Did you experience hallucinations or illusions?" "What's the difference?" "An illusion is a misreading of actual sensory data, while a hallucination … - Michael Swanwick

I’m a politician. I agree with the majority of whoever I happen to be with at the moment.

What you propose to do today is to bring civilization to a lawless corner of the world. I know that you claim more modest ambitions. But when the protection of law is extended to the innocent and weak, that is civilization. Now I hold that in the natural state, there are only two kinds of people in the world—the men with guns, and the victims. And the one kind feeds off the other.

The hearsay of hearsay is not admissible as scholarship.