Hamlet would worry about having nothing to worry about if he had nothing to worry about. - Jasper Fforde

"Humans are molded by evolution to be short-termists, Miss Next," he continued. His voice rumbled deeply and seemed to echo inside my head. "We need only to see our children to reproductive age to be successful in a biological sense. We have to move beyond that. If we see ourselves as residents on this planet for the long term, we need to plan for the long term."

Failure concentrates the mind wonderfully. If you don’t make mistakes, you’re not trying hard enough.

"The stupidity surplus," repeated Landen as he sat down at the kitchen table, "I'm all for responsible government, but storing it up like this is bound to cause problems sooner or later—even by acting sensibly, the government has shown itself to be a bunch of idiots."
"There are a lot of idiots in this country," I replied absently, "and they deserve representation as much as the next man."