History Quotes / RetiredMonster

'''Vegeta:''' (''stands there, exasperated'') [[{{Catchphrase}} ...God...damn it...Nappa...]]

->''"Meier did [[NoodleIncident something terrible]] in a war he tries to forget. He did it over and over, and at the time he’d freely admit he enjoyed it. His side lost, though, and the victors, along with his own ashamed people, have hunted his fellow soldiers down one by one. Through the years since, he’s heard people talk about how terrible it was, he’s seen them put up monuments to the dead and the martyrs, and his desire to escape justice has become a backwards kind of guilt. His conscience tugs at him not so much for his sins, but for anything that reminds him of the man who committed them. He’s gradually conflated this with his fear of capture, coming to believe that any trace of the man he was will somehow alert those who (he imagines) pursue him for his crimes. Yet he can’t let go of his memories... or his [[CreepySouvenir souvenirs]].''

->'''Chaotzu''': I blew myself up trying to kill Vegetas' dumbass friend. Now he's out there making movies or some shit.

->'''Chaotzu''': I blew myself up trying to kill Vegetas' dumbass friend. Now he's out there making movies or some shit.

->"The times were different. I was different. The ''whole bloody world'' was different, okay? ... Killing was all I knew. Is that what you want to hear?! I killed. But I didn't just kill fifty. I didn't kill a hundred. I killed a thousand. I killed ''ten'' thousand! And I was good at it. And it wasn't for vengeance. It wasn't for greed. It was because I liked it. Cassandra was nothing. Her village was nothing. Do you know who I was? [[HorsemenOfTheApocalypse I was Death! Death on a horse!]] When mothers warned their children that the monster would get them, that monster was ''me''! I was the nightmare that kept them awake at night! ''Is that what you want to hear?! The answer is yes. Oh yes."

->"[[TimeAbyss The times were different]]. I was different. The ''whole bloody world'' was different, okay? ... Killing was all I knew. Is that what you want to hear?! I killed. But I didn't just kill fifty. I didn't kill a hundred. I killed a thousand. I killed ''ten'' thousand! And I was good at it. And it wasn't for vengeance. It wasn't for greed. It was because I liked it. Cassandra was nothing. Her village was nothing. Do you know who I was? [[HorsemenOfTheApocalypse I was Death! Death on a horse!]] When mothers warned their children that the monster would get them, that monster was ''[[TheDreaded me]]''! I was the nightmare that kept them awake at night! ''Is that what you want to hear?! The answer is yes. Oh yes."

->''When it was over, I submitted my resignation. At first my superiors, humans all, could not decide whether to accept it and let my fellow "natives" kill me once I no longer had the protection of the Imperial Army, or to refuse it and execute me for treason for having made the request in the first place. I recall I did not much care. They let me go. I vanished. Neither my Imperial superiors, nor the family or friends left behind who lusted for my horns, ever saw me or [[WickedCultured my music collection]] again.''

->"[[TimeAbyss The times were different]]. I was different. The ''whole bloody world'' was different, okay? ... Killing was all I knew. Is that what you want to hear?! I killed. But I didn't just kill fifty. I didn't kill a hundred. I killed a thousand. I killed ''ten'' thousand! And I was good at it. And it wasn't for vengeance. It wasn't for greed. It was because I liked it. [[ButForMeItWasTuesday Cassandra was nothing. Her village was nothing.]] Do you know who I was? [[HorsemenOfTheApocalypse I was Death! Death on a horse!]] When mothers warned their children that the monster would get them, that monster was ''[[TheDreaded me]]''! I was the nightmare that kept them awake at night! ''Is that what you want to hear?! The answer is yes. Oh yes."

->''When it was over, I submitted my resignation. At first my superiors, humans all, could not decide whether to accept it and let my fellow "natives" kill me once I no longer had the protection of the Imperial Army, or to refuse it and execute me for treason for having made the request in the first place. I recall I did not much care. They let me go I vanished. Neither my Imperial superiors, nor the family or friends left behind who lusted for my horns, ever saw me or [[WickedCultured my music collection]] again.''

-->-- '''''[[TabletopGame/NewWorldOfDarkness Midnight Roads]]''''''

-->-- '''''VideoGame/GodOfWarPS4'''''

-->-- '''Kreia''', ''VideoGame/KnightsOfTheOldRepublicII''

-->-- '''''VideoGame/KnightsOfTheOldRepublicII'''''

'''"Karidian"''': In order to save four thousand others! And if the supply ships [[AllForNothing hadn't come earlier than expected,]] this Kodos of yours might have gone down in history as a great hero!\\

->'''"Karidian":''' The revolution is successful, but survival depends on drastic measures. [[FinalSolution Your continued existence represents a threat to the well-being of society.]] Your lives means slow death to the more valued members of the colony. Therefore I have no alternative but to sentence you to death. Your execution is so ordered. Signed, Kodos, governor of Tarsus Four.\\
'''Kirk:''' I remember the words; I wrote them down. You said them like you knew them. You hardly glanced at the paper.
-->-- ''Series/StarTrekTheOriginalSeries'', "The Conscience of the King"

[[foldercontrol]]

[[folder:Film - Live-Action]]

->I quit because I'd had a belly-full of killing. But then, I'd rather be a killer than a victim.

->We are proud...of having been officers of the finest corps of the [[UsefulNotes/NaziGermany Third Reich]]. And if I were born again, I would do exactly what I did. ''Sieg Heil!''
-->-- ''Film/TheNightPorter''

[[/folder]]

[[folder:Literature]]

->[[UsefulNotes/TheHolocaust What we did]] was [[BlatantLies motivated only by survival]], and nothing about survival is pretty. I had dreams... yes. For years, I had them. Blackness, and sounds in the blackness. Tractor engines. Bulldozer engines. Gunbutts thudding against what might have been frozen earth, or human skulls. Whistles, sirens, pistol-shots, screams. The doors of cattle-cars rumbling open on cold winter afternoons. Then, in my dreams, all sounds would stop - and eyes would open in the dark, gleaming like the eyes of animals in a rainforest. For many years I lived on the edge of the jungle, and I suppose that is why it is always the jungle I smelled and felt in those dreams. When I awoke from them, I would be drenched with sweat, my heart thundering in my chest, my hand stuffed into my mouth to stifle the screams. And I would think: ''the dream is the truth.'' [[ArgentinaIsNaziLand Brazil, Paraguay, Cuba]]... those places are the dream. In the reality, I am still at Patin. The Russians are closer today than yesterday. Some of them are remembering that in 1943 [[NoPartyLikeADonnerParty they had to eat frozen German corpses to stay alive]]. Now they long to drink hot German blood. There were rumors, boy, that some of them did just that when they crossed into Germany: cut the throats of some prisoners and drank their blood out of a boot. I would wake up and think: ''The work must go on, if only [[DestroyTheEvidence so there is no evidence of what we did here]], or so little that the world, which doesn't want to believe it, won't have to.'' I would think: ''The work must go on if we are to survive.''
-->-- '''[[NaziGrandpa Kurt Dussander]],''' ''[[Literature/DifferentSeasons Apt Pupil]]''

->'''[[TheHero Harry Keogh]]:''' But have you no desire to use [[SoulJar such remains]], like Thibor, to [[RiseFromYourGrave raise yourself up again]]?\\
'''[[OurVampiresAreDifferent Faethor Ferenczy]]:''' You are naive, Harry. If I could, I probably would. But how? I died here and may not depart this spot. And anyway, I know you will destroy whatever Thibor left buried in that castle a thousand years ago - if it has survived. But a thousand years, Harry - think of it! Even I don't know if vampire protoplasm can live that long in those circumstances.\\
'''Harry Keogh:''' But it might have survived. Doesn't that... interest you?\\
'''Faethor Ferenczy:''' Harry, let me tell you something. Believe me if you like, or disbelieve, but I am at peace - with myself, anyway. I have had my day, and [[GracefulLoser I am satisfied]]. If you had lived for thirteen-hundred years, perhaps you might understand.
-->-- ''Literature/{{Necroscope}} II: Wamphyri''

->With one thing and another, it took about half a year for the Rebellion on Devaron to be put down. Rebellions are drawn-out affairs, even the failures. When it was over, [[ScrewThisImOuttaHere I submitted my resignation]]. At first my superiors, humans all, could not decide whether to accept it and let my fellow "natives" [[TheDogBitesBack kill me]] once I no longer had the protection of the Imperial Army, or to refuse it and execute me for treason for having made the request in the first place.
->I recall I did not much care.
->[[KarmaHoudini They let me go]].
->I vanished. Neither my Imperial superiors, nor the family or friends left behind who lusted for my horns, ever saw me or [[WickedCultured my music collection]] again.

[[/folder]]

[[folder:Live-Action TV]]

->You think I'm unaffected by what I did? That I don't hear them screaming every time I close my eyes? It would be so much simpler if I was just one thing, wouldn't it? The mad scientist who made that killing machine, or the physician who's dedicated his life to serving this town. The fact that I'm both bewilders you.
-->-- '''Jex''', ''Series/DoctorWho'', [[Recap/DoctorWhoS33E3ATownCalledMercy "A Town Called Mercy"]]

->[[TimeAbyss The times were different]]. I was different. The ''whole bloody world'' was different, okay? ... Killing was all I knew. Is ''that'' what you want to hear?! I killed, but I didn't just kill fifty, I didn't kill a hundred. I killed a thousand. I killed TEN thousand! And [[BloodKnight I was good at it.]] And it wasn't for vengeance, it wasn't for greed. [[EvilFeelsGood It was because I liked it]]. [[MysteriousWaif Cassandra]] was nothing. [[DoomedHometown Her village]] was ''nothing''. Do you know who I was? I was Death! Death on a horse! When mothers warned their children that the monster would get them, that monster was ''[[TheDreaded me]]''! I was the nightmare that kept them awake at night! IS THAT WHAT YOU WANT TO HEAR?! ''(calms himself)'' The answer is yes. Oh yes.
-->-- '''Methos''', ''[[Series/{{Highlander}} Highlander: The Series]]'', "Comes a Horseman"

->I ain't takin' your guilt money. When I was bangin', we used to clear 60 Gs a month. I seen guys shot down execution-style. I didn't give a shit. Then I got caught. Darnell was born my first year in. Never saw him once, not even a picture. I can't take back the bad I done. All I can do is to make my own way, like I been doin'. You understand. Ain't pride, Frank.
-->-- ''Series/HouseOfCardsUS''

->'''"Karidian":''' The revolution is successful, but survival depends on drastic measures. [[FinalSolution Your continued existence represents a threat to the well-being of society]]. Your lives means slow death to the more valued members of the colony. Therefore I have no alternative but to sentence you to death. Your execution is so ordered. Signed, Kodos, governor of Tarsus Four.\\
'''Kirk:''' I remember the words; I wrote them down. [[MyGreatestFailure You said them like you knew them]]. You hardly glanced at the paper.

[[/folder]]

[[folder:Music]]

[[/folder]]

[[folder:Tabletop Games]]

->[[MultipleChoicePast Meier]] did [[NoodleIncident something terrible]] in a war he tries to forget. He did it over and over, and at the time he’d freely admit he enjoyed it. His side lost, though, and the victors, along with his own ashamed people, have hunted his fellow soldiers down one by one. Through the years since, he’s heard people talk about how terrible it was, he’s seen them put up monuments to the dead and the martyrs, and his desire to escape justice has become a backwards kind of guilt. His conscience tugs at him not so much for his sins, but for anything that reminds him of the man who committed them. He’s gradually conflated this with his fear of capture, coming to believe that any trace of the man he was will somehow alert those who (he imagines) pursue him for his crimes. Yet he can’t let go of his memories... or his [[CreepySouvenir souvenirs]].
-->-- ''[[TabletopGame/NewWorldOfDarkness Midnight Roads]]''

[[/folder]]

[[folder:Video Games]]

->"How are things in the pastry corps, Nimdok? Tell me again how you saw the smoke from the furnaces and you thought they might be roasting chickens? Or don’t you want to talk about all that, about your pal, the Good Doktor Mengele? For everyone else, it must be Hell, but it must be Heaven for you, eh, my good friend…we’re so much alike… [[InLoveWithYourCarnage we enjoy the same pleasures,]] mein good brother."
-->--'''AM''' to Nimdok, ''VideoGame/IHaveNoMouthAndIMustScream''

->Father Armand was silent, for a long time. He glanced over at the head on a stake. "A Hunnic trophy," he said. "I think the man was a Visigoth. He died at the Battle of Catalaunian Fields. I keep it here so that I may see it every day and remember."\\

"Sometimes... I miss it."

->What do you wish to hear? That I once believed in the code of the Jedi? That I felt the call of the Sith, that perhaps, once, I held the galaxy by its throat? That for every good work that I did, I brought equal harm upon the galaxy? That perhaps what the greatest of the Sith Lords knew of evil, they learned from me?"
-->-- '''[[spoiler:Kreia]]''', ''VideoGame/KnightsOfTheOldRepublicII''

[[/folder]]

[[folder:Webcomics]]

->Truth and beauty are wonderful words, but shrapnel is shrapnel, and at the end of the day, I am alone with what I have done.\\
(alt text: "We buried truth under playgrounds.")

[[/folder]]

[[folder:Web Video]]

->'''Shuck:''' My bloodletting days are behind me.
->'''Ludwig:''' ''Right'' behind you.
->'''Shuck:''' [[TheAtoner I'm not going back. If that means being a joke to you, then fuck it.]] Hope you get a good long laugh out of it.

[[/folder]]

[[folder:Real Life]]

->''During cross-examination, prosecutor Hausner asked Eichmann if he considered himself guilty of the murder of millions of Jews. Eichmann replied: "Legally not, but in the human sense … yes, for I am guilty of having deported them". When Hausner produced as evidence a quote by Eichmann in 1945 stating: "I will leap into my grave laughing because the feeling that I have five million human beings on my conscience is for me a source of extraordinary satisfaction", Eichmann countered the claim saying that he was referring only to "enemies of the Reich".''
-->--'''Edward Snappmann''', "The Adolf Eichmann Trial, 1961"

[[/folder]]

->''You have to be trusted by the people that you lie to\\
So that when they turn their backs on you,\\
You'll get the chance to put the knife in\\
You gotta keep one eye looking over your shoulder\\
You know it's going to get harder,\\
And harder, and harder as you get older\\
And in the end you'll pack up and fly down south,\\
Hide your head in the sand, just another sad old man,\\
All alone and dying of cancer''
-->--'''Pink Floyd - Dogs'''

-->--'''Deckard''', ''Film/BladeRunner''

-->--''Series/HouseOfCardsUS''

-->--''Series/StarTrekTheOriginalSeries'', "The Conscience of the King"

->[[TimeAbyss The times were different]]. I was different. The ''whole bloody world'' was different, okay? ... Killing was all I knew. Is ''that'' what you want to hear?! I killed, but I didn't just kill fifty, I didn't kill a hundred. I killed a thousand. I killed TEN thousand! And [[BloodKnight I was good at it.]] And it wasn't for vengeance, it wasn't for greed. [[EvilFeelsGood It was because I liked it]]. [[MysteriousWaif Cassandra]] was nothing. [[DoomedHometown Her village]] was ''nothing''. Do you know who I was? I was Death! Death on a horse! When mothers warned their children that the monster would get them, that monster was ''[[TheDreaded me]]''! I was the nightmare that kept them awake at night! IS THAT WHAT YOU WANT TO HEAR?! ''(calms himself)'' The answer is yes. Oh yes.
-->--'''Methos''', ''[[Series/{{Highlander}} Highlander: The Series]]'' ("Comes a Horseman")

->You think I'm unaffected by what I did? That I don't hear them screaming every time I close my eyes? It would be so much simpler if I was just one thing, wouldn't it? The mad scientist who made that killing machine, or the physician who's dedicated his life to serving this town. The fact that I'm both bewilders you.
-->--'''Jex''', ''Series/DoctorWho'', [[Recap/DoctorWhoS33E3ATownCalledMercy "A Town Called Mercy"]]

->What do you wish to hear? That I once believed in the code of the Jedi? That I felt the call of the Sith, that perhaps, once, I held the galaxy by its throat? That for every good work that I did, I brought equal harm upon the galaxy? That perhaps what the greatest of the Sith Lords knew of evil, they learned from me?"
-->--'''[[spoiler:Kreia]]''', ''KnightsOfTheOldRepublic II''

->Truth and beauty are wonderful words, but shrapnel is shrapnel, and at the end of the day, I am alone with what I have done. (alt text: "We buried truth under playgrounds.")
-->--''Webcomic/ASofterWorld''

-->''Midnight Roads,'' TabletopGame/NewWorldOfDarkness

-> We are proud...of having been officers of the finest corps of the [[UsefulNotes/NaziGermany Third Reich]]. And if I were born again, I would do exactly what I did. -Sieg Heil!
-->-- ''TheNightPorter''

->[[UsefulNotes/TheHolocaust What we did]] was [[BlatantLies motivated only by survival]], and nothing about survival is pretty. I had dreams... yes. For years, I had them. Blackness, and sounds in the blackness. Tractor engines. Bulldozer engines. Gunbutts thudding against what might have been frozen earth, or human skulls. Whistles, sirens, pistol-shots, screams. The doors of cattle-cars rumbling open on cold winter afternoons. Then, in my dreams, all sounds would stop - and eyes would open in the dark, gleaming like the eyes of animals in a rainforest. For many years I lived on the edge of the jungle, and I suppose that is why it is always the jungle I smelled and felt in those dreams. When I awoke from them, I would be drenched with sweat, my heart thundering in my chest, my hand stuffed into my mouth to stifle the screams. And I would think: ''the dream is the truth.'' [[ArgentinaIsNaziLand Brazil, Paraguay, Cuba]]... those places are the dream. In the reality, I am still at Patin. The Russians are closer today than yesterday. Some of them are remembering that in 1943 [[NoPartyLikeADonnerParty they had to eat frozen German corpses to stay alive]]. Now they long to drink hot German blood. There were rumors, boy, that some of them did just that when they crossed into Germany: cut the throats of some prisoners and drank their blood out of a boot. I would wake up and think: ''The work must go on, if only [[DestroyTheEvidence so there is no evidence of what we did here]], or so little that the world, which doesn't want to believe it, won't have to.'' I would think: ''The work must go on if we are to survive.''
-->--'''[[NaziGrandpa Kurt Dussander]],''' ''[[Literature/DifferentSeasons Apt Pupil]]''

->'''[[TheHero Harry Keogh]]:''' But have you no desire to use [[SoulJar such remains]], like Thibor, to [[RiseFromYourGrave raise yourself up again]]?
->'''[[OurVampiresAreDifferent Faethor Ferenczy]]:''' You are naive, Harry. If I could, I probably would. But how? I died here and may not depart this spot. And anyway, I know you will destroy whatever Thibor left buried in that castle a thousand years ago - if it has survived. But a thousand years, Harry - think of it! Even I don't know if vampire protoplasm can live that long in those circumstances.
->'''Harry Keogh:''' But it might have survived. Doesn't that... interest you?
->'''Faethor Ferenczy:''' Harry, let me tell you something. Believe me if you like, or disbelieve, but I am at peace - with myself, anyway. I have had my day, and [[GracefulLoser I am satisfied]]. If you had lived for thirteen-hundred years, perhaps you might understand.
-->--''Literature/{{Necroscope}} II: Wamphyri''
----
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