He thought of men like Hitler, Stalin, and Napoleon. All it took was a lot of seemingly decent people to put the wrong person in power and then fall under their spell.

Run, we think, as buildings crumble. Run, as people perish.

It was the hubris of each generation to think this anew, to think that their time was special, that all things would come to an end with them.

We are not the people who made this world, Lukas, but it's up to us to survive it. You need to understand that." "We can't control where we are right now," he mumbled, "just what we do going forward.

It turned out that some crooked things looked even worse when straightened. Some tangled knots only made sense once unraveled.

There are two competing philosophies in Wool: one is that people have to live under an iron thumb in order to survive, and the other one is that everyone should live completely freely and happily and everything will sort itself out.

It’s easy to forgo distractions and to not accumulate things when you have a larger goal on the horizon.