ever shine bright.
-President McNally
President During the War of The Revolution, Leader of United Massachusetts during the UM Great Depression.

Today, we cry out throughout the world "Free At Last, Free At Last". We are released from the shackles of tyranny
- Fmr. President Lin
Founding Father, After UM received independence from Great Britain

[Bereia]

"There is no better a hand to guide the inherently-evil Mankind away from the allure of evil than that of the State."

~ General Elena Trotskaya.

"You mean the bureaucratic apparatus designed, manned, and operated by evil Mankind? Unless, of course, you have it in your head that politicians are cut of a finer cloth than everybody else."

-- Julissa Hickman, Citizen.

[Euro Asian Republics]

"Just so you know... It doesn't matter what your bloodline is, if you ever think about calling Major General Matz a dick for real... He's gonna put you into bigger trouble than those robots put you in a little while back." - Col. Juliane Rier of the Sotian Confederation Enforcer Corps' 1st Special Ops Battalion to (then recently recruited) Capt. Werner Dustin, 2095

[Sieen]

"Being fair, they cost us our empire, we wanted revenge." - LT. Asil Ekmekçi, Sieenese Red Army (ret.) on the Sieenese-Alyssian War

[Hetrica]

Is not a quote of the people of my nation but is recognised throughout Hetrica
"The best way to undermine logic is to ignore it and tell the person to shut up"
-Ex-nations leader

[Gigaverse]

"Sir. Rome... has turned into a gigantic Nazi concentration camp. There's a mountain of bodies piling up in the Colosseum..."

"I know it's cruel of me to say this: Good. The Reich is further tainting its name with the blood of the undesirables. On this side of the Earth, it means valuable time for us to clean ours. This war will end; not with us marching into Berlin or them massacring their way into the ruins of Tokyo, but with the Reich falling to the pressure of internal upheaval."

-An Ishin-ha partisan reporting to Shinji Sakahara about the Fall of Rome as part of the German-Italian War/European Theater; Reich-Sphere Third World War timeline.

[The Gamindustrian Union]

"Sed ut perspiciatis, unde omnis iste natus error sit voluptatem accusantium doloremque laudantium, totam rem aperiam eaque ipsa, quae ab illo inventore veritatis et quasi architecto beatae vitae dicta sunt, explicabo. nemo enim ipsam voluptatem, quia voluptas sit, aspernatur aut odit aut fugit, sed quia consequuntur magni dolores eos, qui ratione voluptatem sequi nesciunt, neque porro quisquam est, qui dolorem ipsum, quia dolor sit, amet, consectetur, adipisci velit, sed quia non numquam eius modi tempora incidunt, ut labore et dolore magnam aliquam quaerat voluptatem. ut enim ad minima veniam, quis nostrum exercitationem ullam corporis suscipit laboriosam, nisi ut aliquid ex ea commodi consequatur? quis autem vel eum iure reprehenderit, qui in ea voluptate velit esse, quam nihil molestiae consequatur, vel illum, qui dolorem eum fugiat, quo voluptas nulla pariatur?

"At vero eos et accusamus et iusto odio dignissimos ducimus, qui blanditiis praesentium voluptatum deleniti atque corrupti, quos dolores et quas molestias excepturi sint, obcaecati cupiditate non provident, similique sunt in culpa, qui officia deserunt mollitia animi, id est laborum et dolorum fuga. et harum quidem rerum facilis est et expedita distinctio. nam libero tempore, cum soluta nobis est eligendi optio, cumque nihil impedit, quo minus id, quod maxime placeat, facere possimus, omnis voluptas assumenda est, omnis dolor repellendus. temporibus autem quibusdam et aut officiis debitis aut rerum necessitatibus saepe eveniet, ut et voluptates repudiandae sint et molestiae non recusandae. itaque earum rerum hic tenetur a sapiente delectus, ut aut reiciendis voluptatibus maiores alias consequatur aut perferendis doloribus asperiores repellat.

"In short,

"Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.

"Is that right?"

-Some Guy

[Greater Mackonia]

"The technological advances of this era stand to disturb the ideological foundations of Social-Humanism, and hence the current order of world power. We have merely shown by logic that such fantasies as the equality of all men in universal brotherhood, the state of nature and rule of law are just that - fantasies, but alas Lady Reason has lost her charms for many. A materialist age needs material refutations. By the routes of genetic improvement or artificial intelligence, man will soon create a being objectively superior to the multitudes which scurry below it, a being utterly untainted by 'society'. Would such a being care for your 'God-given rights'? Would such a being believe in the Marxist theory of history? Would a hyper-intelligent superhuman grown in a vat, emerging with banks of knowledge already downloaded to his brain be satisfied with the profundity of the original position? Absolutely not, the conclusion which all the scattered ponies of science are straining their yokes to grasp is that man is not in fact an equal animal. Do not think they will let this stand, let their lies be torn apart, can you not already imagine the sight of a fat, white-haired senator or Eurocrat droning on about making genetic engineering 'humane'?...Gods, doesn't it just fill you with rage? It fills me with rage! Humane...humane! That fucking word, that utterly empty word which now stands to censor the future. Its pathetic, and what makes it all the more pathetic is that its been refuted a thousand times before yet they will not listen. The fight now is for the future. I assure you, the current ideology will not be able to bring that future, its a future with no place for themselves within it. They will stand to stop it - who's to say they have not already done so?"

-Dr Shavnur Tenoskal

[Blakullar]

"There is no better a hand to guide the inherently-evil Mankind away from the allure of evil than that of the State."

~ General Elena Trotskaya.

"You mean the bureaucratic apparatus designed, manned, and operated by evil Mankind? Unless, of course, you have it in your head that politicians are cut of a finer cloth than everybody else."

-- Julissa Hickman, Citizen.

"This, my friend, is where the tenets of mechanocracy come to its salvation. Perhaps a bureaucracy under human control will indeed exhibit human errors, but what I must ask of you is this - is it possible for something to make a human error when it is not human?"

~ General Elena Trotskaya, after rubbing her hands together and making herself comfortable in her favourite leather armchair.

[Singaporean Transhumans]

"90% of the time it's just that the idea of being ruled by a toaster is pretty cool and makes you a special snowflake."
-Philip Pines

[Oneesans Unitatem]

"The question then becomes, if Man has no rights, if man is not equal, if egoism rules the day... then where does the obligation to create a greater being come from? This strikes me as an aesthetic value, since if we are being self-interested egoists, we should be prioritizing our own survival and creating a shackled genie rather than a free-roaming god."
- bureaucrat, briefly becoming a glitched image of Theodore Hobbes

"It's never the first one on the stack. Well, it usually isn't. One, two, three magazines... five magazines... and here we go. A 'special swimsuit edition' of Crime Magazine. Crime Magazine has never had a swimsuit edition. Just the other day I was reading a newspaper and there was a full-page advertisement for someplace called 'Great Britain'. I've certainly never heard of such a place."
- man

[Jutomi]

"I like potatoes."

- About half of my cabinet.

[Fatatatutti]

"Capitalism naturally pushes the self-interest of each individual to improve the situation of the whole, often without demanding sacrifices of any kind."

-- Dr. Karston Bell, Economist.

"Of course the capitalist doesn't have to make any sacrifices himself. He forces the sacrifices on everybody else. That's why I used the analogy of the family. There are no capitalists in families. There is no magical trickle-down effect. There's only the welfare of the whole family before the individual."
-- Harlan Escrow

[Greater Mackonia]

"Two causes alone exist for the suspension of self-interest in man, folly or weakness."

-Tseila Kathangi

[Las Palmeras]

"I suppose there is a difference between beauty standards in Las Palmeras and the majority of the rest of the Western Hemisphere. They are the only ones prideful enough to, at least in local consumer ads and celeb norms to accept that that the tall and thin or 'blondeified' physique isn't typical of Palmeran women. I'd call it an intermediate between the 'sexy' and the 'cute'. But what's truly Palmeran is that the the Palmeran State at least appreciated sociological work enough to oppose 'whitening' standards of beauty in media and try to fissure the Colonial system, even going as far as to set quotas to be identical to the population's appearance.

But personally I think Las Palmeras isn't as revolutionary as it seems; though the caste system was and is working in the social seams, the islands' physical limits and value of work and acceptance of hardships proved too important a factor- and if ethnicity and identity politics changed in some 450 to 500 years the thing without change were the remnants of Courtly ideals remembered even in the XV century by Europe's least progressive power and adapted for Palmeran gender and work roles; so it was to be expected that there was a valuation of willpower with loyalty and that a 'minimum' of physical attractiveness was recommended but that a 'spiritual' ideal was indispensable."
-Tsuneko Zorilla

---

"Foreign essayist calls Palmeran sexual politics Medieval."
-Newspaper story title

[Acheronis]

"Humans are naturally barbaric. We may have been given sapience, but that doesn't mean we lost the our primal thirst for blood in the process. However, what does mean is that we have been given the tools to recognise our primal urges and be abhorred by what we see. And with developing technology, we shall soon be able to alter our psyche and eliminate these traits that have no place in modern civilisation."

-Professor Grant Song, How we can change our Future

[Ashkera]

"Two causes alone exist for the suspension of self-interest in man, folly or weakness."
-Tseila Kathangi

"Don't patronize me, Hideyoshi. Even in this great armor, a single bolt from a ballista, or a lucky strike from an enemy, could still kill me. I am still too weak. WE ARE ALL STILL TOO WEAK!"
- warlord, 650 BCE, prior to ordering another round of training - double for his flattering advisors

"All earthly creatures are weak.
Even the mighty Tiger
May be felled by a single blow."
- unknown, written on the door of the throne room of the final emperor of the First Empire

[Estainia]

"Nationalistic fervor here is... complicated."

"That's one way to say it's an utter trainwreck kept together only by a combination of sheer luck and jackbooted thuggery."

"Shut up, Cornelius." - conversation between Tsar Alexander Yordanov, a courtier who was listening, and Cornelius A. Maximilian

[Xekliv]

"Bhasa have two potato. Raksha take one away. How many left?

Is trick question. No one have two potato."

-- A poor outworlder peasant

[Ashkera]

"Rather than the Mackonian strategy of 'bailout imperialism', the Ashkeran government relies on something called 'Development Wave'. A set of tariffs is issued by the GX countries on foreign imports according to how poor the labor and environmental conditions are. Generally, this isn't enough to completely eliminate the advantage of outsourcing, but it does go a long way. This money is put into the GX Development Fund pool, and is issued to underdeveloped countries joining GX. It is spent under supervision on joint projects between local companies and Ashkeran companies on things like water treatment plants, schools, hospitals, power plants, and the like. Meanwhile, thousands of advisors swoop in to install GX institutions, accompanied by military police from the wealthier GX nations to put an end to any ethnic conflicts and criminal organizations. GX nations don't have to pay the tariffs to trade with other GX nations, so companies begin to outsource there as well while the country rapidly stabilizes.

It's essentially a bribe to give up a large chunk of your sovereignty and join the GX superstate - which, taken together, would be one of the larger nations in the world. Every five or ten years or so, new nations are added, using incoming funding from earlier nations. The amount of competition from cheap labor is kept balanced by its low rate of introduction, helping to keep the various non-democratic or limited-democratic regimes in power back home while still benefitting from heavy investment in developing countries, industrialization, and outsourcing.

Perhaps the most dramatic recent example is the Military State of Morda, where the Ashkeran military was deployed against the Islamic State of Morda. Rather than aiming for a kill, they used a combination of drones, less-than-lethal chemical weapons, LTL small arms, and other measures to take literally thousands of members of ISM alive. The men were shipped to the newly-constructed island fortress prison UltraMax One. After that, they brokered a deal with the Communists to the south. All Cruze Telemat had to do was let someone else run his country."
- foreign analyst

"It's a lot less powerful as an image of martyrdom when the footage is of you looking baked out of your mind, stumbling into the back of a truck with a bunch of crying men who are also stumbling, some of whom are puking. Absolutely, they deserve death. We have no intention of giving it to them. We will break this edgy little rebellion of theirs and reduce them to the lowly criminals they are, worthy of admiration by no one."
- judge, from beneath mask, regarding Islamic State of Morda

"Like something out of one of those Hollywood science fiction movies..."
- rural resident, describing the ISM capture operation

"I'm pleased you've decided to reach out to me, Mr. Telemat. We can have several thousand tons of rice heading on a boat to your nation by midnight tomorrow, if that would help. Why don't you arrange a meeting with our foreign ministry..."
- unknown, phone call, 2013

[Greater Mackonia]

"I mean people say 'don't judge yourself by the achievements of others', and then they say 'be more empathetic!' To which I respond 'don't judge yourself by the sufferings of others either', because how the fuck does that make any more sense? I mean, if we're going to give even the slightest shit for each other at all, we may as well emulate each other's virtues rather than multiply our sufferings."

-Zilkas Soekthar-Mesok.

[Blakullar]

"If history has taught me anything, it is that the empires of humanity are fixed firmly within an endless cycle. The world is fragmented into great powers; one power rises above and subjugates them all; the nascent empire continues to grow; at its apex, the empire becomes complacent for lack of enemies; when enemies finally arrive, the empire is caught unprepared; it is extinguished and the world fragments once more. All of the empires of old adhered to this cycle: the Assyrians, the Egyptians, the Greeks, Romans, Mongols, Spanish, British, Nazis, Americans. How, then, do we break this seemingly-impregnable cycle and form the self-perpetuating empire? This is an easier question to answer than one might imagine. Empires become complacent primarily because they lack enemies. Our predicament can therefore be solved with one simple equation: where there are no enemies, enemies must be created. At the subjugation stage of the imperial cycle, commission an offshoot of your ruling circle to establish a faux-rebellion in a subjugated territory. Ferment revolution, allow them to declare independence and grow themselves to equivalent status as your nation, but at all times maintain an invisible iron grip over the enemy. With an enemy firmly in your control, your empire should not become complacent for lack of enemies."

~ extract from The Musings of General E. Trotskaya.