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

Sometimes, even the very best course of action fails.

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.

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.

Which came first, the mind or the idea of the mind? Have you never wondered? They arrived together. The mind is an idea.

A society that fears knowledge is a society that fears itself.

In the end, living is defined by dying. Book-ended by oblivion, we are caught in the vice of terror, squeezed to bursting by the approaching end. Fear is ever-present, waiting to be called to the surface. Change brought fear, and fear brought destruction.