Good men are dying at this very moment to protect you, your factories, your possessions, and all civilization." "Good men are dying every moment," Gr… - Michael Swanwick

The problem was that when all you're trying to do is survive, the universe seems a cold and hostile place. We needed a purpose. To distract us from our awareness of being a single spark of human warmth in an infinite expanse of silence. One small candle in the infinite night of being."
"Do you really think science is purpose enough?"
"Yes, I do. I always have. Maybe it's because I was a lonely kid, and there were times that learning things was all that kept me going. The search for truth is not an unworthy reason to keep going."
"You make it sound so arbitrary."
"Maybe it is. Yet I persist in believing that knowledge is better than ignorance.

(All human beings have their price, and quite often it is surprisingly small. The trick consists of knowing exactly what that price is, when they themselves do not.)

The intent of the Goddess is neither known nor knowable. She makes us dance, male and female, in ever-converging gyres that bring us ultimately each to our own destiny, and that destiny is always the same and never escapable. She does not tell us why."
"You said there were no outside forces ordering our lives. That there was nothing but chance and random occurrence."
He shrugged.
"You did!"
"The Goddess is unknowable and her aims unfathomable, unpredictable, and ineluctable. They might as well be random. We live our brief lives in ignorance and then we die. That's all.