Are you saying a society wracked by plague is preferable to one wracked by indifference?

The mind is not a machine, it is an idea. And the Idea resists all attempts to control it.

The only thing binding individuals together is ideas. Ideas mutate and spread; they change their hosts as much as their hosts change them.

In this environment it was a simple matter for The Republic to maintain its structure. People did as they were told because they were working together, focused on a common threat, a shared enemy. But time passes. Fear becomes a memory. Terror becomes routine; it loses its grip.

Human spirit is the ability to face the uncertainty of the future with curiosity and optimism.

Science is a little bit more than a wonderful way of modelling and predicting; its a wonderful technical abstraction. I think science is a really wonderful technical abstraction.

Superstition is the need to view the world in terms of simple cause and effect.