"Come on," I said. "We have to try. The effort is utterly pointless, but inaction seems an even greater agony." - Michael Shea

Deeper and deeper. Ever greater power. Ever greater evil.

The assumption that we would ever be called upon to perform this second task now appeared quite clearly to me as the most extravagant folly, based on a wild delusion conceived by a raving idiot.

You realize of course, Barnar, that it is simply not possible that we're actually doing this?"
"I've come to the same comforting conclusion, old friend. Therefore let's away—an impossibility can only do us an unreal sort of harm, after all.