4x game. best in class. lots of great quotes so i'm going to make this a daily post thread, because you can't stop me. (also if anyone wants to talk about it that's cool too i can't stop you either)

We sit together
the mountain and I,
until only the mountain remains.

--Li Po "The Yang Collection"

Information, the first principle of warfare, must form the foundation of all your efforts. Know, of course, thine enemy. But in knowing him do not forget above all to know thyself.
The commander who embraces this totality of battle shall win even with inferior force.

-- "Spartan Battle Manual"

Learn to overcome the crass demands of flesh and bone, for thy warp the matrix through which we perceive the world. Extend your awareness outward, beyond the self of body, to embrace the self of group and the self of humanity. The goals of the group and the greater race are transcendent, and to embrace them is to achieve enlightenment.

-- Chairman Sheng-ji Yang "Essays on Mind and Matter"

He held his arm too stiffly, and so was thrown back repeatedly, until at last I seized his forearm and snapped it back against itself.
His training suffered while the arm healed, of course, but I felt this was a lesson he must learn early and well.

-- Spartan Kel "Honing the Ki"

As the Americans learned so painfully in Earth's final century, free flow of information is the only safeguard against tyranny. The once-chained people whose leaders at last lose their grip on information flow will soon burst with freedom and vitality, but the free nation gradually constricting it's grip on public discourse has begun its rapid slide into despotism.
Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master.

-- Commissioner Pravin Lal "U.N. Declaration of Rights"

Symbols are the key to telepathy. The mind wraps its secrets in symbols; when we discover the symbols that shape our enemy's thought, we can penetrate the vault of his mind.

-- Lady Deirdre Skye "Our Secret War"

Resources exist to be consumed. And consumed they will be, if not by this generation then by some future.
By what right does this forgotten future seek to deny us our birthright?

None I say!
Let us take what is ours, chew and eat our fill.

-- CEO Nwabudike Morgan "The Ethics of Greed"

If out society seems more nihilistic than that of previous eras, perhaps this is simply a sign of our maturity as a sentient species.
As our collective consciousness expands beyond a crucial point, we are at last ready to accept life's fundamental truth:
that Life's only purpose is Life itself.

-- Chairman Sheng-ji Yang "Looking God in the Eye"

Man's unfailing capacity to believe what he prefers to be true rather than what the evidence shows to be likely and possible has always astounded me. We long for a caring Universe which will save us from our childish mistakes, and in the face of mountains of evidence to the contrary we will pin all our hoes on the slimmest of doubts. God has not been proven not to exist, therefore he must exist.

-- Academican Prokhor Zakharov "For I have Tasted the Fruit"

Therefore a wise prince will seek means by which his subjects will always and in every possible condition of things have need of his government, and then they will always be faithful to him.

-- Niccolo Machiavelli "The Prince"

And so we return again to the holy void. Some say this is simply our destiny, but I would have you remember always that the void EXISTS, just as surely as you or I. Is nothingness any less a miracle than substance?

-- Sister Miriam Godwinson "We Must Dissent"

From the delicate strands, between minds we weave out mesh: a blanket to warm the soul.

-- Lady Deirdre Skye "The Collected Poems"

If you can discover a better way of life than office holding for your future rulers, a well-governed city becomes a possibility. For only in such a state will those rule who are truly rich, not in gold, but in the wealth that makes happiness, a good and wise life.

-- Plato "The Republic"

What do I care for your suffering? Pain, even agony, is no more than information before the senses, data fed to the computer of the mind. The lesson is simple: you have received the information, now act on it. Take control of the input and you shall become master of the output.

-- Chairman Sheng-ji Yang "Essays on Mind and Matter"

The Morgans fear what may not be purchased, for a trader cannot comprehend a thing that is priceless.

-- Sister Miriam Godwinson "The Collected Sermons"

Man has killed man from the beginning of time, and each new frontier has brought new ways and new places to die. Why should the future be different?

-- Col. Corazon Santiago "Planet: A Survivalist's Guide"

Once a man has changed the relationship between himself and his environment, he cannot return to the blissful ignorance he left. Motion, of necessity, involves a change in perspective.

-- Commissioner Pravin Lal "A Social History of Planet"

Life is merely an orderly decay of energy states, and survival requires the continual discovery of new energy to pump into the system. He who controls the sources of energy controls the means of survival.

-- CEO Nwabudike Morgan "The Centauri Monopoly"