Flint quotes from Black Sails

Flint

[to Silver] This is how they survive. They paint the world full of shadows and then tell their children to stay close to the light. Their light. Their reasons. Their judgments. Because in the darkness, there be dragons. But it isn't true. We can prove that it isn't true. In the dark there is discovery. There is possibility. There is freedom in the dark once someone has illuminated it.

Flint

I'm gonna go and see Richard. He can help me recreate the schedule.

Gates

Richard Guthrie?

Flint

Mm-hmm.

Gates

You think he's gonna help you?

Flint

Yes. Yes, I do.

Gates

Let's just for fun say that he doesn't. What then?

Flint

Then I'll forget about the schedule and go back to hunting fat, lazy merchantmen and everyone will be content.

Gates

This is one of those times where we pretend that we both don't know that you're lying.

Miranda

I'm sorry. You know I would never intentionally put you in any kind of danger.

Flint

What was your intent? What was it? To destroy everything we've tried to build here for the past ten years? Or was it just to embarrass me?

Miranda

To show you a way out of all this. To free you.

Flint

A way out? Have you no memory of how we got here? What they took from us?

Miranda

What does it matter now?

Flint

What does it matter?

Miranda

What does it matter what happened then if we have no life now? Because there is no life here, there is no joy here, there is no love here!

Flint

What are you talking about? What do you think I'm out there fighting for if not to make all those things possible here?

Miranda

You'll fight a war so we can make a life?

Flint

You don't get one without the other, my sweet.

Miranda

No. You're wrong. I sent that letter to show you that you're wrong. There is a life in Boston. There is joy there, and music, and peace. The door is open. I've opened it for you. And it requires no war and no blood and no sacrifice.

Flint

It requires an intolerable sacrifice.

Miranda

To accept a pardon?

Flint

To apologize.

Miranda

Apologize? Who will you be apologizing to?

Flint

To England. They took everything from us. And then they called me a monster. The moment I sign that pardon, the moment I ask for one, I proclaim to the world that they were right. This ends when I grant them my forgiveness. Not the other way around.

Let's say by some miracle we could dislodge the British from Nassau. I could not possibly hope to defend it with my numbers.

Flint

Your numbers? For every man in your camp, there are thousands somewhere in the West Indies living under the same yoke, chained in fields, pressed on ships, sold into indenture. When they see a sitting governor, protected by His Majesty's Navy, deposed by an alliance of pirates and slaves, how many consider joining that fight? How many thousands of men will flock to Nassau, join your ranks, and help you defend it? What does a colonial power do when the men whose toil powers it lay down their shovels, take up swords, and say 'no more'? Bring down Nassau. Maybe bring it all down.