William Lawton (ME-1)/Quotations

Said By Will

 * "I want to be the kind of person the likes of Aristotle, Kongzi, and Diderot would have recognized as a fellow philosopher."
 * "I, who am self appointed protector of all that I see, have seen so much cruelty; I've seen hate in it's purest form; I have so very much. I have so very little. I am not loved, I know that. Not in body or mind. I have never known the soft whisper of endearment; never have I known the peace that lies between the thighs of woman; never have I known the reciprocation of that which my eyes hold most affectionately, but I am respected; I am feared: I am needed. And that will suffice, because it must. Because I love. I, who am not loved in return: I have a love that is far deeper than that of empty modern coupling. I will fight and die for the people I love, and those I hate, and I do hate. I have and still see cruelty and hate, but also have and still I see compassion and even love; I see everything; that is my curse, but I can do anything, and that is my gift."
 * "I give up; I run the risk of alienating everyone by so much as voicing my opinions, It doesn't matter what I do; it doesn't matter if I try; I always fail; Try to woo a girl: I'm either creepy; they don't see me that way or something. I try to help people, but somehow I'm too blunt, or just mean. I've tried too hard for too long.; some may disagree, but in my 'heart' I feel like I've dealt with more than enough rejection. I give up; that's really all I can say."
 * "I could have done so much better, if only I was smarter; So many of them were dead; tortured and dead; who knows how many of them were moved on to be sold; I didn't save them; I failed."
 * "I don't need a life outside the cowl, Bruce. Nor do I want one. Outside the suit, I'm just another random human that no one really knows or cares about. I'm only ever me when I wear that suit, and save people in this way; my way; the only way I truly can."
 * "When I started this, I had liberty, but I ignored it; I had time, but I wasted it; and I had love, but I could not feel it. Many years and many lives would pass before I understood the meaning of all three. And now this understanding has passed into contentment. Liberty, time, and love: once so foreign, are the fuels that drive me forward. And love, most especially. For you, for my teams, and the people who need me; this vast and wonderful world that gave us life, and keeps us guessing. I used to dream of seeing someone worthwhile, who I recognized as myself in mirror, now I see the cowl of Knight Owl staring right back at me. My name IS Knight Owl, and I love what I do. My Odyssey ends here, in my Ithaca, with you, my Penelope."
 * "I don't know how long I'll live. I can still die, but from what I can tell I don't age, so if I'm careful enough who knows how long I'll live. I promise you, as long as I live, I will love you more than anyone who has ever or will ever live. I am beyond confident in this. If I live thousands of years, I will love you for thousands of years without fail. Roxanne Lilith Beaumont, will you do me the unfathomable, incommunicable honor of being my wife?"
 * "Owl's fly alone, as do I."
 * "Man will die; nations will fall; life will end, but ideas can live forever."
 * "I will stand right where I belong: between people like you, and everyone else."
 * "I never really wanted an easy life; I wanted to be strong enough to endure hardships and achieve greatness, and maintain my integrity as I did."
 * "The only thing a man keeps with him is his principles. Everything else dies eventually."
 * "I'm starting to sum myself up into two distinct personalities: the lowly soldier ant, who doesn't think and just does, never giving up, even after several thousand failures, and the cynical Frenchman who sits back, takes a puff, and says 'nothing matters,' or simply put: I'm stupid."
 * "If you are silent you are taken to agree; disagree? Then speak up!"
 * "I haven't lost a friend that I care to get back."
 * "That which was fuels us will kill us if it controls us. My career is no compulsion or obssession; I can, have, and will quit whenever I want; I just don't want to."
 * "War doesn't change; war changes us."
 * "I wish Freddie Mercury was still alive, so Queen could make the soundtrack to my life."
 * "Why do I bother? Because of responsibility, and justice, and service. Do you understand what these words mean? You should do your job, and you should do it well, simply because you can, without looking for special notice or reward."
 * "When I was a kid, the Batman was my hero."
 * "I know that, so does this city, and the world. In your apathy the world has lost it's Knight. Somebody needs to show the world that someone's still watching."
 * "I am a lot of things; an agnostic, an atheist, which most people stopped listening there back in my hometown, but I'm more; I am an ignostic, a verificationist, an empiricist, sometimes an absurdist, and most importantly a humanist, but no one cared what I was; they cared about what I wasn't. I learned a long time ago, that I'll never be a normal person. I'll never be the person people think about and say 'I wonder how he's doing. I'll give him a call... 'I miss him' I'm the person who sat in the corner, listening to all the stupid around him; I'm the person you like when you need, but after you no longer need me: I no longer exist. I'm a specter, I know my place, and it's not around people."
 * "I'd rather fail trying to do the right thing, than succeed at doing the wrong thing."
 * "I lied all those years ago, Grant. I think you knew that. I needed to prove that you didn't make a mistake; that you didn't train a loser. This time I needed to prove in my mind if no elses', that I deserve that suit, that name. I need to know that my reflection in the mirror isn't just a child's fantasy. This time...I did it for me."
 * "How dare you speak to me as if you know me?! How dare you pretend you could possibly quantify may life and yours? I truly try to empathize with your pain, yet you disregard mine. I've gone my whole life with the grand majority of females thinking I'm disgusting, and that my ability to disagree with people made me the asshole, not matter what it was. I've been told that I'm not good enough, by most people. Unlike you I never let them convince me, because they don't define me: I do! Fuck you, and anyone else for that matter: I know pain, and you couldn't fathom my rage."

Said To Will

 * "You're gonna have a hard life; you're going to lose everything fighting to not lose anything."
 * "You can be the outcast; you can make the choice; the choice that no one else can make: the right choice."
 * "That's your power, your greatest gift; you can bear their pain, without breaking; it can make you stronger, if you allow yourself to feel it, embrace it; they will make you more powerful than you could ever imagine; feel pain; feel fear; feel rage, but chose to heal, to overcome, to forgive. Show the world what a superhuman looks like. I believe in Knight Owl."
 * "There are more people alive and free, because of what you did. Those people will tell their children, and their children's children about how a someone cared to save them; that's a lot better than what anyone else could say; You should be proud: I know I am." - Henri Ducard
 * "I'm not the Batman anymore." - Richard Barrison
 * "You tried to play hero, and now it's going to blow up in your face, and destroy everything you care about." - Harvey Dent
 * "You gotta have heart, because it's the one thing that makes a fighter that can't be taught. You can teach anyone the moves; anyone can learn all these new fighting styles, but not everyone's got the fire to take pain and make it strength. You gotta have heart if you want to be anything worth being in life, and kid, you've got more heart than anyone I've ever met." - The Wildcat
 * "There's something different about you; it's the girl. You love her, and your mysterious opponent knows it and will use that against you. Is she worth it?" - Shiva
 * "Knight Owl isn't just a stupid fucking costume you put on, nor is it just who you really are. Much more than that: Knight Owl is a promise. A promise to anyone that when forces conspire to harm them, so too is there a force planning to protect them. It's a promise you've made by being just and vehement; by being yourself. A lot of people have died for this promise, and I wish I could say the one thing that will take their weight off your shoulders, but I can't. What I can say, is they all believed in that promise, and wanted to see you keep it. So what will be: stay here and mourn people who can't feel anything anymore, or prove to the world that they trained a person who always keeps his promise?" - Thaddeus Tucker

Said About Will

 * "He's basically a byronic hero; a hero who hates being one."
 * "I would trust him with absolute power; I think he has an integrity and just mind; he lives to do the right thing, and he's one of the few I believe knows what that is: a true phronimos" - Barda
 * “He’s more legend than man now. He doesn’t care about race or gender; he doesn’t care about the law or jurisdiction; he only cares about what’s right.”
 * "He's smart, intuitive, brutal, and he lacks any semblance of a personal life. He'd be a fantastic Black Knight, but he questions things, especially authority. He cares more about the details than the bigger picture [saving people/preventing collateral damage]. He cares, and that will prevent him from ever making a difference here at Checkmate." - Adeline Waller

Will's Favorite Quotes

 * "A return to first principles in a republic is sometimes caused by the simple virtues of one man. His good example has such an influence that the good men strive to imitate him, and the wicked are ashamed to lead a life so contrary to his example. " - Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli
 * “Everyone sees what you appear to be, few experience what you really are.” - Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli
 * "To attempt the destruction of our passions is the height of folly. What a noble aim is that of the zealot who tortures himself like a madman in order to desire nothing, love nothing, feel nothing, and who, if he succeeded, would end up a complete monster!" - Denis Diderot
 * "To say that man is a compound of strength and weakness, light and darkness, smallness and greatness, is not to indict him, it is to define him." - Denis Diderot
 * "We swallow greedily any lie that flatters us, but we sip only little by little at a truth we find bitter." - Denis Diderot
 * "The philosopher has never killed any priests, whereas the priest has killed a great many philosophers." - Denis Diderot
 * "Every man has his dignity. I'm willing to forget mine, but at my own discretion and not when someone else tells me to." - Denis Diderot
 * "Man will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest." - Denis Diderot
 * "Disturbances in society are never more fearful than when those who are stirring up the trouble can use the pretext of religion to mask their true designs." - Denis Diderot
 * "Gaiety — a quality of ordinary men. Genius always presupposes some disorder in the machine." - Denis Diderot
 * "The general interest of the masses might take the place of the insight of genius if it were allowed freedom of action." - Denis Diderot
 * "It is said that desire is a product of the will, but the converse is in fact true: will is a product of desire." - Denis Diderot
 * "There are things I can't force. I must adjust. There are times when the greatest change needed is a change of my viewpoint. " - Denis Diderot
 * "It is very important not to mistake hemlock for parsley, but to believe or not believe in God is not important at all." - Denis Diderot
 * "Pithy sentences are like sharp nails which force truth upon our memory." - Denis Diderot
 * "Morals are in all countries the result of legislation and government; they are not African or Asian or European: they are good or bad." - Denis Diderot
 * "There is no moral precept that does not have something inconvenient about it." - Denis Diderot
 * "The possibility of divorce renders both marriage partners stricter in their observance of the duties they owe to each other. Divorces help to improve morals and to increase the population." - Denis Diderot
 * "Mistakes are always forgivable, if one has the courage to admit them." - Bruce Lee
 * "Knowledge will give you power, but character respect." - Bruce Lee
 * "Physical fitness is not only one of the most important keys to a healthy body, it is the basis of dynamic and creative intellectual activity." - John Fitzgerald Kennedy
 * "The cost of freedom is always high, but Americans have always paid it. And one path we shall never choose, and that is the path of surrender, or submission." - John Fitgerald Kennedy
 * "You sold us out, Clark. You gave them the power that should have been ours. Just like your parents taught you. My parents taught me a different lesson... lying on this street... shaking in deep shock... dying for no reason at all. They showed me that the world only makes sense when you force it to." - Batman
 * "You don't develop courage by being happy in your relationships everyday. You develop it by surviving difficult times, and challenging adversity." - Epicurus
 * "The misfortune of the wise is better than the prosperity of the fool." - Epicurus
 * "Misfortune seldom intrudes upon the wise man; his greatest and highest interests are directed by reason throughout the course of life." - Epicurus
 * "Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power." - Abraham Lincoln
 * "He who does not punish evil commands it to be done." - Leonardo da Vinci
 * "Every man is guilty of the good he did not do." - Voltaire
 * "Great and Good are seldom the same man." - Winston Churchill
 * "Think like a man of action, act like a man of thought." - Henri Bergson
 * "To become truly great, one has to stand with people, not above them." - Charles de Montesquieu
 * "There has to be evil so that good can prove its purity above it." -  Buddha
 * "May you live your life as if the maxim of your actions were to become universal law." - Immanuel Kant
 * "It's choice - not chance - that determines your destiny." -  Jean Nidetch
 * "Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls; the most massive characters are seared with scars." -  Kahlil Gibran
 * "Science may have found a cure for most evils; but it has found no remedy for the worst of them all - the apathy of human beings." -Hellen Keller
 * "Be the change you want to see in the world." -Mahatma Gandhi
 * "If there's something wrong, those who have the ability to take action have the responsibility to take action." - Thomas Jefferson
 * "If there is something to pardon in everything, there is also something to condemn." - Nietzsche
 * "Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful." - Edward Gibbon
 * "I'm a Catholic whore, currently enjoying congress out of wedlock with my black Jewish boyfriend who works at a military abortion clinic. Hail Satan, and have a lovely afternoon madam." Colin Firth as Harry Hart in Kingsman: The Secret Service.
 * "I’m sorry, but I don’t want to be an emperor. That’s not my business. I don’t want to rule or conquer anyone. I should like to help everyone - if possible - Jew, Gentile - black man - white. We all want to help one another. Human beings are like that. We want to live by each other’s happiness - not by each other’s misery. We don’t want to hate and despise one another. In this world there is room for everyone. And the good earth is rich and can provide for everyone. The way of life can be free and beautiful, but we have lost the way. Greed has poisoned men’s souls, has barricaded the world with hate, has goose-stepped us into misery and bloodshed. We have developed speed, but we have shut ourselves in. Machinery that gives abundance has left us in want. Our knowledge has made us cynical. Our cleverness, hard and unkind. We think too much and feel too little. More than machinery we need humanity. More than cleverness we need kindness and gentleness. Without these qualities, life will be violent and all will be lost.... The aeroplane and the radio have brought us closer together. The very nature of these inventions cries out for the goodness in men - cries out for universal brotherhood - for the unity of us all. Even now my voice is reaching millions throughout the world - millions of despairing men, women, and little children - victims of a system that makes men torture and imprison innocent people. To those who can hear me, I say - do not despair. The misery that is now upon us is but the passing of greed - the bitterness of men who fear the way of human progress. The hate of men will pass, and dictators die, and the power they took from the people will return to the people. And so long as men die, liberty will never perish. ..... Soldiers! don’t give yourselves to brutes - men who despise you - enslave you - who regiment your lives - tell you what to do - what to think and what to feel! Who drill you - diet you - treat you like cattle, use you as cannon fodder. Don’t give yourselves to these unnatural men - machine men with machine minds and machine hearts! You are not machines! You are not cattle! You are men! You have the love of humanity in your hearts! You don’t hate! Only the unloved hate - the unloved and the unnatural! Soldiers! Don’t fight for slavery! Fight for liberty! In the 17th Chapter of St Luke it is written: “the Kingdom of God is within man” - not one man nor a group of men, but in all men! In you! You, the people have the power - the power to create machines. The power to create happiness! You, the people, have the power to make this life free and beautiful, to make this life a wonderful adventure. Then - in the name of democracy - let us use that power - let us all unite. Let us fight for a new world - a decent world that will give men a chance to work - that will give youth a future and old age a security. By the promise of these things, brutes have risen to power. But they lie! They do not fulfil that promise. They never will! Dictators free themselves but they enslave the people! Now let us fight to fulfil that promise! Let us fight to free the world - to do away with national barriers - to do away with greed, with hate and intolerance. Let us fight for a world of reason, a world where science and progress will lead to all men’s happiness. Soldiers! in the name of democracy, let us all unite!" - Charlie Chaplin
 * “Disobedience, in the eyes of any one who has read history, is man's original virtue. It is through disobedience that progress has been made, through disobedience and through rebellion.” - Oscar Wilde