Ultimately, all things are known because you want to believe you know.
Absolute prediction is completion . . . is death!
Small souls who seek power over others first destroy the faith those others might have in themselves.
Greatness is a transitory experience. It is never consistent. It depends in part upon the myth-making imagination of humankind. The person who experiences greatness must have a feeling for the myth he or she is in. That person must reflect what is projected upon him or her.
Blood is thicker than water, but politics are thicker than blood.
Then, as his planet killed him, it occurred to Kynes that his father and all the other scientists were wrong, that the most persistent principles of the universe were accident and error.