Everything in this Book Is the Opposite of True does remind me a little of Praise of Folly now, but I’d missed that one in my earlier education. I think Kur’Ik doesn’t have the right cultural grounding to appreciate it. Diablini seems more like a little bit Aristotle and a little bit Machiavelli. His first line is modeled on a quote from Matthew Arnold, “seasoned” with Gastonian speciesism.

Some other quotes I cranked out for Phil to use or, as he did, to discard:

“If some must be miserable, let all be miserable!”

–Parvus the Serf, The Street-Sweeper’s Manifesto

“Be generous, or be roadkill!”

–Anonoymous highwayman slogan co-opted by the wildly unsuccessful trader Charles the Thin, whose desire to be liked burned away his fortune in record time, mentioned disparagingly in The Macroeconomicon

“In Gnometown, the guardsman is a working-class hero. In Gastonia, the guardsman is a working-class traitor.”

–Guard Chief Garrier, quoted by Historian Herodon, Cross-Indexed Ruminations on Security [note: this is based on a real-life quote from Martin Amis]

“The strongest dividing force within and between nations is, has been, and ever will be the unequal distribution of property.”

–Melgar III, son of Gror, a warrior-king who joined Gastonia voluntarily and is widely considered one of its greatest statesmen, speech quoted in The Governator’s Manual [quote based loosely on James Madison’s The Federalist]