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She looked Sensia in the eye. “I have no money to pay for this.” She had heard that the Culture survived without money, but hadn’t believed a word of it.

“That’s as well,” Sensia said reasonably, “I have no charge to levy.”

“You would do this out of kindness, or for my obligation?”

“Let’s call it kindness, but it’s my pleasure.”

— Surface detail by Iain M. Banks (Culture, #9)

Behave honourably and wish for a good death. He’d always dismissed it as self-serving bullshit, frankly; most of the people he’d been told were his betters were quite venally dishonourable, and the more they got the more the greedy bastards wanted, while those that weren’t like that were better behaved at least partly because they could afford to be.

Was it more honourable to starve than to steal? Many people would say yes, though rarely those who’d actually experienced an empty belly, or a child whimpering with its own hunger. Was it more honourable to starve than to steal when others had the means to feed you but chose not to, unless you paid with money you did not have? He thought not. By choosing to starve you became your own oppressor, keeping yourself in line, harming yourself for having the temerity to be poor, when by rights that ought to be a constable’s job. Show any initiative or imagination and you were called lazy, shifty, crafty, incorrigible. So he’d dismissed talk of honour; it was just a way of making the rich and powerful feel better about themselves and the powerless and poverty-stricken feel worse.

— Matter by Iain M. Banks, Iain Banks (Culture, #8)

A temple was worth a dozen barracks; a militia man carrying a gun could control a small unarmed crowd only for as long as he was present; however, a single priest could put a policeman inside the head of every one of their flock, for ever.

— Matter by Iain M. Banks, Iain Banks (Culture, #8)

everybody always thought they were right, and shared, too, the quaint belief that the very fervency of a belief, however deluded, somehow made it true.

— Matter by Iain M. Banks, Iain Banks (Culture, #8) (32%)

You know what they say, Huyler. Don’t fuck with the Culture. We are about to.

— Look to Windward by Iain M. Banks (Culture, #7)

“It must be a burden, not even being able to say you were just obeying orders.”

“Well, that is always a lie, or a sign you are fighting for an unworthy cause,

— Look to Windward by Iain M. Banks (Culture, #7)