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S: So you did not answer my question, you surprising man. I did not ask you what same thing is both pious and impious, and it appears that what is loved by the gods is also hated by them. So it is in no way surprising if your present action, namely punishing your father, may be pleasing to Zeus but displeasing to Kronos and Ouranos, pleasing to Hephaestus but displeasing to Hera, and so with any other gods who differ from each other on this subject.
S: We shall soon know better whether it is. Consider this: Is the pious loved by the gods because it is pious, or is it pious because it is loved by the gods?
I neglected the things which most men value, such as wealth, and family interests, and military commands, and public oratory, and all the civic appointments, and social clubs, and political factions, that there are in Athens; for I thought that I was really too honest a man to preserve my life if I engaged in these affairs.
For I go around doing nothing but persuading both young and old among you not to care for your body or your wealth in preference to or as strongly as for the best possible state of your soul, as I say to you: “Wealth does not bring about excellence, but excellence brings about wealth and all other public and private blessings of men.”
Let us reflect in this way, too, that there is good hope that death is a blessing, for it is one of two things: either the dead are nothing and have no perception of anything, or it is, as we are told, a change and a relocating for the soul from here to another place.
S: Would that the majority could inflict the greatest evils, for they would then be capable of the greatest good, and that would be find, but now they cannot do either. They cannot make a man either wise or foolish, but they inflict things haphazardly.
S: We should not then think so much of what the majority will say about us, but what he will say who understands justice and injustice, that one, that is, and the truth itself.
S: It is clear then that those who do not know things to be bad do not desire what is bad, but they desire those things that they believe to be good but that are in fact bad. It follows that those who have no knowledge of these things and believe them to be good clearly desire good things. Is that not so? — It is likely.
As the soul is immortal, has been born often and has seen all things here and in the underworld, there is nothing which it has not yet learned; so it is in no way surprising that it can recollect the things it knew before, both about virtue and other things.
S: It follows from this reasoning, Meno, that virtue appears to be present in those of us who may possess it as a gift from the gods.
For whether I be awake of asleep, two plus three makes five, and a square does not have more than four sides; nor does it seem possible that such obvious truths can fall under suspicion of falsity.All the same, a certain opinion of long standing has been fixed in my mind, namely that there exists a God who is able to do anything and by whom I, such as I am, have been created. How do I know that he did not bring it about that there be no earth at all, no heavens, no extended thing, no figure, no size, no place, and yet all these things should seem to me to exist precisely as they appear to do now? Moreover—as I judge that others sometimes make mistakes in matters that they believe they know most perfectly—how do I know that I am not deceived every time I add two and three or count the sides of a square or perform an even simpler operation, if such can be imagined? But perhaps God has not willed that I be thus deceived, for it is said that he is supremely good. Nonetheless, if it were repugnant to his goodness that he should have created me such that I be deceived all the time, it would seem, from this same consideration, to be foreign to him to permit me to be deceived occasionally. But we cannot make this last assertion.
What then will count as true? Perhaps only this one thing: that nothing is certain.
Thus it must be granted that, after weighing everything carefully and sufficiently, one must come to the considered judgment that the statement “I am, I exist” is necessarily true every time it is uttered by me or conceived in my mind.
Moreover, in order to remove this doubt, I ought at the first opportunity to inquire if there is a God, and, if there is, whether or not he can be a deceiver. If I am ignorant of these matters, I do not think I can ever be certain of anything else.
But it is evident by the light of nature that at the very least there must be as much in the total efficient cause as there is in the effect of that same cause. For, I ask, where can an effect get its reality unless it be from its cause? And how can the cause give that reality to the effect, unless the cause also has that reality? Hence it follows that something cannot come into existence from nothing, nor even can what is more perfect, that is, that contains in itself more reality, come into existence from what contains less.
Still, this is not yet altogether satisfactory; for error is not a pure negation, but a privation or a lack of some knowledge that somehow ought to be in me.
I note that these errors depend on the simultaneous concurrence of two causes: the faculty of knowing that is in me, and the faculty of choosing (in other words, the free choice of the will), that is, they depend on the intellect and will at the same time.
But granted I could no more think of God as not existing than I can think of a mountain without a valley, still it does not follow that a mountain actually exists in the world. Thus, from the fact that I think of God as existing, it does not seem to follow that God exists; for my thought imposes no necessity on things. Just as one can imagine a winged horse, without there being a horse with wings, so in the same way perhaps I can attach existence of God, even though no such God exists.
Although perhaps (or rather, as I shall soon say, to be sure) I have a body that is very closely joined to me, nevertheless, because on the one hand I have a clear and distinct idea of myself—insofar as I am a thing that thinks and not an extended thing—and because on the other hand I have a distinct idea of a body—insofar as it is merely an extended thing, and not a thing that thinks—it is therefore certain that I am truly distinct from my body, and that I can exist without it.
For certainly these feelings of thirst, hunger, pain, and so on are nothing but confused modes of thinking arising from the union and, as it were, the mingling of the mind with the body.
Now, first, I realize at this point that there is a great difference between a mind and a body, because the body, by its very nature, is something divisible, whereas the mind is plainly indivisible.
Next, I observe that my mind is not immediately affected by all the parts of the body, but merely by the brain, or perhaps even by just one small part of the brain—namely, by that part in which the “common sense” is said to be found.
But because the need to get things done does not always give us the leisure time for such a careful inquiry, one must believe that the life of man is vulnerable to errors regarding particular things, and we must acknowledge the infirmity of our nature.
It is man alone who brings light to this world. Nature is dark, brooding and cruel. What compassion there is in the earth flows from the sterling heart of man.
Slit a man’s throat and his dog will lap up the blood. Slit the dog’s throat and the man will save him if he can.
The desire for a strong faith is not the proof of a strong faith, rather the opposite. If one has it one may permit oneself the beautiful luxury of scepticism: one is secure enough, firm enough, fixed enough for it.
My conception of freedom. – The value of a thing sometimes lies not in what one attains with it, but in what one pays for it – what it costs us. I give an example. Liberal institutions immediately cease to be liberal as soon as they are attained: subsequently there is nothing more thoroughly harmful to freedom than liberal institutions.
Where faith is needed. – Nothing is rarer among moralists and saints than integrity; perhaps they say the opposite, perhaps they even believe it. For when faith is more useful, effective, convincing than conscious hypocrisy, hypocrisy instinctively and forthwith becomes innocent: first principle for the understanding of great saints.
– The word ‘Christianity’ is already a misunderstanding – in reality there has been only one Christian, and he died on the Cross.
I think that if we are going to reform the world, and make it a better place to live in, the way to do it is not with talk about relationships of a political nature, which are inevitably dualistic, full of subjects and objects and their relationship to one another; or with programs full of things for other people to do. I think the end is the beginning. Programs of a political nature are important end products of social quality that can be effective only if the underlying structure of social values is right. The social values are right only if the individual values are right. The place to improve the world is first in one’s own heart and head and hands, and then work outward from there. Other people can talk about how to expand the destiny of mankind. I just want to talk about how to fix a motorcycle. I think that what I have to say has more lasting value.
Gumption is the psychic gasoline that keeps the whole think going. If you haven’t got it there’s no way the motorcycle can possibly be fixed. But if you have got it and know how to keep it there’s absolutely no way in this whole world that motorcycle can keep from getting fixed. It’s bound to happen. Therefore the thing that must be monitored at all times and preserved before anything else is the gumption.
Gumptionology 101-An examination of affective, cognitive and psychomotor blocks in the perception of Quality relationships-3 cr, VII, MWF. I’d like to see that in a college catalog somewhere.
The real cycle you’re working on is a cycle called yourself. The machine that appears to be “out there” and the person that appears to be “in here” are not two separate things. They grow toward Quality or fall away from Quality altogether.
The explanation, I suppose, is that the physical distance between people has nothing to do with loneliness. It’s psychic distance, and in Montana and Idaho the physical distances are big but the psychic distances between people are small, and here it’s reversed.
It’s the primary America we’re in. It hit the night before last in Prineville Junction and it’s been with us ever since. There’s this primary America of freeways and jet flights and TV and movie spectaculars. And people caught up in this primary America seem to go through huge portions of their lives without much consciousness of what’s immediately around them. The media have convinced them that what’s right around them is unimportant. And that’s why they’re lonely. You see it in their faces. First the little flicker of searching, and then when they look at you, you’re just a kind of object. You don’t count. You’re not what they’re looking for. You’re not on TV.
Damn the United States! I wish I may never hear of the United States again!
“...Glad poverty’s an honest thing, that’s plain,
Which Seneca and other cleark’s maintain.
Whoso will be content with poverty,
I hold him rich, though not a shirt has he.
And he covets much is a poor wight,
For he would gain what’s all beyond his might.
But he that has not, nor, desires to have,
Is rich, although you hold him but a knave.”
“O storm-torn people! Unstable and untrue!
Ay indiscreet, and changing as a vane,
Delighting ever in rumour that is new,
For like the moon aye do you wax and wane;
Full of all chatter, dear at even a jane;
Your judgement’s false your constancy deceives,
Afull great fool is he that you believes!”
“Under a shepherd soft and negligent
Full many a sheep and lamb by wolf is bent.”
The individual in any given nation has in this war [World War I] a terrible opportunity to convince himself of what would occasionally strike him in peacetime—that the state has forbidden to the individual the practice of wrong-doing, not because it desired to abolish it, but because it desires to monopolize it, like salt and tobacco.
I woke up as the sun was reddening; and that was the one distinct time in my life, the strangest moment of all, when I didn’t know who I was—I was far away from home, haunted and tired with travel, in a cheap hotel room I’d never seen, hearing the hiss of steam outside, and the creak of the old wood of the hotel, and footsteps upstairs, and all the sad sounds, and I looked at the cracked high ceiling and really didn’t know who I was for about fifteen strange seconds.
What difference does it make after all—anonymity in the world of men is better than fame in heaven, for what’s heaven? What’s earth? All in the mind.
and now it was the strangeness of Americans and Mexicans blasting together on the desert and, more than that, the strangeness of seeing in close proximity the faces and pores of skins and calluses of fingers and general abashed cheekbones of another world.
Elmer Gantry was drunk.
as a rounder and a wine-bibber, being chosen as the god of the Prohibitionists
“That’s the whole aim of the ministerial training: to teach us to reconcile contradictions, by saying that one of them doesn’t mean what it means—and it’s always a good stunt to throw in ‘You’d understand it if you’d only read it in the original Greek’!”
He advocated a system of economics whereby no one saved money or stored up wheat of did anything but live like a tramp. If this teaching of his had been accepted, the world would have starved in twenty years, after his death!
My chief objection is that ninety-nine percent of sermons and Sunday School teachings are so agonizingly dull!
I have decided that no one in this room, including your pastor, believes in the Christian religion. Not one of us would turn the other cheek. Not one of us would sell all that he has and give to the poor. Not one of us would give his coat to some man who took his overcoat. Every one of us lays up all the treasure he can. We don’t practise the Christian religion. We don’t intend to practise it. Therefore I resign, and I advise you to quit lying and disband.
Mother died today. Or, maybe, yesterday; I can’t be sure.
Everybody has that wish at times. But that had no more importance than wishing to be rich, or to swim very fast, or to have a better-shaped mouth. It was in the same order of things.
I went close up to him and made a last attempt to explain that I’d very little time left, and I wasn’t going to waste it on God.
It was as if that great rush of anger had washed me clean, emptied me of hope, and, gazing up at the dark sky spangled with its signs and stars, for the first time, the first, I laid my heart open to the benign indifference of the universe.
Let them see what is on the end of that long newspaper spoon.
A functioning police state needs no police.
The broken image of Man moves in minute by minute and cell by cell... Poverty, hatred, war, police-criminals, bureaucracy, insanity, all symptoms of the Human Virus.
The Human Virus can now be isolated and treated.
Wouldn’t YOU?
All sinners would be miserable in heaven.
but treachery and violence are spears pointed at both ends: they wound those who resort to them worse than their enemies.
I tell you I have nearly attained my heaven; and that of others is altogether unvalued and uncoveted by me.
HIM ME
KEEP QUIET SQUEAL KEEP QUIET
I GET 2 YEARS HE GETS 2 YEARS
I GET CHAIR HE GOES FREE SQUEAL
I GO FREE HE GETS CHAIR
I GET 10 YEARS HE GETS 10 YEARS
Airplane hijacking with hostages. Price wars at the fuel pump. Food hoarding. Bank runs. Industrial poisoning. Amatory jealousy. Divorce proceedings, for that matter. The arms race. Double-parking. Anyone want to take a stab at how they’re all related?
Doc, note, I dissent, a fast never prevents a fatness: I diet on cod.
They looked in the windows of every structure they passed, exercising the eminent domain of those marginally happier than the median.
if the numbers he had just read out loud were true, she didn’t see why another half-dozen babies made any difference.
“These are really good times, only not very many people know it.” —Henry Ford (during the Great Depression)
“History is the army of occupation, and we are all collaborators.”
“History is more or less bunk. We want to live in the present, and the only history that is worth a tinker’s damn is the history we make today.” —Henry Ford
(for what is a novelist but a general who sends his troops across fields of paper?)
Still he had not answered the question with which he began. Who finally would do the dishes?
So women could have the right to die of men’s diseases
A Great Epoch calls for great men... Schweik didn’t want to burn a temple merely to get his name in newspapers or school reading books... And that, in itself, is enough.
That was mighty quick work, Mrs. Müller, mighty quick. I’d buy a Browning for a job like that. It looks like a toy, but in a couple of minutes you could shoot twenty archdukes with it, thin or fat. Although between ourselves, Mrs. Müller, it’s easier to hit a fat archduke than a thin one
So was Jesus Christ,” said Schweik, “but they crucified Him for all that. Nobody anywhere at any time has ever cared a damn whether a man’s innocent or not. Maul halten und weiter dienen, as they used to tell us in the army. That’s the best and wisest thing to do.
Long Live our Emperor Franz Josef the First!
May God bless your bayonets that they may penetrate deep into the entrails of your enemies. May the Almighty in His grand righteousness direct your artillery fire upon the heads of the enemy staffs. Merciful God, grant that all our enemies may be stifled amid their own blood, from the wounds which we inflict upon them.
So they all had to pay a whopping big fine, and to-morrow, Mrs. Müller, I want you to cook me some noodles.
Now there were many latrines at Turowa Wolska, and before long all of them were clogged with these leaflets.
A pure hand needs no glove to cover it.
No man, for any considerable period, can wear one face to himself, and another to the multitude, without finally getting bewildered as to which may be the true.
For such as violate our civil order, it may be permitted us to show mercy. But woe to the wretch that troubleth our religion!
No, Dorothy, this poor child is no captive from the wilderness,” he replied. “The heathen savage would have given him to eat of his scanty morsel, and to drink of his birchen cup; but Christian men alas! has cast him out to die.
I wasn’t impressed. As it says in Bible, God fights on side of heaviest artillery.
I shoved her down, with hard left hand. Surprised her, and surprised me—had not touched her in any way save necessary contact. Oh, different today, but was 2075 and touching fem without her consent—plenty of lonely men to come to rescue and airlock not far away. As kids say, Judge Lynch never sleeps.
Prof shook head. “Every new member made it that much more likely that you would be betrayed. Wyoming dear lady, revolutions are not won by enlisting the masses. Revolution is a science only a few are competent to practice. It depends on correct organization and, above all, on communications. Then, at the proper moment in history, they strike. Correctly organized and properly timed it is a bloodless coup. Done clumsily or prematurely and the result is civil war, mob violence, purges, terror. I hope you will forgive me if I say that, up to now, it has been done clumsily.”
Wyoh looked baffled. “What do you mean by ‘correct organization’?”
“Functional organization. How does one design an electric motor? Would you attach a bathtub to it, simply because one was available? Would a bouquet of flowers help? A heap of rocks? No, you would use just those elements necessary to its purpose and make it no larger than needed—and you would incorporate safety factors. Function controls the design.
“So it is with revolution. Organization must be no larger than necessary—never recruit anyone merely because he wants to join. Nor seek to persuade for the pleasure of having another share your views. He’ll share them when the time comes . . . or you’ve misjudged the moment in history. Oh, there will be an educational organization but it must be separate; agitprop is no part of basic structure.
“As to basic structure, a revolution starts as a conspiracy; therefore structure is small, secret, and organized as to minimize damage done by betrayal—since there always are betrayals. One solution is the cell system and so far nothing better has been invented.
“Much theorizing has gone into optimum cell size. I think that history shows that a cell of three is best—more than three can’t agree on when to have dinner, much less when to strike. Manuel, you belong to a large family; do you vote on when to have dinner?”
“Bog, no! Mum decides.”
“Dear lady, I must come to Manuel’s defense. He has a correct evaluation even though he may not be able to state it. May I ask this? Under what circumstances is it moral for a group to do that which is not moral for a member of that group to do alone?”
“Uh . . . that’s a trick question.”
“It is the key question, dear Wyoming. A radical question that strikes to the root of the whole dilemma of government. Anyone who answers honestly and abides by all consequences knows where he stands—and what he will die for.”
“I can get along with a Randite. A rational anarchist believes that concepts such as ‘state’ and ‘society’ and ‘government’ have no existence save as physically exemplified in the acts of self-responsible individuals. He believes that it is impossible to shift blame, share blame, distribute blame . . . as blame, guilt, responsibility are matters taking place inside human beings singly and nowhere else. But being rational, he knows that not all individuals hold his evaluations, so he tries to live perfectly in an imperfect world . . . aware that his effort will be less than perfect yet undismayed by self-knowledge of self-failure.”
“Dear lady, I’ll happily accept your rules.”
“But you don’t seem to want any rules!”
“True. But I will accept any rules that you feel necessary to your freedom. I am free, no matter what rules surround me. If I find them tolerable, I tolerate them; if I find them too obnoxious, I break them. I am free because I know that I alone am morally responsible for everything I do.”
Prof set us straight: Easier to get people to hate than to get them to love.
I got annoyed and had to remind myself that from Mike’s viewpoint analyzing jokes was just as important as freeing Luna—and you don’t break promises to a child.
“Children seldom are able to realize that death will come to them personally. One might define adulthood as the age at which a person learns he must die. . . and accepts his sentence undismayed.”
STUART RENÉ LAJOIE
Poet—Traveler—Soldier of Fortune
(Prof was a pacifist. Like his vegetarianism, he did not let it keep him from being “rational.” Would have made a terrific theologian.)
“Many would die. Then a new stability would be reached with somewhat more people—more efficient people and better fed. This planet isn’t crowded; it is just mismanaged . . . and the unkindest thing you can to for a hungry man is to give him food. ‘Give.’ Read malthus. It is never safe to laugh at Dr. Malthus; he always has the last laugh. A depressing man, I’m glad he’s dead. But don’t read him until this is over, too many facts hamper a diplomat, especially an honest one.”
“Of course. A king is the people’s only protection against tyranny . . . especially against the worst of all tyrants, themselves. Prof will be ideal for the job . . . because he does not want the job.”
At Oran, as elsewhere, for lack of time and thinking, people have to love one another without knowing much about it.
“There have been as many plagues as wars in history; yet always plagues and wars take people equally by surprise.”
“When a war breaks out, people say: “It’s too stupid; it can’t last long.” But though a war may well be “too stupid,” that doesn’t prevent its way; as we should see if we were not always so much wrapped up in ourselves.”
it made them think, “Sons who had lived beside their mothers hardly giving them a glance fell to picturing with poignant regret each wrinkle in the absent face that memory cast upon the screen.”
In normal times all of us know, whether consciously or not, that there is no love which can’t be bettered; nevertheless, we reconcile ourselves more or less easily to the fact that ours has never risen above the average. But memory is less disposed to compromise.
“Death means nothing to men like me. It’s the event that proves them right.”
“The evil that is in the world always comes of ignorance, and good intentions may do as much harm as malevolence, if they lack understanding. On the whole, man are more good than bad; that, however, isn’t the real point. But they are more or less ignorant; and it is this that we call vice or virtue; the most incorrigible vice being that of an ignorance that fancies it knows everything and therefore claims for itself the right to kill. The soul of the murderer is blind; and there can be no true goodness nor true love without the utmost clear-sightedness.”
“But again and again there comes a time in history when the man who dares to say that two and two make four is punished with death. The schoolteacher is well aware of this. And the question is not one of knowing what punishment or reward attends the making of this calculation. The question is that of knowing two and two do make four. For those of our townsfolk who risked their lives in this predicament the issue was whether or not plague was in their midst and whether or not they must fight against it.”
“It’s only artists who know how to use their eyes,” was his [Grand’s] conclusion.
One fine morning in May a slim young horse woman might have been seen riding a glossy sorrel mare along the flower-strewn avenues of the Bois de Boulogne.
There was no doubt as to the existence of good and evil and. as a rule, it was easy to see the difference between them.
“My brothers, a time of testing has come for us all. We must believe everything or deny everything. And who among you, I ask, would dare to deny everything?”
“Like those worthy women, who after learning that buboes were the natural issues through which the body cast out infection, went to the church and prayed: “Please, God, give him buboes,” thus the Christian should yield himself wholly to the divine will, even though it passed his understanding.”
“The sufferings of children were our bread of affliction but without this bread our souls would die of spiritual hunger.”
“—yes, Rieux, I can say I know the world inside out, as you may see—that each of us has the plague within him; no one, no one on earth is free from it.”
U.S. TPB:
Dark Horse Manga:
WHAT DO YOU WANT?
DO YOU JUST WANT TO EAT AND CONTRIBUTE NOTHING, TO BE BRAINWASHED BY MEDIA TRASH? TO SACRIFICE THE NATION'S FUTURE FOR YOUR OWN SELFISHNESS?
BUT...
BUT...
THAT'S NOT WHAT...
LISTEN KID--
YOU'VE GOT A GHOST, AND A BRAIN...
AND YOU CAN ACCESS A CYBER-BRAIN.
CREATE YOUR OWN FUTURE...
UMM...
GOSH, I JUST WANTED TO SAY THAT ROBOTS HAVE RIGHTS, TOO...
OF COURSE.
JUST THINK, ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE EARTH, STARVING REFUGEES ARE DYIN' LIKE CRAZY. THEY'VE OBVIOUSLY GOT THE RIGHT TO EAT, BUT THEY GOT NO FOOD, YEAH?
IT'S THE SAME FOR MURDER VICTIMS... SURE, THEY GOT CIVIL RIGHTS, BUT THEY DON'T HAVE A LIFE ANYMORE.
HEY, THEY'VE GOT SOME RIGHTS, TOO, YOU KNOW.
IF EVERYONE HAD ALL THEIR RIGHTS THE WORLD'D BE AT PEACE AND WE'D BE OUT OF A JOB!
HOW FRAGILE THE HUMAN HEART IS...
PEOPLE GET CAUGHT UP IN WORLDLY EVENTS AND SEEK NOTHING BUT PLEASURE, BECOMING MACHINES PURSUING PROFIT AND EFFICIENCY, OR MERE CONSUMPTION UNITS...
WHY SO PHILOSOPHICAL ALL OF A SUDDEN, CHIEF?
I'M GOING TO GET OLD SOMEDAY, TOO...
AS AN ADVENTURER ONCE SAID LONG AGO: "SOMETIMES PEOPLE NEED TIME JUST TO STOP AND THINK...
... AND PEOPLE ARE THE ONLY ONES WHO CAN DO THAT."
SAY CHIEF...
ABOUT MY PAID VACATION...
RIGHT--
I ALMOST FORGOT.
HERE...
YOU'RE TO LEAVE TOMORROW MORNING FOR TWO MONTHS TRAINING WITH THE SAS. TRY TO COME BACK ALIVE.
WE'RE SUCH A GLOBALLY CONSCIOUS NATION, AREN'T WE?
IF THOSE PEACE ACTIVISTS WOULD JUST DEAL WITH REALITY A LITTLE MORE EFFECTIVELY WE WOULDN'T BE PLACED IN THESE SITUATIONS.
THEY'RE JUST LIKE US. THEY HATE VIOLENCE...
THEY'RE SO HYPOCRITICAL.
EMPHASIZING A LIFESTYLE BASED ON CONSUMPTION IS THE ULTIMATE VIOLENCE AGAINST POOR COUNTRIES.
WHAT REALLY KILLED HIM IS THE PERSON OR PERSONS WHO ORIGINALLY PROGRAMMED HIM, NOT ME. I WAS JUST AN UNWITTING ACCOMPLICE.
If they were not truly intelligent, I hope I never live to see us tangle with anything at all like them which is intelligent. I know who will lose. Me. You. The so-called human race.
I decided that I need treat them with no more respect, or only a little more respect, than I would give to any casual crowd of witnesses, i.e., ignore them; change neighborhoods and forget it.
“Anybody missing?”
“How can you tell, in a free country?”
If the slugs taught us anything, it was that the price of freedom is the willingness to do sudden battle, anywhere, any time, and with utter recklessness.
Death and Destruction!
“Does the Little Doctor work against a planet?”
Mazer’s face went rigid. “Ender, the buggers never deliberately attacked a civilian population in either invasion. You decide whether it would be wise to adopt a strategy that would invite reprisals.”
The observers behind him began to cough, to move nervously. They were beginning to realize that Ender didn’t know what to do.
I don’t care anymore, thought Ender. You can keep your game. If you won’t even give me a chance, why should I play?
Like his last game in Battle School, when they put two armies against him.
And just as he remembered that game, apparently Bean remembered it, too, for his voice came over the headset, saying, “Remember, the enemy’s gate is down.”
Molo, Soup, Vlad, Dumper, and Crazy Tom all laughed. They remembered, too.
“No human being, when you understand his desires, is worthless. No one’s life is worth nothing”
“When you really know somebody, you can’t hate them.”
“Or maybe it’s just that you can’t really know them until you stop hating them.”
“You killed more people than anybody in history.”
“Be the best at whatever you do, that’s what my mother always told me.”
I find it interesting that the meanest life, the poorest existence, is attributed to God’s will, but as human beings become more affluent, as their living standard and style begin to ascend the material scale, God descends the scale of responsibility at a commensurate speed.
The white kids were going to have a chance to become Galileos and Madame Curies and Edisons and Gauguins, and our boys (the girls weren’t even in on it) would try to be Jesse Owenses and Joe Louises.
The needs of a society determine its ethics, and in the Black American ghettos the hero is that man who is offered only the crumbs from his country’s table but by ingenuity and courage is able to take for himself a Lucullan feast.
Once upon a time there was a Martian named Valentine Michael Smith
“All any philosopher ever comes out with is what he walked in with—except for self-deluders who prove their assumptions by their conclusions. Like Kant. Like other tail-chasers. So the answer ought to be here.” He waved at piles of books. “Only it’s not. Bits that grok true, but never a pattern—or if there is, they ask you to take the hard part on faith. Faith! What a dirty monosyllable—Jill, why didn’t you mention that one when you were teaching me the short words that mustn’t be used in polite company?”
Jubal looked sour. “Solipsism and pantheism. Together they can explain anything. Cancel out any inconvenient fact, reconcile all theories, include any facts or delusions you like. But it’s all cotton candy, all taste and no substance—as unsatisfactory as solving a story by saying: ‘—then the little boy fell out of bed and woke up.’”
Jubal shook his head. “I’ll give an exact definition. ‘Love’ is that condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own.”
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