## Metadata - Author: [[Josiah Bancroft]] - Full Title: The Fall of Babel - Category: #books ## Highlights - Marat smiled. “… but my followers see me as a hod, someone who is not so unlike them. There’s a reason that the Sphinx’s Wakemen are, over and over, ostracized and rejected by the people they protect. They, like the Sphinx, are too strange, too… unapproachable.” Senlin found it telling that in Marat’s eyes, the Sphinx’s error had not been one of policy, but rather performance. ([Location 5807](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08Y8LC51M&location=5807)) - As Senlin listened to Marat again expose the lavishness of his vanity, it dawned upon him how simple the world was in the eyes of a zealot. Everyone was either an implement or an idiot, a rung or an impediment, and the Tower was but a toy he had promised himself. His was not a complex philosophy, but rather an august sort of childishness. Civility, wisdom, and empathy required growth, sacrifice, a willingness to change, but evil never grew up. ([Location 5819](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08Y8LC51M&location=5819))