In retrospect, each of the steps toward this abyss seemed irrevocable, and yet they had all been so small! - James Blish

One thing you learn fast in the munitions business is that it’s a very good idea to stay off battlefields.

“Though the wicked may hide, the claws of crabs are dangerous people in bridges,” Father Selahny intoned abruptly. As was the case with all his utterances, the group would doubtless find out what this one meant only after sorting out its mixed mythologies and folklores, and long after it was too late to do anything about it.

The early anatomists, who laid the foundations of scientific medicine, were primarily artists; the early psychotherapists, like Freud, were primarily poets. Neither group ever cured anything, but each opened up a previously forbidden area of investigation. Both were retired to the sidelines when really hardcore knowledge began to be available.