Warhammer 40k Commissar Quotes

You brothers-such a nest of rivalries. I warned him to make you sisters, that it would make things more civilized. He thought I was joking, I wasn't. - Malcador ~ Chris Wraight

The rewards of tolerance are treachery and betrayal. ~ Games Workshop

We know no fear. It was cut from our souls at birth. We can feel it only as an absence, as an empty shadow cast by the light of annihilation. In the face of a future of atrocity I stand mute, numb to the only feeling that would make me human. But I remember what fear was: its cold pulse in my veins; its echo in my ears. I remember fear, and remember that I was once human. I look towards what must come to pass and I wish that I could meet it as my ancestors did, with fear. The future deserves that, it deserves fear. ~ John French

The world goes quiet and warm.
I am dying, he thinks, I have failed and there will be nothing left, nothing but ash and hungering darkness.
Something within him dims, fluttering to nothing like a flame fading to cold embers.
He tries to raise his sword.
He is falling…
He was…
… running the ashes of a dead world through his fingers. ~ John French

There is no time to plan, there is no space to think. No respite. No forgiveness. There is only war. ~ Warhammer 40 000 Source Book

All of creation suffers, young ones. Only in accepting our own mortality can we make a difference. Only in bearing the burden of our failures can we find the strength to go on. Only in detachment from glory, or honour, or jealousy... from life itself can we hope to spare others from grief. We are Doom Eagles. And we are dead already. --
Librarian Secundus Thryn of the Doom Eagles ~ Simon Spurrier

What would you know of struggle, perfect son? When have you fought against the mutilation of your mind? When have you had to do anything other than tally compliance's and polish your armor? The people of your world named you "Great One". The people of mine called me slave. Which one of us landed on a paradise of civilization to be raised by a foster father, Roboute? Which one of us was given armies to lead after training in the halls of the Macraggian High Riders? Which one of us inherited a strong, cultured kingdom? And which one of us had to rise up against a kingdom with nothing but a horde of starving slaves? Which one of us was a child enslaved on a world of monsters, with his brain cut up by carving knives? Listen to your blue clad wretches yelling courage and honor, courage and honor, courage and honor! Do you even know the meaning of those words? Courage is fighting the kingdom which enslaves you, no matter that their armies outnumber yours by ten-thousand to one. You know nothing of courage! Honor is resisting a tyrant when all others suckle and grow fat on the hypocrisy he feeds them. You know nothing of honor! ~ Angron, Wahammer 40K

Everything is darkest," Xaphen mused, "before the dawn."

"That, my brother, is an axiom that sounds immensely profound until you realize it's a lie. ~ Aaron Dembski-Bowden

But they are many and he is alone.
This has not come to pass yet, he thinks, this is not happening. I am not dying. This is my fate, what shall be. This is the future, it has not happened yet. ~ John French

Regard the books,' Sinderman said,
'Are there some I should read? Will you prepare a list for me?' (asked Loken)
'Read them all. Read them again. Swallow the learning and ideas of our predecessors whole, for it can only improve you as a man... ~ Dan Abnett

They say he is elusive,' he said. 'You will hear that a lot. But listen: he is not elusive; he is at the centre. Wherever he is, that is the centre. He will seem to have broken the circle, drifted to the edge, right until the end, and then you will see that the world has come to him, and he has been waiting for it all along. ~ Chris Wraight

So I fight for a Father who I never loved, against a brother that I did. I defend an empire that never wanted me against an army that would have taken me in a heartbeat. ~ Chris Wraight

These things were in the past now, many long years ago, though the memory remained as solid and present as his heartbeats. Time's passage had made the events seem almost crazed, hyper-real, stretched across a surreal dreamscape that felt more like a skjald's embellished saga than the intact past. Perhaps it had not happened like that. Perhaps the Lion had taken his Stormbirds to the Tyrant's fortress, and he himself had teleported in. Perhaps it had not been Ogvai there, but Gunn, or someone else. Had Bjorn been there too? It was a long time ago, so doubtful, but Bjorn seemed to always have been there, right from the start, just waiting for his time to come to maturity. ~ Chris Wraight

Sulien held up the broken spear, one piece in each hand. "A warhammer did this?"
"You saw that hammer the Lightning almost hit Addolgar with. And that's not even the one he uses during battles. That one is bloody huge. Nearly as
big as the bastard's head."
Her father chuckled and stepped around her. "The only purpose of this spear was to protect you - and it did. Its job is now done." He started to
throw the pieces into a bin he kept for trash.
"Don't you dare throw that out."
"Why not? It's broken, and repairing it would be useless. It'l only break again."
"But you made it for me."
"You cling to what is meaningless, child. Just like your mother sometimes, only with her it's mostly grudges. ~ G.A. Aiken

A world of death is a world of stagnation, without the change that makes it worthwhile. What you call uncertainty, I call life itself. ~ Graham McNeill

The sternest commissar and the wildest hippie both share the same daydream: that a thing can be worth other than people are willing to give for it. ~ P. J. O'Rourke

I was amongst them – the first female pilot who had got admission to the Sturmoviks…Since my childhood I'd been lucky enough to meet good people. Wherever I studied, wherever I worked I would meet loyal friends, kind-hearted tutors. I was trained at the factory school by the old craftsman Goubanov, I was assisted by the engineer Aliev, who was the shift boss, in my transfer to the most important sector of operations – the tunnel. I was trained by the superb instructor Miroevskiy in the aeroclub, the secretary of the Ulyanovsk District Comsomol Committee gave me a hand at a very hard moment of my life, then there was Maria Borek from Leningrad, the Secretary of the Smolensk District Comsomol Committee, the Commissar of the Smolensk aeroclub…Was it really possible to count all those who had warmed my soul with their sympathy and human kindness and helped me to realize my dream! ~ Anna Timofeeva-Egorova

This is not our home. We can turn away and leave it to the skaven. We can abandon our brothers to slavery and atrocity at the paws of these beasts. We can go crawling back to Middenland. And when the skaven again come, when they bring this great horror against our homes, who will there be to stand with us? Who will help us fight? No, it is here we make our stand. A man can die but once. Do we die on our feet or on our knees? ~ C.L. Werner

We are all damaged now,' said Arvida, watching the approach. 'All but you.' Yesugei sat back against the curve of the hull. 'No living thing is undamaged.' 'Yet you still smile. You still believe.' 'So do the rest. They need to remember, that is all. For now, all they see is slow defeat. They forget they have been... magnificent. They fight alone when all others are lost or manning walls far away. They come at enemy out of the glare of the sun. They have made him halt, turn back, come after us. They have forsaken the world they loved, have let it pass into ruin, all for this.' Yesugei thought of Qin Xa then, from whom there had never been a murmur of unbelief. 'They will remember, before the end. Other Legions have failed this test – they let their souls change. ~ Chris Wraight

The Hall of Tra was cold and lightless. His wolf-eye caught the ghost radiation of barely smouldering firepits. In terms of heat and light, the Wolves were making no allowances for human tolerances of comfort. They had given him a pelt and an eye to see through the dark with. What more could he want? He realised he wasn't alone. The company was all around him. Their body heat was barely detectable, dimmer than the dull firepits. The Hall was a massive natural cavern, ragged and irregular, and the Astartes were ranged around it, huddled and coiled in their furs, as immobile as a sibling pack of predators, gone to ground overnight, dormant and pressed close for warmth. Faces cowled by animal skin hoods were watching his approach. There were occasional grumbles and murmurs, like animals growling in their sleep or tussling over bones. As his eye resolved the scene better, the Upplander saw some evidence of movement. He saw hands casually raise silver bowls and dishes so that men could sip black liquid from them. He saw hunched shapes engaged in the counter game, hneftafl, that the Upplander had seen Skarsi playing. ~ Dan Abnett

Only one advantage still remained to Mandred, an edge that Vrrmik could never take from him. The soldiers who marched behind his banner were men and it was the hearts of men that beat within their breasts, hearts that could be moved to selflessness, could be stirred to valour and fired with courage. However numerous Vrrmik's horde, they were skaven, they were cringing beasts driven by fear and greed, incapable of believing in anything more vital than their own skins. Terror and avarice were the forces that drove them on, but such things could only stretch so far, overcome only so much. Mandred's troops could endure more than Vrrmik's monsters. That was the one strength the skaven could never equal. ~ C.L. Werner

Brain's got all kinds of gauges. You can know you're blind even when you're not; you can know you can see, even when you're blind. And yeah, you can know you don't exist even when you do. It's a long list, commissar. Cotard's, Anton's, Damascus disease. Just for starters. ~ Peter Watts

Not only the portraits on the walls, but also the shelves in the library were thinned out. The disappearance of certain books and brochures happened discretely, usually the day after the arrival of a new message from above. Rubashov made his sarcastic commentaries on it while dictating to Arlova, who received them in silence. Most of the works on foreign trade and currency disappeared from the shelves – their author, the People's Commissar for Finance, had just been arrested; also nearly all old Party Congress reports treating the same subject; most books and reference-books on the history and antecedents of the Revolution; most works by living authors on problems of birth control; the manuals on the structure of the People's Army; treatises on trade unionism and the right to strike in the People's State; practically every study of the problems of political constitution more than two years old, and, finally, even the volumes of the Encyclopedia published by the Academy – a new revised edition being promised shortly.
New books arrived, too: the classics of social science appeared with new footnotes and commentaries, the old histories were replaced by new histories, the old memoirs of dead revolutionary leaders were replaced by new memoirs of the same defunct. Rubashov remarked jokingly to Arlova that the only thing left to be done was to publish a new and revised edition of the back numbers of all newspapers. ~ Arthur Koestler

The skaven will not prevail! Here they will be broken, shattered upon our steel! They fight for domination, to sate their greed. We fight for our homes, for our families, for those we would keep safe from the horrors of Old Night. It is our cause that is just; it is our fight that is righteous! ~ C.L. Werner

Humankind will not be free until the last Kremlin commissar is strangled with the entrails of the last Pentagon chief of staff. ~ Edward Abbey

My mind is my weapon. My brother has his sword, King Robert has his warhammer, and I have my mind ... and a mind needs books as a sword needs a whetstone, if it is to keep its edge. Tyrion ~ George R R Martin

I am an Imperial commissar. I will enflame the weak, support the wavering, guide the lost. I will be all things to all men who need me. But I will also punish without hesitation the incompetent, the cowardly, and the treasonous.
Ibram Gaunt ~ Dan Abnett

Because it is on the anvil of pain that the gods forge heroes. ~ C.L. Werner

Perhaps everything you say is true and these are the death throes of the human race, but even if that was true, I would not lose faith. There must be hope, and I must fight for my Emperor against Chaos and it's servants.

That is insanity.

Wrong, it's being human. ~ Ben Counter

It's alleged that our scourge of God and punishment from heaven, Commissar Strelnikov, is Antipov come back to life. A legend, of course. And it's not like him. ~ Boris Pasternak

The gods couldn't be trusted. They gave a man everything he wanted, even when he begged them to stop. ~ Josh Reynolds

After a dozen deaths, you learn not to care. After a hundred, you can't even if you wanted to. ~ C.L. Werner

Up! Up into man-thing nest! Up to their streets and their cellars! Up to their granaries and their stockyards! Up to their homes and their temples! All-all belongs to Rictus! All-all belongs to Vecteek! ~ C.L. Werner

But my knowledge of Marxism was limited to knowing that Marx was a Jew, and that he had a long white beard. I said to Lunatcharsky (the political communist commissar for Education, 1918, fh) 'Whatever you do, don't ask me why I painted in blue or green, and why you can see a calf inside the cow's belly, etc. On the other hand you're welcome: if Marx is so wise, let him come back to life and explain it himself'. I showed him my canvases. ~ Marc Chagall

Watch-see, Holy One, my grave-rats will kill-kill all dead-things. We show-tell Fester-rats how to fight. Show-tell why Fester-rats should stay true to Horned One. ~ C.L. Werner

The lion snorted. 'You treat all as a game. That is why they sent for me - Malcador cannot trust you. No one can trust you. Your Legion is a rabble that would brawl among themselves if you were not there to smack their heads together.' 'If only they were more like yours,' said Russ, mockingly. 'Yes,' replied the Lion, exasperated. 'Yes. Is that so hard to imagine?'

Russ loosened his arms, letting Krakenmaw swing lazily before him. 'I know why you do this. I know why you conquer, world after world, driving your sons after every campaign Malcador finds for you. But our father won't do it, brother. He won't choose a favourite. And if He did, it wouldn't be you - it would be Sanguinius, or Rogal, or Horus. So you're wasting yourself, trying to be noticed. It doesn't work like that.'

The Lion let slip a scornful laugh. 'Not all of us are so without friends in the Palace, Leman, and you have no idea who our father favours. ~ Chris Wraight

That such lowly beginnings would soon become one of the world's strongest dictatorships is beyond fantastic. Lenin was essentially a pamphleteer. In 1918 he was identified as "Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars and journalist," and earned more money from publication honoraria (15,000 rubles) than from his salary (10,000 rubles).17 Trotsky was a writer as well, and a grandiloquent orator, but similarly without experience or training in statecraft. Sverdlov was something of an amateur forger, thanks to his father's engraving craft, and a crack political organizer but hardly an experienced policy maker. Stalin was also an organizer, a rabble-rouser, and, briefly, a bandit, but primarily a periodicals editor - commissar of nationalities was effectively his first regular employment since his brief stint as a teenage Tiflis weatherman. Now, ~ Stephen Kotkin

The dead do not squabble as this land's rulers do. The dead do not fight one another. The dead have no desires, no petty jealousies or ambitions. A world of the dead is a world at peace… ~ Graham McNeill