They sought to take the unfairness out of existence, to remove the mistakes in the transmitted message of life which gave it any point or advancement...
They are. But in Special Circumstances we deal in the moral equivalent of black holes, where the normal laws — the rules of right and wrong that people imagine apply everywhere else in the universe —...
It wasn’t a finite supply of promiscuity he was draining, it was an ever-replenishing fixation that was eating up his potential for future personal growth.
Una verdad aparentemente tan trascendental que uno se asombra de que los oprimidos de la Tierra no se subleven envueltos en llamas y rabia. Pero no lo hacen, porque están tan infectados con el mito de...
Experience as well as common sense indicated that the most reliable method of avoiding self-extinction was not to equip oneself with the means to accomplish it in the first place.
One thing that empires are not about is the efficient use of resources and the spread of happiness; both are typically accomplished despite the economic short-circuiting—corruption and favoritism, mos...
It was a beautiful voice. He wanted to reply to it. But he couldn’t work out how to. It was very dark. ‘Cheradenine?’ A very patient voice. Concerned, somehow, but a hopeful voice; a cheerful, even lo...
When in Rome; burn it.
Was Fergus Urvill anywhere, still? Apart from the body - whatever was left of him physically, down there in that dark, cold pressure - was there anything else? Was his personality intact somehow, some...
Birds and airfish, singly and in vast flocks that dimmed the sun, filled the spaces between the ocean and the clouds, lazily trailing one long wing across the brief smooth curvings between the waves b...
Prin let the old one witter on. They could make him stay in here, stop him from leaving and stop him from offering any violence to this dream-image of the old representative, but they couldn’t stop hi...
In the old days people died and that was that; you might hope to see them in heaven, but once they were dead they were dead. It was simple, it was definite. Now … He shook his head angrily. Now peopl...
You been mud wrestling..?' 'Only with my conscience.' 'Really? Who won?' 'Well, it was one of those rare occasions when violence really doesn't solve anything.
In life you hoped to do what you could but mostly you did what you were told and that was the end of it.
Well, in the end, there was no helping this. Sometimes you just had to adopt the attitude summed up by,
A temple was worth a dozen barracks; a militia man carrying a gun could control a small unarmed crowd only for as long as he was present; however, a single priest could put a policeman inside the head...
He felt great. spa'dassins digladiate; ziffidae and xebecs contend! gol-iard dunking!
He could not believe that ordinary people in the Culture really wanted the war, no matter how they had voted. They had their communist Utopia. They were soft and pampered and indulged, and the Contact...
What is any achievement, however great it was, once time itself is dead?
All food, comfort, energy, shelter, space, fuel and sustenance gravitates naturally and easily away from those who need it most and towards those who need it least.
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