Life & Wisdom Quote by Raymond E. Feist

Fantasy loves its banners and vows, but Feist is pointing at the seam where that romantic fabric tears. "Personal honour vs. the good of the many" isn’t just a tidy ethical dilemma; it’s a pressure test for identity. Honor, in epic storytelling, is rarely private. It’s reputation, lineage, oath-keeping, the story a character tells about themselves and needs others to believe. Feist frames it as a "key issue" because he understands how quickly a principled stance can curdle into vanity once it collides with mass stakes.

The phrasing does sly work. "The good of the many" sounds utilitarian, almost civic, but it’s also a narrative trap: who gets counted, who gets sacrificed, and who gets to declare the math. In Feist’s worlds (and in modern politics), leaders justify brutal choices by claiming they’re saving everyone, then quietly define "everyone" as the people who will remember their name.

The kicker is "unforeseen consequences", a phrase that undercuts both sides. It punctures the fantasy that either honor or pragmatism produces clean outcomes. The subtext is anti-triumphalist: even the "right" choice can breed disaster because complex systems punish certainty. Feist’s intent feels less like prescribing morality and more like warning against moral absolutism. The hero who refuses to bend might doom a city; the ruler who bends might invent a tyranny. The drama lives in that narrow corridor where ethics becomes logistics and character becomes collateral.