Athar:
“When men destroy their old gods they will find new ones to take their place.” –Pearl S. Buck
“Wise was he who invented God.” --Plato
Some heathens whose Idol was greatly weatherworn threw it into a river, and erecting a new one, engaged in public worship at its base.
"What is this all about?" inquired the New Idol.
"Father of Joy and Gore," said the High Priest, "be patient and I will instruct you in the doctrines and rites of our holy religion."
A year later, after a course of study in theology, the Idol asked to be thrown into the river, declaring himself an atheist.
"Do not let that trouble you," said the High Priest -- "so am I."
-- Ambrose Bierce
Believers in the Source:
“Every man partakes of the divine nature in both his spirit and his flesh. That is why the mystery of Christ is not simply a mystery for a particular creed. It is Universal. The struggle between God and man breaks out in everyone, together with the longing for reconciliation. Most often this struggle is unconscious and shortlived. A weak soul does not have the endurance to resist the flesh for very long. It grows heavy, becomes flesh itself, and the contest ends. But among responsible men, men who keep their eyes riveted day and night upon the Supreme Duty, the conflict between flesh and spirit breaks out mercilessly and may last until death.” –Nikkos Kazantzakis
"Why so hard?" the kitchen coal once said to the diamond. "After all, are we not close kin?" --Nietzsche
“The greatest deepest defeat suffered by a human being is constituted by the difference between what one was capable of becoming and what one has in fact become.” –Ashley Montagu
Bleak Cabal:
“I hope for nothing.
I fear nothing.
I am free.”
--inscription on Kazantakis's tomb
in Heraklion, Greece
“Pandemonium did not reign; it poured.” –John Hendrick Bangs
“Hope in reality is the worst of all evils, because it prolongs the torments of man.” --Nietzsche
Doomguard:
“Just as the constant increase of entropy is the basic law of the universe, so it is the basic law of life to be ever more highly structured and to struggle against entropy.” –Vaclav Havel
Dustmen:
“He not busy being born is busy dying.” –Bob Dylan
“Death is more universal than life; everyone dies but not everyone lives.” –A. Sachs
“From my rotting body, flowers shall grow and I am in them and that is eternity.” –Edvard Munch
Fated:
“Nobody can give you freedom, equality or justice or anything. If you’re a man, you take it.” –Malcolm X
Fraternity of Order:
“Law is order, and good law is good order.” --Aristotle
Free League:
“I would never die for my beliefs because I might be wrong.” –Bertrand Russell
“I would rather have a mind open by wonder than closed by belief.” –Garry Spence
Harmonium:
“Justice requires that to lawfully constituted authority there be given that respect and obedience which is its due; that the laws which are made shall be in wise conformity with the common good; and that, as a matter of conscience all men shall render obedience to these laws.” –Pope Pious XI
Mercykillers:
“Justice is truth in action.” –Benjamin Disralei
“The sword of justice has no scabbard.” –Antione
“Were it not for injustice, men would not know justice.” --Heraclitus
Revolutionary League:
“Where you find the laws most numerous, there you will also find the greatest injustices.” –Arcesilaus
"Rebels learn the rules better than the rule-makers do. Rebels learn where the holes are, where the rules can best be breached. Become an expert at the rules. Then break them with creativity and style." --Kristine Kathryn Rusch
“Just look at us. Everything is upside down. Doctors destroy health, lawyers destroy justice, universities destroy knowledge, governments destroy freedom, the major media destroy information, and religions destroy spirituality.” –Michael Ellner
(Still scouring The Secret Agent for a good quote)
Sign of One:
“Imagination is one weapon in the war against reality.” –Jules de Gaultier
“In the province of the mind, what one believes to be true either is true or becomes true.” –John Lilly
Society of Sensation:
"There is no more lively sensation than that of pain; its impressions are certain and dependable, they never deceive as may those of the pleasure women perpetually feign and almost never experience." –Marquis de Sade
"The great art of life is sensation, to feel that we exist, even in pain." –Lord Byron
Transcendent Order:
“It is by acts and not by ideas that people live.” –Anatole France
“He does not preach what he practices until he has practiced what he preaches.” --Confucius
Xaositects:
“You need chaos in your soul to give birth to a dancing star.” –Nietzsche
“Sometimes I’ve believed as many as 6 impossible things before breakfast.” –Lewis Carroll
"God is dead."
"They that give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." -Benjamin Franklin
"Our fathers were our models for God. If our fathers failed, what does that tell you about God?"
-Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club. (I think it's in the book, anyway. Don't have it on me, but most of the quotables of the movie are in the book)
Believers in the Source:
"What a piece of work is a man! How noble in reason! How infinite in faculty! In form and moving how express and admirable! In action how like an angel! In apprehension how like a god! The beauty of the world! The paragon of animals!"
-William Shakespeare, Hamlet
(Can be finished with, "And yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust?" and thereby becomes the statement of Dustman or a Doomguard. Sort of.)
Mercykillers
"Those who falter, and those who fall, must pay the price."
-Andrew Loyd Webber, "Stars", Les Miserables
Revolutionary League:
"It's only when we have nothing that we're free to do anything."
-Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club.
Ring Givers
"My bible teaches me when I help others, I'm really helping myself."
Stephen Schwartz, "Spread a Little Sunshine", Pippin
Sign of the One
"So you lie to make yourself happy, nothing wrong with that. Everybody does it."
Christopher Nolan, Memento
"Only after disaster can we be ressurected. It's after you've lost everything that you're free to do anything. Nothing is static. Everything is evolving. Everything is falling apart." - Tyler Durden Fight Club
The fear of death is more to be dreaded than death itself.
-Publilius Syrus
Death is not the worst; rather, in vain
To wish for death, and not to compass it.
-Sophocles
Xaositects:
What we imagine is order is merely the prevailing form of chaos.
-Kerry Thornley, Principia Discordia, 5th edition
Before the beginning of great brilliance, there must be chaos. Before a brilliant person begins something great, they must look foolish in the crowd.
-From the I Ching
Chaos is the score upon which reality is written.
-Henry Miller
When dealing with the insane, the best method is to pretend to be sane.
-Hermann Hesse
Sometimes the appropriate response to reality is to go insane.
-Philip K. Dick
'REDRUM'- the Shining
alternatively
' Heere's Johny!'- the Shining
Indeps:
"Liberty of thought is the life of the soul."- Voltaire
Doomguard:
"Weapons of mass destruction"- George W.
I felt like destroying something beautiful-the narrator
"Immortality- a fate worse than death" - Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary
Harmonium
"A closed mind is a tidy mind" - Saying of the Emperor, Warhammer 40,000
Mercykillers
"No. Not even in the face of Armageddon. Never compromise." - Rohrschach, Watchmen
Doomguard
The entirety of "Ozymandias," by Percy Bysshe Shelley
The Revolutionary League
"I don't think we really gave barbarism a fair try."
"If we could just find out who's in charge, we could kill him."
both by George Carlin
Xaositects
"Our only hope is insane leadership." - also by George Carlin.
"Existence is random. Has no pattern save what we imagine after staring at it for too long. No meaning save what we choose to impose. This rudderless world is not shaped by vague metaphysical forces. It is not God who kills the children. Not fate that butchers them or destiny that feeds them to the dogs."
"It's us. Only us."
--Rorschach, Watchmen (for any hardcore Bleaker or maybe Mercykiller)
"Streets stank of fire. The void breathed hard on my heart, turning its illusions to ice, shattering them. Was reborn then, free to scrawl own design on this morally blank world. Was Rorschach." --ibid
"Come...dry your eyes, for you are Life, rarer than a quark and unpredictable beyond the dreams of Heisenberg; the clay in which the forces that shape all things leave their fingerprints most clearly."
--Jon, Watchmen (for any Godsman)
"Those who fail to learn history are doomed to repeat it; those who fail to learn history correctly -- why, they are simply doomed."
Achem Drom'hm
"Here's everything I know about war: somebody wins, somebody loses, and nothing is ever the same again."
Admiral Constanza Stark
"The heavens burned,
the stars cried out,
And under the ashes of infinity,
Hope, scarred and bleeding, breathed its last."
Ulatempa Poetess
"Many say living in the Way is difficult. Is sleeping difficult? Is waking?"
Serenity Vikram Singh Khalsa
"We say atoms are bound by weak attractors. Why not admit the truth: the Universe is held together by love."(( loved this one so much I used it in a wedding toast))
MICHIO VON KERR,
Wayist physicist
"Humans say Hell is paved with good intentions. Why? Do they think there's a shortage of bad ones?"
Karm'Luk P'an Ku
"Between birth and death
lies desire,
Desire for life, for love,
for everything good.
And this is the source
of all suffering."
Outcast Consensus 17,
Why Existence?
"Only those born guilty Recognize
Innocence for what it is:
The rarest thing in the Universe,
And the most Precious."
THE ANOINTED,
The Finder of The Way
"The enemy of my enemy
is still my enemy."
Drago Museveni
"Come bitter Rain,
And wash from my Heart
That saddest of all Words:
Home"
Ulatempa Poetess,
"Song of My Exile"
"The soul is larger than the sky
Deeper than the ocean, or the abysmal dark
Of the unfathomed center."
-- Enoch Vere de Vere,
"Lamentations Sous-terre",
"Love? Truth? Beauty? I prefer negotiable securities."
--Doge Miskich Var Miskich, "All About Me"
"We are not the masks we wear.
But if we don them, do we not become them?"
Keops D'ao Tsumai, "Fortunes"
"To a god, a wall is but a line on the page. We are all naked, seen beyond seeing."
--Wayfinder Hasturi
a.k.a. "The Mad Perseid",
"Absolute power
corrupts absolutely.
Which is a problem.
If you're powerless."
--Drago Museveni,
"Manifesto"
"I trust fast poison
The stars to wink out
And you, my love--and you."
--Lyric from "The Void,"
by Minstrel d'Becevex
"You can't outrun Death forever.
But you can make the Bastard work for it."
--Major Korgo Korgar, "Last of The Lancers"
"The true quarry of any great adventurer is the undiscovered territory of their own soul."
--Lady Aenea Makros "The Metaphysics of Motion"
"To venture in the Fair Unknown, I must enter as I leave: A traveler, alone."
Anonymous
"Beneath knowing, understanding
Beneath understanding, seeing
Beneath seeing, recognizing
Beneath recognizing, knowing"
Keeper of the Way,
Vision of Faith
"Welcome twilight.
Welcome blackness.
Welcome inky night.
Only in darkness
can I see your soul."
Lost Verses of Krrendar
"The Rabid Dogs of Gallaphron
Can be trained to drool
At the ring of a bell.
Doesn't stop them from biting."
Karlos El Greeta-Stirra,
"Reflections of Rim-Salt,"
"The moth wants a star
The night wants tomorrow
The King wants what's far
Outside his sphere of sorrow."
"Tales of Queen Kysella,"
"Walk without footprints.
Breathe without breath.
Our lives leave no trace."
Motto of The Assassins' Guild,
"To the question of
life after death:
Not whether
such a thing exists,
but...What manner of life?"
"A Wayist Practicum"
Reverend Bem
"She wounds you
as a rose will wound you --
Not with her thorn.
"A rose will always wound you
with her beauty."
Harry Martinson
"It matters little how we die,
so long as we die better men
than we imagined we could be -- and no worse than we feared."
Drago Museveni
"What clings to a wall, But travels all the world?"
Unsolvable Riddle of Ski, Patriarch of Jill.
"You might say reality is the result of complex negotiations between the observer and the observed. But that is simply a point of view."
Michio Von Kerr,
"The Apotheosis of Reason,"
"The universe is bound in equal parts by arrogance and altruism.
Any attempt to alter this Would be suicide."
Dr. Walter Giles,
"The Value of Value,"
"Are you a monster?
Are you a freak?
Will you be my friend!
Or have you lost your way.
With trouble to pay,
When you come
to your journey's end?"
Empyrium Lullaby,
"I've always found
a fully deployed
battle group
to be the most
effective negotiator."
Admiral Constanza Stark,
High Guard Chief-of-Staff,
"I can no more
endure to view;
Wondrous sight
of so celestial hue."
Final diary entry of
Capt. Oswald Pierce,
Regarding his only love.
"The universe is perfect.
You cannot improve it.
If you try to change it,
you will ruin it.
If you try to hold it,
you will lose it."
Notes to Odo Chan
"We all wear
the twin masks
of emotion.
Happy or sad,
haunted or hunted,
You choose the mask,
you choose the risk.
You choose your own poison."
Last words of
Plethe the Pirate
"Gentlebeings,
I bid you welcome.
Welcome to the blood,
to the sweat, to the tears.
Welcome to your places
on the wall."
Admiral Constanza Stark,
"Address to War College Graduates,"
"Down where it was tangled and dark.
Down where the spirits feasted on carrion.
Down. Down. Down.
It was there, yes, the High-Hatted ones
forever screamed 'Eureka.' "
Yolin's Narrows of Decline
"The tyrant and the rebel
hold the same creed:
To act is to live."
War Heretics of Auden
"Beneath the web-thin simulacrum,
inundating and fecund,
live myth and manifold truths.
Not one point of view
can embrace them at a glance."
Council of One
"Destiny is the promise
I give to you.
Hope, the part you play,
is trusting me to
keep this promise."
The Prophetic Tetraglyphs
"Regarding the cerebellum,
there is a culture
and a presentation.
Both hold power and sway. "
Cuisine of the Lost Empire
"Around, around
and underneath,
the Trickster flies.
Catch him, catch him --
If he doesn't lose you,
lose you when he flies! "
Perseid Child's Game
"Her beauty shimmers
with the light of a new star.
But she is the other.
Touch her, and you will know death. "
Poet Templar
"Confine that which
you fear to the mirror.
Start with who is standing there.
Then smile."
Bogdo Geghen Seer of Agharta
"Cast your eye upon the changeling,
then look for the origin of change.
Perhaps it is in the eye. "
Luna, "Catalog of Companions"
"...Knock, knock, knock
on the devil's door.
Do not invite him to dinner;
his beasts will come for more."
High Priestess Misabo Ahm
in Triumvirate War Council
"On the plains of Galiolith,
Crystalline chimes herald a new beginning
For all who wish to hear them."
Ghillie Clethrad, Flumerian Hymns
"What is fate? Why do you ask?
The answer lies in the composing of
Light and Influence.
Nothing will fall to you early or late."
Rhyme of the Primeval Paradine
"Man is his own star.
His acts are his angels, good or ill,
While his fatal shadows walk
silently beside him."
Rhyme of the Primeval Paradine
"What is faith then but persistent hope
in the fact of relentless doubt."
Brother Carmen Jane
A Case For Consciousness
"Official secrets keep good lies
turning in every mouth."
High Senator Bonn
Fifteenth Congress of Tal
"In the absence of doubt,
there is no change."
The Memories
Not sure who wrote these but I consider them some of the finest modern statements of thought. it barely needs any edit to fit planescape's altruistic philosophical bent.
-Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobediance
Creepy, eh?
-JordarAd, Manuel of the Planes
[...]
Your Heinlein quote would be a basic start for underlining some of the key points of the Sensate philosophy.
"I claim not to have controlled events but confess plainly that events have controlled me." - Abraham Lincoln
"A good plan violently executed now is better than a perfect plan executed next week." - George S. Patton
A doubter might come closer to God than all the churchgoers.
-Anonymous.
Belivers of the Source:
Be all you can be.
-U.S. Army recruiting slogan
Bleak Cabal:
Did you think I'd crumble
Did you think I'd lay down and die
Oh no, not I
I will survive
Oh as long as I know how to love
I know I will stay alive
I've got all my life to live
I've got all my love to give
and I'll survive
I will survive
It took all the strength I had
not to fall apart
kept trying hard to mend
the pieces of my broken heart
and I spent oh so many nights
just feeling sorry for myself
I used to cry
But now I hold my head up high
and you see me
somebody new.
-Gloria Gaynor "I will survive"
Doomguard:
Q: Who governs the governors? A: Entropy.
-Frank Herbert
Dustmen:
While I thought I was learning how to live, I have learned how to die.
-Leonardo da Vinci
Fated:
Why should I care about posterity? What's posterity ever done for me?
-Groucho Marx
Fraternity of Order:
Knowledge is power.
-Francis Bacon
Free League:
Who is the more foolish? The fool, or the fool who follows him?
-Obi Wan Kenobi, "Star Wars" (Episode IV)
Harmonium:
Let him who desires peace, prepare for war.
-Vegetius "Epitoma Rei Militaris"
Mercykillers:
Never pray for justice, because you might get some.
-Margaret Atwood
Revolutionary League:
I reverse the phrase of Voltaire, and say that if God would have existed, it would be necessary to abolish Him.
-Mikhail Bakunin "On God and the State"
Sign of One:
All men who have achieved great things have been great dreamers.
-Orison Swett Marden
Society of Sensation:
What one has not experienced, one will never understand in print.
-Isadora Duncan
Transcendent Order:
Success is blocked by concentrating on it and planning for it.
-Tennessee Williams
Xaositects:
There's a fine line between genius and insanity. I have erased this line.
-Oscar Levant
Men come and the go and they trot and they dance, and never a word about death. All well and good. Yet when death does come - to them, to their wives, their children, their friends - catching them unawares and unprepared, then what storms of passion overwhelm them, what cries, what fury, what despair!
To begin depriving death of its greatest advantage over us, let us adopt a way clean contrary to that common one; let us deprive death of its strangeness. Let us frequent it, let us get used to it; let us have nothing more often in mind than death ... We do not know where death awaits us, so let us wait for it everywhere. To practice death is to practice freedom. A man who has learned how to die has unlearned how to be a slave."
- Michel de Montaigne
Patrul Rinpoche was a great master whose life was full of eccentric episodes that would bring the teaching [of Buddhism] to life. Instead of celebrating New Year's day and wishing people "a Happy New Year" like everyone else, Patrul Rinpoche used to weep. When asked why, he said that another year had gone by, and so many people had come one year closer to death, still unprepared.
- Sogyal Rinpoche
Both the above quotations were lifted from Sogyal Rinpoche's "The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying". Of course, there are heavy influences from Buddhist teachings in the philosophies of the Dustmen, the Transcendent Order, the Athar and the Believers of the Source.
"If the mind is not contrived, it is spontaneously blissful, just as water, when not agitated, is by nature transparent and clear"
Here's another good one:
"When people begin to meditate, they often say that their thoughts are running riot, and have become wilder than ever before. But I reassure them and tell them that this is a good sign. Far from meaning that your thoughts have become wilder, it shows that you have become quieter, and you are finally aware of just how noisy your thoughts have always been."
- Sogyal Rinpoche
lastly,
"...there is a gap between each thought. When the past thought is past, and the future thought not yet arisen, you will always find a gap in which the Rigpa, the nature of mind, is revealed."
- Sogyal Rinpoche
EDIT: And next, a quote from the RPG Nobilis that would be appropriate to Planescape as a whole:
" A bird flies in through the cage door; and when it sought to return, it found the cage door closed."
"If the bird was a god, then what would be its cage?"
- Nobilis, by S.R. Borgstrom
"A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects."
--Robert Heinlein
Also for the Fated and Godsmen, the entirety of The Moon is a Harsh Mistress and Stranger in a Strange Land, respectively.
"Greed, for lack of a better word, is good. Greed is right. Greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit. Greed in all of its forms – greed for life, for money, for love, knowledge has marked the upward surge of mankind."
- Wall Street
Scientia Ipsa Potestas Est
(Knowledge itself is power)
The previous statement is true.
Welcome to our corner of the universe."
Xaositects
"That is not dead which can eternal lie, and in strange eons even death may die"
-H.P. Lovecraft
Come to think of it, it was on one Planescape module...maybe Dead Gods....
And look at my sig!!!! Perfect Signer....it's from Neil Gaiman's Sandman
"This is a universe of boundless space, howlie. Matter and energy are rare and small. For us in this vast emptiness, even dreams are real."
- A.A. Anastasio, Radix.
"Man's path, through matter's warfields, led/
to this dream-realm that waits ahead.
Where we may lift our gaze and see,
Overhead, the soul's infinity."
- Alan Moore, Promethea
The Believers of the Source:
'What is a human being, then?'
'A seed.'
'A... seed?'
'An acorn that is unafraid to destroy itself in growing into a tree'
- David Zindell, The Broken God
"Biotechnology allows us to evolve in the directions in which we wish to be evolved: taller, stronger, healthier, higher IQ, more beautiful. We imagine this will be the future humanity. Absurd. If a tribe of Australopithecus had set down to design the next evolutionary breakthrough, they would have planned something that could run faster, see further, smell better, have sharper nails to grub out insects and roots. They would not have planned talking, thinking, toolmaking H. sapiens."
- Ian McDonald, Evolution's Shore.
The Athar:
"No, me love. Killing a god cannot make you one. It can only set you free."
- Joseph Rheaume, Pirate Jesus
One for the Dustmen:
"That is not dead which can eternal lie, and in strange eons even death may die"
-H.P. Lovecraft
Come to think of it, it was on one Planescape module...maybe Dead Gods....
It was in Dead Gods, with the caption of something like "Some Prime, proving that they're not all Clueless."