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.

That's where all of us are standing now, he thought. On the fat kindling of past sins.

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.

For no change comes calmly over the world.

To minimize suffering and to maximize security were natural and proper ends of society and Caesar. But then they became the only ends, somehow, and the only basis of law - a perversion. Inevitably, then, in seeking only them, we found only their opposites: maximum suffering and minimum security.

....to abuse the intellect for reasons of pride, vanity, or escape from responsibility, is the fruit of that same tree.

It is said that water is for cattle and farmers, that milk is for children and blood for men.