Nicholas Lamar Soutter Quotes

Sarah Aisling: I can't defend against these charges because I can't afford a litigator. But I can't afford a litigator because I've been charged.

Judge: You should have had insurance against contract suits.

Sarah Aisling: I did.

Judge: So what's the problem?

Sarah Aisling: They canceled my insurance when I filed the claim.

Judge: So sue them!

Sarah Aisling: I can't, I don't have a litigator.

Judge: That's very cute, Mrs. Aisling.

Never tell the same lie twice. Lies have to be fresh, constantly changing. You cheat on your spouse, come up with a new excuse every time you're home late. Don't, and you get eaten.

But it's not your fault. You can't control what other people do.

No, but I was responsible for my own actions. At some point we had abandoned responsibility and began fostering corruption in others so that we might shield ourselves from persecution by virtue of a common guilt. We did this in the name of profit, and we justified our crimes with the rationalization that, somewhere down the line, better people would safeguard our victims from us. I wasn't a looter or a moocher. I wasn't a producer either. None of us were. We certainly weren't capitalists. We were pillagers. Decency exists. That alone must make it important; even the great Darwin himself would say that. But we tried to cut decency out of others so as to lower the bar for ourselves.

We are relative creatures. The man who teaches his slaves to read is a saint in a world where slavery is legal, and a monster where it isn't. We aren't born knowing if we're good or bad. We decide by comparing ourselves to others - and by that yardstick it's no different to measure by our own successes than our neighbors failures, save that it's easier to corrupt the neighbor.

You see what you want to see. The truth is that the glass is both half empty and half full. What you can control is how you choose to see it.