Dominance hierarchies had underlain every system ever realized so far, but at the same time democratic values had been always a hope and a goal, expr… - Kim Stanley Robinson

Rituals should have some unpleasantness, or you don’t appreciate them properly.

Science was many things, Nadia thought, including a weapon with which to hit other scientists.

She did not want to act. Everyday life was enough. But she did enjoy the world of the theater. This was a new way of getting at people and changing their values, less wearing than the direct approach of politics, more entertaining, and perhaps in some ways even more effective. Theater in Odessa was powerful; movies were a dead art, the constant incessant oversaturation of screen images had made all images equally boring; what the citizens of Odessa seemed to like was the immediacy and danger of spontaneous performance, the moment that would never return, never be the same.