When you laugh at something, you don’t fear it anymore. - Kage Baker

Do you remember that terrible moment, señors, when the self-righteousness of your youth died? When all the stern warnings of your elders, ignored until the consequences abruptly came crashing down on your head, made you see in a flash that the warnings hadn’t been unfair or mean-spirited or blind, they’d been right? All along your elders had been trying to tell you about the black joke that is life, trying to help you and save you from pain. But you insisted on running straight into the trap, mocking them as you ran, to the agony that was irreversible and permanent, with no one to blame, finally, but yourself.
It’s not good to see yourself in the mirror then.

Rutherford was a historian, after all, and secretly enjoyed it when the truth did injury to modern sensibilities.

True believers aren’t real receptive to the idea that what they’re telling you is just mythology.