Yes, for a time we were every bit as majestic as Stoker's scrawling or Lugosi's powder-pated mockery suggests. The others dub us "Fiends," and so we were - Princes of the Monsters. A miasmic dread hung over the kine, and soon the eldest Tzimisce did not even need to leave their enclaves to hunt. The kine, fearful of retribution, willingly sent a fraction of their swains and maidens into the spider's lair. And this would prove the elders' undoing, for the line grew complacent. Seated in their dining halls, sating themselves without a finger's motion, they brooded over past slights and reminisced over past victories. But most of all, they forgot.
So lethargic they became that even the minimal tasks of rulership and study become onerous. Rather than turn over all of their responsibilities to revenants, the elders procreated in record numbers. Soon the lands were overrun with ravenous childer...
—Vampire: The Masquerade - Clanbook: Tzimisce
Yet perhaps we Qartheen are too confined ourselves. We feel safe behind our walls and our laws, which no visitor can hope to follow, and by which any citizen who vouches for a guest always pays with his life. But like a ship in the Summer Seas, a city grows becalmed without fresh wind. "The greatest city that ever was or will be?" An epitaph. I would would prefer: "The greatest city that is".
—Xaro Xhoan Daxos, History and Lore of Westeros: Qarth
Who hustles the hustlers? Even agents of chaos can go rigid. They need a shake-up. I'm the shaker. They're going to like what I've got waiting in the wings. It's going to hurt so good...
— Damon Kiyota on The Dragon, The Secret World
Meanwhile, the rest of Europe and America enjoyed a prosperous peace. What did we gain? Complacency. In 1927, Adolf Hitler toppled the Kaiser and channeled the power of German science and industry into weapons production. The democracies, lulled by decades of uninterrupted affluence, ignored him. The Germans have had a six year lead in the race to unlock the secrets of nuclear fission. Now that the World War has begun, I wonder if the question is not whether Hitler will use his atomic weapons, but when.
If only the past could be changed...
If only the past could be changed...
—Frank Carson, in the "Nuclear Germany" ending, Titanic: Adventure Out of Time
For all their wisdom, our Archmasters forgot Ie Ictus' declaration: reality belongs to those who claim it. And as the witch-folk say, you claim your world simply by existing in it. Hermes' children are no exception. By building worlds to our design, then isolating ourselves within them, we Hermetics crossed The Tower with The Devil. Our stagnation demanded change.
—Mage: The Ascension - Tradition Book: Order of Hermes (revised)
If you want something to eat, you get it from a replicator. If you want amusement, you go to a holosuite. And if you need protection, you call for Starfleet. But someday, someday soon, you're going to have to learn to take care of yourselves. Because if I see you as helpless children, then how do you think the Borg see you? Or the Romulans, or the Cardassians, or the Klingons, or the Dominion? These empires look at The Federation, and they see a prize, a prize that we have forgotten how to protect. And if we don't change our ways, they're going to take it from us.
—Pascal Fullerton, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine ("Let He Who is Without Sin...")
We came from Caladan - a paradise world for our form of life. There existed no need on Caladan to build a physical paradise or a paradise of the mind - we could see the actuality all around us. And the price we paid was the price men have always paid for achieving a paradise in this life - we went soft, we lost our edge.
—From "Muad'Dib: Conversations" by the Princess Irulan, Dune
Hard times create strong men. Strong men create good times. Good times create weak men. And, weak men create hard times.
—G. Michael Hopf, Those Who Remain
The empire long united must divide, long divided must unite; this is how it has always been.
We were at our zenith then; worshipped throughout the Middle Worlds. Anything we wanted, we had. Gold, weapons, wine, women. Odin and Thor were the popular ones - along with Golden Boy, of course - but even Yours Truly had his share of songs and sacrifices. Ice Folk and Rock Folk were both at peace; Frey was happy with his bride and Skadi was on one of her trips to the North, meaning that there was no one there to cast a damper on the festivities.
Something, sometime, was bound to go wrong. We had all become far too complacent. Suspicion and Survival are twins – lose one, and the other soon follows.
Orthopox-13: The war was over! We didn't need the big guns!
Cryptosporidium: So what did we spend our money on?
Orthopox: (unenthused) Oh, poverty, education, health care... TRIVIA! UTTER, UTTER TRIVIA! OH, CURSE OUR GODS-DAMNED COMPLACENCY!
Cryptosporidium: So what did we spend our money on?
Orthopox: (unenthused) Oh, poverty, education, health care... TRIVIA! UTTER, UTTER TRIVIA! OH, CURSE OUR GODS-DAMNED COMPLACENCY!
Alex: The Council hasn't gotten better. They've gotten worse.
Lyle: We've had ten years of peace. That's your idea of "worse"?
Alex: The reason you've had peace is because you and the Council let the Dark mages do whatever they want. You know what they do to the people in their power. Why don't you ask them how good a deal they think it is?
Lyle: We've had ten years of peace. That's your idea of "worse"?
Alex: The reason you've had peace is because you and the Council let the Dark mages do whatever they want. You know what they do to the people in their power. Why don't you ask them how good a deal they think it is?
—Alex Verus: Fated
"But like many before him— and since— the General mistook peace for complacency, and mercy for lack of resolve. Now, as Krypton defends its tradition of tranquility, Zod discovers his error...
Van-Zee: These past years inside that bottle, we haven't been people— We've been pets! You tended to us, protected us, loved us— and gradually we lost our sense of initiative! Perhaps now we can begin to find it again!
Superman: W-what do you mean?
High Councilor: Look around you, Kal-El— A primitive wilderness, waiting to be tamed, to be conquered—! And if we cannot accomplish that, then perhaps we never deserved to be released from our bottle in the first place!
Superman: W-what do you mean?
High Councilor: Look around you, Kal-El— A primitive wilderness, waiting to be tamed, to be conquered—! And if we cannot accomplish that, then perhaps we never deserved to be released from our bottle in the first place!
Silver Surfer: You thought... the Galadorians had lost their way, didn't you? That they had stagnated?
Brandy Clark: Our lives are pointless! Warriors without a cause! It is leading to moral weakness. We were so easily corrupted during the Phalanx incursion.
Silver Surfer: And you sought to remedy that.
Ikon: No. what you are suggesting is preposterous!
Silver Sufer: Is it? Or was it just a matter of supplying the eager Dredd with the sensitive data he required... in the belief that the Spaceknights needed their ancient enemy to define them? To give them purpose?
Brandy Clark: Our lives are pointless! Warriors without a cause! It is leading to moral weakness. We were so easily corrupted during the Phalanx incursion.
Silver Surfer: And you sought to remedy that.
Ikon: No. what you are suggesting is preposterous!
Silver Sufer: Is it? Or was it just a matter of supplying the eager Dredd with the sensitive data he required... in the belief that the Spaceknights needed their ancient enemy to define them? To give them purpose?
—Annihilators #2
"In the years following our retreat from Earth, we grew insular and withdrawn. [...] A few centuries later, this status quo was formalized in the Nameless Treaty. We called it that because the human term "non-aggression pact" had no equivalent in our tongue. Alas, in time it did enter our Lexicon. We had grown soft, believing an empty human promise actually protected our soverein borders."
— Dominator head geneticist, The Dominator War
"You see, the [New] Republic spent decades doing nothing. And all along... we were preparing... for this day."
— Gideon Hask, Battlefront II (2017) Project: Resurrection DLC
"Evil does not sleep, Elrond. And in the moment of our complacency, it blind us."
—Galadriel, The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power
"Also, the problem is, when you think you’ve been without monsters for so long, sometimes you forget what they look like, what they sound like, no matter how much remembering your education urges you to do. It’s not the same when the monsters are gone. You’re only remembering shadows of them, stories that seem to be limited to the pages or screens you read them from. Flat and dull things. So, yes, people forget. But forgetting is dangerous. Forgetting is how the monsters come back."
—Pet
