Then he decided that nothing was more impractical than misplaced practicality. - Poul Anderson

We, the proper civil government, approved your defense measures of the past several years, though you are aware that I myself always considered them excessive. When I think of the prosperity that tax money, those resources, could have brought, left in private hands—or the social good it could have done in the public sector— Give you military your heads, and you’d build bases in the fourth dimension to protect us against an invasion from the future.

Like sensible people throughout history, the average Phoenician wanted as little to do with his government as possible.

Men, whose span is cruelly short, rush nonetheless to death in their youth as to a maiden’s arms.