I never thought of asking anyone to do it for me. Something’s wrong with me. In a time of trouble should people not be able to ask help without feeli… - John Brunner

We’re aware of the scale of the planet, so we don’t accept that our own circumscribed horizons constitute reality. Much more real is what’s relayed to us by the TV.

The real Earth was the place from which men would cheerfully run away to enlist as lowly troopers on a ship like this one, to be cocooned and made to hibernate while light-years ticked away, to be revived and ordered to battle stations against an enemy who might not appear, to return to mindless sleep until the time came for paying-off and discharge – most likely on some other human planet than the race’s overcrowded pock-faced homeworld.

You can’t blame the people who can’t hear the warnings; you have to blame the ones who can, and who ignore them.