A person who calls facts absurdities will often be surprised. - Jack Vance

If the study of human interactions could become a science, I suspect that an inviolate axiom might be discovered to this effect: Every social disposition creates a disparity of advantages. Further: Every innovation designed to correct the disparities, no matter how altruistic in concept, works only to create a new and different set of disparities.

Experience is the only source of wisdom: by which I mean, the competent conduct of life.

“I am a patriot. I wish to see my planet prosperous, waxing in wealth. I am a man imbued with the culture of my world; I can conceive of no better way of life, and I wish to see this culture expand, enriching itself with the cultures of other worlds, adapting the good, overcoming the bad.”
“In other words,” said Joe, “You’re as strenuous an imperialist as your military friends. Only your methods are different.”