If some of the nations would only take a lesson from some small neighborhood like ours — a lesson in how to get along — the world would be a whole lo… - Clifford D. Simak

But man had changed. He had lost the old knowledge and old skills. His mind had become a flaccid thing. He lived from one day to the next without any shining goal. But he still kept the old vices — the vices that had become virtues from his own viewpoint and raised him by his own bootstraps. He kept the unwavering belief that his was the only kind, the only life that mattered — the smug egoism that made him the self-appointed lord of all creation.

Now it seemed that this had been a self-sustained illusion he had nourished carefully to bolster a sense of his own importance.

It must be wonderful, I thought, to be, not exactly rich, but to have enough so you didn’t have to worry when there was some little thing you wanted, not to have to wonder if it would be all right if you spent the money for it. To be able to live in a house like this, to line the walls with books and have rich draperies and to have more than just one bottle of booze and a place to keep it other than a kitchen shelf.