That idea only makes sense if you don’t think too hard about it. - Lois McMaster Bujold

The really unforgivable acts are committed by calm men in beautiful green silk rooms, who deal death wholesale, by the shipload, without lust, or anger, or desire, or any redeeming emotion to excuse them but cold fear of some pretended future. But the crimes they hope to prevent in that future are imaginary. The ones they commit in the present — they are real.

We have what we can hold, dear boy, and never let them see you flinch or falter.

And so men organized themselves for the sake of their technology as they never had for their principles. The sea’s politics were unarguable.