The single definition of government I've ever seen that makes sense is that it's the organization which claims the right to kill people who won't do what it wants.
Poul AndersonSo much American science fiction is parochial - not as true now as it was years ago, but the assumption is one culture in the future, more or less like ours, and with the same ideals, the same notions of how to do things, just bigger and flashier technology. Well, you know darn well it doesn't work that way.
Poul AndersonIf we knew exactly what to expect throughout the Solar System, we would have no reason to explore it.
Poul AndersonColonization means potential immortality for the human genus. Man's safety on Earth was never great, and it dwindles hourly. Disarmament, even world government, will not guarantee survival in an age when population presses natural resources to the limit and when the knowledge of how to work mischief on a planetary scale is ever more widely diffused among peoples who may grow ever more desperate.
Poul Anderson