Only people with full stomachs become environmentalists. - David Brin

Might human sapience be a fluke? Evolutionary biologist Ernst Mayr said — “Nothing demonstrates the improbability of high intelligence better than the fifty billion earthly species that failed to achieve it.

Change is the principal feature of our age and literature should explore how people deal with it. The best science fiction does that, head-on.

Far worse than bribery is blackmail. Whether a person was originally entrapped in some small misjudgment, or willingly did something awful, the man who is blackmailed is far easier for evil ones to control than someone who is merely greedy or venial.