In the end, the work of diplomats continues even while others fight. So, it's not necessarily true that everyone needs to march.

...where were answers to the truly deep questions? Religion promised those, though always in vague terms, while retreating from one line in the sand to the next. Don't look past this boundary, they told Galileo, then Hutton, Darwin, Von Neumann, and Crick, always retreating with great dignity before the latest scientific advance, then drawing the next holy perimeter at the shadowy rim of knowledge.

My first duty to write a gripping yarn. Second is to convey credible characters who make you feel what they feel. Only third comes the idea.

Why must conversions always come so late? Why do people always apologize to corpses?

Self-awareness is probably overrated. A complex, self-regulating system doesn't need it in order to be successful, or even smart.

It's how creativity works. Especially in humans. For every good idea, ten thousand idiotic ones must first be posed, sifted, tried out, and discarded. A mind that's afraid to toy with the ridiculous will never come up with the brilliantly original.

It is a paradox of Life that all species breed past mere replacement. Any paradise of plenty soon fills to become paradise no more.