Some smart moves were little more than nicely padded traps. - David Brin

It was silly to suppose that trials only hardened men, automatically making them wise. He knew many who were stupid, arrogant, and mean, in spite of having suffered.

All this talk of using tax policy to 'assess social costs'...what a dumb idea. The only way to stop polluters is to put them against walls and shoot them.

At last, a kind of immortality could be achieved by anybody who learned the new trick of recording their words and thoughts and stories, by marking impressions in wet clay. The immortality of speaking across time and space, even long after your original body returned to dust.