Men must fumble awhile with error to separate it from truth, I think- as long as they don't seize the error hungrily because it has a pleasanter taste.

Ask for an omen, then stone it when it comes -- de essentia hominum.

Because a doubt is not a denial. Doubt is a powerful tool, and it should be applied to history.

One should be embarrassed to speak of God in the third person.

What's to be believed? Or does it matter at all? When mass murder's been answered with mass murder, rape with rape, hate with hate, there's no longer much meaning in asking whose ax is bloodier. Evil, on evil, piled on evil. Was there any justification in our 'police action' in space? How can we know? Certainly there was no justification for what they did - or was there? We only know what that thing says, and that thing is a captive. The Asian radio has to say what will least displease it's government; ours has to say what will least displease our fine patriotic opinionated rabble, which is what, coincidentally, the government wants it to say anyhow, so where's the difference?

The captain looked defensive. "You regard our customs as primitive?"Every society to its own tastes, captain. The wisdom of one society would be folly for another. Who is qualified to judge? Only the universe, which passes the judgment of survival on all peoples.

The wild black scavengers of the skies laid their eggs in season and lovingly fed their young. They soared high over prairies and mountains and plains, searching for the fulfillment of that share of life's destiny which was theirs according to the plan of Nature. Their philosophers demonstrated by unaided 15 Animals reason alone that the Supreme Cathartes aura regnans had created the world especially for buzzards. They worshipped him with hearty appetites for many centuries.