I will be succinct, eschewing vainglorious hyperbole. - Michael Shea

Good soldiers stay alive by being unsentimental and having a quick eye for the main chance.

And I make bold to say that I am not the only one of my countrymen who could profit from taking this admonition to heart.

Granting that our knowledge be limited, what can it profit us to traffic in lurid fantasies and errant imaginings? When—certainty failing us—we must speculate, let us recognize the difference between careful enumeration of reasonable hypotheses, and the reckless multiplication of bizarre conceptions.