Mercenary Quotes

“I've made peace with myself.
Good for you. That's the hardest war of all to win.
Didn't say I won. Just stopped fighting.”
― Joe Abercrombie, Best Served Cold

“Somebody said to me, 'But the Beatles were anti-materialistic.' That's a huge myth. John and I literally used to sit down and say, 'Now, let's write a swimming pool.”
― Paul McCartney

“He sells his loyalties to the highest bidder. Shouldn’t even a mercenary have morals? That’s the textbook definition of a whore!”
― Nadia Scrieva

“Cotter leaned forward. "Where do you get off being such a bossy bitch?"

I looked him dead in the eyes. "I was born a bossy birch, so you can either roll with it or get rolled over.”
― Rachel Bach, Fortune's Pawn

“I've been on jobs like that before, everyone stuck on the money not the work, watching their backs every minute. Bad for your health and your business. We'll do this civilised, or not at all. What do you say?
"I say civilised," said Shenkt. "For pity's sake, let's kill like honest men.”
― Joe Abercrombie, Best Served Cold

“It is very easy to be a military strategist, a mercenary, or a king, but much harder to be a father.”
― Nadia Scrieva, Tides of Tranquility

“If I die, I want to die for something I believe in and take my word for it, there isn’t much out there. But you, Rachel, you’re worth dying for.”
- Tristan Jacobs”
― Joni Hahn, Agent I1: Tristan

“The devil would be powerless if he couldn't entice people to do his work. So as long as money continues to seduce the hungry, the hopeless, the broken, the greedy, and the needy, there will always be war between brothers.”
― Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem

“Hi. I'm here to enlist.

You can't. You aren't human.
You see, little fella, we don't do sociological stuff like "interspeciated workplaces." We're a crack company of space mercenaries. We do "hurting people" and "breaking things."

Sounds like my kind of fun.
-Schlock & Lieutenant Der Trihs”
― Howard Tayler, The Tub of Happiness

“So you're a fellow mercenary, then."

"Does this mean you'll afford me some professional courtesy?"

"Don't ask for that. All it means is that you might get to face the person who kills you. . . But only if it's convenient.”
― Howard Tayler, Emperor Pius Dei

“What is a whore?"
Unsurprisingly, that hadn't been one of the words we had shared over the last span of days. For half a moment I considered lying, but there was no way I could manage it. "He says your mother is a person men pay money to have sex with."
Tempi turned back to the mercenary and nodded graciously. "You are very kind. I thank you.”
― Patrick Rothfuss, The Wise Man’s Fear

“We either need an overwhelming force advantage, or we need more information."

"Reinforcements cut into our bounty, remember?"

"It's unanimous. We need more information.”
― Howard Tayler, The Blackness Between

“A Nation State or Cyber-Mercenary won’t hack e-voting machines one by one. This takes too long and will have minimal impact. Instead, they’ll take an easier approach like spear phishing the manufacturer with malware and poison the voting machine update pre-election and allow the manufacturer to update each individual machine with a self-deleting payload that will target the tabulation process.”
― James Scott, Senior Fellow, Institute for Critical Infrastructure Technology

“Mercenary? No, I'm only farsighted. Though perhaps that is merely a synonym for mercenary. At least, people who were not as farsighted as I will call it that.”
― margaret mitchell, Gone with the Wind

“My lover is dead.
And they think I killed him.
I'm running rogue.
Hell bent on both revenge and redemption. Whatever it takes, I'm going to finish a job that began nine months ago. An unauthorized assignment that turned horribly, devastatingly wrong. My miscalculation.
My fault.
My heart left shattered into incomplete pieces which will never wholly fit back together again.
But first I have to outsmart my former organization and the hired killer they've sent after me; a ghost from my past who knows my every move, who’s been inside my head, my heart, my dreams and memories: Jaxson.
I'm the traitor, Kylie. The rogue mercenary, Jaxon's newest assignment. And this is our love story.”
― Michele Mannon, Rogue

“Idle Jeffrey, when asking his cousin for money: "I fear I have not a mercenary tendency."

The Chancellor of the Exchequer and his cousin, Plantagenet Palliser: "Men must have mercenary tendencies or they would not have bred. The man who plows, so he may live, does so because, luckily, he has mercenary tendencies."

Jeffrey: "Just so, but you see I am less lucky than the plowman."

Palliser: "There is no vulgar error so vulgar, that is to say common or erroneous, as that by which men have been taught to say that mercenary tendencies are bad. The desire for wealth is the source of all progress. Civilization comes from what men call greed. Let your mercenary tendencies be combines with honesty, and they cannot take you astray.”
― Anthony Trollope, Can You Forgive Her?

“If he didn’t frighten me, I’d be a bloody fool.” Bronn gave a shrug. “Might be I could take him. Dance around him until he was so tired of hacking at me that he couldn’t lift his sword. Get him off his feet somehow. When they’re flat on their backs it don’t matter how tall they are. Even so, it’s chancy. One misstep and I’m dead. Why should I risk it? I like you well enough, ugly little whoreson that you are … but if I fight your battle, I lose either way. Either the Mountain spills my guts, or I kill him and lose Stokeworth. I sell my sword, I don’t give it away. I’m not your bloody brother.”
― George R.R. Martin, A Storm of Swords

“Essentially, the mercenary sets morality aside, or at best reorders the customary structures to fit the needs of his way of life. The great issues become how well he does his job, how faithfully he carries out his commission, how well he adheres to a standard demanding unswerving loyalties to his comrades. He dehumanizes the world outside the bounds of his outfit. Then anything he does, or witnesses, becomes of minor significance as long as its brunt is borne outside the Company”
― Glen Cook, Shadows Linger

“Do not say we work to go to Heaven because we are mercenary. Does a man love a woman and ask for her hand because he is mercenary? I love poetry; there's no money in it.”
― Fulton J. Sheen, Life Is Worth Living

“The warrior who went by the moniker "the Wolf" was a favorite subject of the troubadours of late. Every other song they sang was about him, praising his courage and prowess in battle as well as his handsome face and hair that was "black as sin". According to those songs, the Wolf was a warrior considered as intelligent and deadly as the wolf he was named for. But he was actually a lone wolf in those songs, because he spoke little and aligned himself with no particular clan, instead offering his sword arm for a price. He was a mercenary, but an honorable one. It was said he served only those with a just cause.”
― Lynsay Sands, Highland Wolf

“He just settled those hard silver eyes on the fae in front of us with no expectation of goodwill. The dragon mercenary who would rather isolate himself on a cold landscape had seen it before.”
― Sabrina Blackburry, Dirty Lying Dragons